Hi, everybody. I hope your couch is in the right place, and I hope the door is facing the right direction, and I hope everything in your house is set up exactly how it should be to bring you great peace and relaxation tranquility. Because with the show from February, we will tell you all about the ins and outs of fung sway from our episode how feng Shui works. It was a good one and I think we got it mostly right, which is not bad for us, So please enjoy it all over again. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w. Chok, Bryant uh and Jerry's over there. So this's the stuff you should know. URCHI is one baby cheer or key. Yeah. There's a lot of different pronunciations that are gonna happen today. Well supposedly, Um, it's just the different spellings same pronunciation. Q I and h i are both cheap. Yeah, um, unless they're saying kai for c h I, in which kids had something totally different. Yeah, that's that would be the Greek letter correct um that means energy. Are we going to pronounce this fung shui. I usually say fung chui fungi, but they could go either way. I mean, it depends. If it's Mandarin that we're speaking, Chuck, Yeah, we should say fong shui funui. I guess I usually say it in Mandarin fun hui. If we're speaking in Cantonese, we would say fung sui. Okay, So I guess we're gonna go with the Mandarin. Alright, great, Is that okay with you? Yeah? And Uh, I even looked up because I've always said Tao is um um 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, Derrek Lenn had a nice little thing. The first the misconception, he says, is that the first letter in t a o daw is an approximation of a Chinese sound that does not have an exact English equivalent, because apparently in England, I think they say Taoism. 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 has he had high academic standing. Jathan friends in and so he said, it is Taoism if you're speaking in English, and that this author has uh spread a mistruth that there is no real translation. So that was fun. Nice. There you go. That was the glossary of this episode pretty much. So well, let's talk about chi first man, because fungi is the the practice of allowing chi to flow in the best possible way. And she is the Chinese concept of the energy that pervades and permeates the universe, including us, and it is linked to Taoism and goes all the way back to sixth century BC. And um, like you said, it's uh, it's supposedly something that can't even be described in language, so I even try. But you did a pretty good job. I think, thanks for someone who uh supposedly is not supposed to be able to do that. The thing is, well, I'm obviously an incredible person. The thing is, um, this chi, this energy can be blocked, it can fall out of balance. There's it's not self correcting necessarily. Sometimes it needs help, that's right. And so when we inhabit an area, build a home, community palace, what have you. We need to build it in such a way that it's not going to block this chet or it's not going to um throw things out of balance, because we will be impacted negatively if it If that happens, that's right, because in the East there is a long held belief that the space we inhabit is not just a space we live in, but we are actually connected to that uh spiritually and with our energy and UM 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 very important part of it. UM. That is functual, which is translated literally as wind and water, right, pretty neat UM. A lot of people in the West have jumped on this train since the nineteen eighties. It's very a popular thing to do. UM. Often misguided attempts. UM as far as traditional functuation, Well, it's like a completely different school. Yeah, basically, um, not basically entirely, yeah, but UM. A lot of people in the West also will poopoo this, and a lot of people in the East poopoo it. Now apparently only about a third of people in modern China even believe it is a thing. Um, well, Chairman Mao rooted it out during the Cultural Revolution. Yeah, I mean it is. It is. It's not illegal to practice it. It is illegal though, to start a business in China, modern China, where you say that you're doing functuation. Um, but they can't really like, well, I guess it could allow the practice. They outlaw lots of stuff from what I've been told. But um, apparently the younger generation it's even less than a third. It's just kind of going the way of the Dodo. But hey, we picked up on it in California and ran with it, you know, especially in the eighties. Yeah, sure, man, that was a super eighties thing. But lot of people poopoo it though, as they do a lot of things in the East and saying this is just a bunch of superstitious gobbitygook. 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 uh, We're just gonna explain it to you exactly. So just save your emails people. So, um, what's interesting about fung hui initially is that not not just China, but also India lay claim to its origins. Actually that's um. And remember I think you you did a pretty good job defining it, but we should it's bear saying again. Funcui is this practice of arranging your inhabit, your your abode, your life, your workspace, UM in a way that allows che to flow freely. That's right, okay, Um, And there was there's evidence I think back three thousand years ago, no, sorry years ago, so about BC. Yeah, 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 uh, this is um been seeing many times. I've read a great article in uh, I think it was history today by guy named Anthony Evini 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 uh and m hmm. This place of Mexico that I will pronounce as d O t hua Kan. I don't know if that's right. It's like in myan ancient Mian city, and they all have the same um philosophy and mine, which is apparently if you go to Beijing, it's very famous for its layout, as is d C. You can stand in Tienamen 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 Masoli liam of Mao z Dong on a perfect north south axis, like everything is planned out. And this is I'm not saying Washington d C was necessarily fun suid functuad, and I know that you shouldn't use that as a verb, but I'm going to. But it's it's the idea like Stonehenge, that the it's the cities are aligned cosmically somehow with the stars in mind. And it can be as simple as um, 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 sure that that is the basis of fung hui, and it does show up in other cultures across time. Yeah. One of the one of the famous cities that was laid out according to UM, this Indian version of it, Vastu Shastra as um ankor Watt in Cambodia, very famous temple. Those were built and I think the thirteenth century CE. So it's not evidence that the Indians were first, but there is evidence elsewhere that 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 too bed or Mongolia or China and started spreading the vast Shastra And that's when China got their hands on it and turned it into what we now recognize as Functui. That's one interpretation of the origin of the whole thing. Yeah, And and either way, what both of them are doing is looking and taking two accounts uh the five elements earth, water, fire, air and space and how they affect uh, your your pad and um or your city, like you said, our community or temple UM. And some people might say, well this is you know, you might want to call it functual 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 functional, I would say, brother, that's functuate A T S. You know, it's just how I like to build my house. And they, you know, that's functual. And then they fight, that's right, they lay wrestle or domination. So that, though, would be more Western functuation. We'll get into it. But basically, the distinction between Western functual eighties function way and classic functui um 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 functual is functual light and not even l I G H T like L I T E like that kind of eighties light. Yeah, well we might as well talk about the schools. Then it's a great seg before we do. Though, sorry to interrupt the segua because it was pretty good. We should say that. Um. Most historians now believe that it was actually China that came up with. Yeah, just the evidence is is just earlier for the idea that it originated with burials in China, Like you bury people a certain way, and you built the burial grounds in a certain way according to functui. So what you're saying is they leg wrestled. They won the leg wrestle very good. So the different schools, um, 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 functional, 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 is build a safe place for your house to be. UM. So maybe you uh set your house up with a wind block at the mountains with that landscape that slopes or you know, the water flowing down to you is super important, so you may want to open your house up to that. Yeah, but it was. It was practical though, right exactly. UM. And another practical way of um figuring out where to put your house is found in the compass school. That one just forget about it. That's 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 it's kind of like the form school where you're looking for different features of the landscape to to most benefit where to build your house. Sure, but this is this is using that same kind of thought process but aligning it with magnetism and the stars. To write, right, well, you're using the stars to determine magnetism, like which way is north and south and that kind of thing. But it does combine some math, Chinese astrology, and then fung shui together and you get that what's called the compass school, which is also very frequently known as traditional funcui, 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. There's just a ton of thought and calculation put into what we'll learn later is called the Bogue map. So that's 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. Where as far as your entry way, yes, okay uh. And then we have, um what the Westerners have latched onto, um the black Hat sect or that'shenmos it does or the black sect esoteric Buddhism Functui, which was founded by Professor Thomas Lynn Jun who was known UM and believed to be an enlightened man. And um he basically came to the West and founded this sect of Functual and it blew up and um. Westerners love this one because it's the one that most easily translates to an h G TV show, right, you know, like put this plant there, put a fountain there, put your door here and painted this color, and and you're going to be wealth unsuccessful. Don't put this there, don't put that there. It's 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. So Chuck the black hat school. That's hilarious to me, 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 functure, and a lot of functual practitioners pooh pooh Western there like this this is some like perversion of an interpretation of functui. Yeah, it's it's americanized um, and it's taught by people who don't even necessarily aren't functual masters. Even they'll just if they can set up a website and say pay me a thousand dollars, I'll come and tell you where to put your plants exactly. But Thomas lynn Un and his followers say, no, we had we hit the basics, Like yeah, definitely, traditional functuation is very detailed, very um mathematically oriented, but we're still getting the same point across and coming to the same conclusions and 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? Good point? Uh? So should we talk about um the five elements a little bit? I guess yes, um. Like I said, there is earth, fire, metal, water, and would. And these are the phases through which the energy or the chi or the key moves and um, 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 um way in which these elements can interact. Uh, you have would producing fire. Uh. Fire produces earth av as an ash. Earth produces metal, um metal produces water, water produces wood, metal producing water. Don't get that one, mm hmm, all the rest of them, like, yeah, made sense. My refrigerators metal and it has a water dispenser. In the day you have it, is it? Uh? And then you have the destructive. This is when the it's bad. Che And if you look at the little illustration on how stuff works on the 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 um would burdens earth. Yeah, nobody wants that. Water douses fire. That's a clear one. Sure, um metal chops would, Yes, it does. There's there's Uh. So, the 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. 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. Our fire melts metal and earth blocks water like a damn. You don't want a damn. You want that water flowing, baby, You know you forgot hulk smash? Was that the other one? The final one? And then uh, 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 cheek, light and dark, night and day, young and old man woman. Sure, And there 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 when it's yang by the way. Yeah, oh yeah, we didn't point that out, and it's not yang yang by the way. We I used to say it that way. I think everybody did it, sure at some point. And yeah, I equipped in my early forties. Um, it's it's yin and yang. Yes. Uh. The yen uh 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, it just looks nice. It's not jagged. It's like it's like two people just cuddling up, 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. Uh there, Um, well, I guess we're at the bagua, right, Yeah, so this has made sense to me. Right. Um, Remember what we're dealing with here is she She flows through the five elements, 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 UM of functional Yeah, nine squares three by three right, uh? 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 as center, and then the eight boxes around it become eight sides of a hexagon if you shave off a little here there, and all of a sudden, what you have are is a bogua. Yeah. And they can represent color as well as UM these elements as well as for the actual map that you're going to use, UM 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. So there's multiple meetings 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 Bogwa grid with the yin yang in the center right, and the yin yang is frequently represented in the center is yellow, correct, yep. Yellow is the center of the Bogua map, which is actually the center of this nine squared box called the low shoe square UM. And in each of the different boxes there is a static representation. So this is this is what you need to know about the Bogua map. It is hexagon that the placement is always the same. What you do is you take your Bagua map and you oriented a certain way over your house, over your your actual house or the room in your house or something like that, and that's what changes. So if you look at the Bogua square, the yellow is always owner and then black, which represents water and career. UM is always at the bottom. Okay, yeah, a k A 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 placed 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 uh square. You want the bottom which is uh. 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. So it's it's not like you move the map over to to to help yourself out. Like where your door 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 um with the black on the entrance right. No matter where the entrance is, the black is on the the black is there. So when you orient your your black box onto your entrance, what you're doing then is using your Bogwa map to show you how you need to change your house in order to maximize the flow of che 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 you're living room has a big new addition to the lefty like, you shouldn't even include that. So basically you're what you're doing is you're 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 gonna make money on TV that didn't exactly happen. Uh. My couch is the knowledge and self cultivation. I'm not sure what that means. And then my sun room would be helpful people in travel, that's what that means either. And in the center is my coffee table. The if I wanted to have good chea to 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 like it, like what you just said, Well, now I know where I should put a yellow rug in my in my house like you would want to put that in the center of where the Bogua map falls over that room. That's right right. Um you might also so for example, um, if you just kind of had a dead space where the red boxes which is for fame and reputation and you want to fall auster that kind of thing, Man, there's a dead space there. Would um you would put something like awards there, animal related items, maybe a stuff jackalopet or something would be a good spot for that or a good thing for that spot. Yeah. Um. And so you basically what you're doing is using the Bogue map to say you're just cross referencing spots of your house. And when you add these things and basically do interior decorating, um, you can maximize a Flowchi. Yeah, if you look at my master bedroom and bathroom, I have a bad functual 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. 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, because again, Western functional has a lot to do with interior decorating, and so too does to an extent um traditional functional, but a traditional functional practitioner um, if they came to your house and they used the Bagua map over your house, they would they wouldn't just align it to an entrance, they would align it to a magnetic direction. I'm pretty sure it's north. I think I think you're right. But the black the black um square in the Bogua map would be oriented in that direction, so it wouldn't necessarily be facing your entrance. And so there's this kind of It reveals this really big distinction between Western functional and traditional functional. Whereas with Western functional it's like, oh, we'll just line it up to the entrance, and maybe you've got a problem with your toilet flushing, your your fame away in your bathroom, or your money away in your bathroom. With traditional functional, there's no getting around it. It's once it lays over your house. According to Magnetic North, what 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. Um, it could reveal a lot of real problems with your house. UM, 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 functual, there's UM, you're not gonna find quite as many problems in a lot more easy solutions. That makes sense also with a traditional functional consultant who um 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 gonna find out when it was built, when the roof wasn't closed. That's a big one too. And then they're going to also create this Baguo map and a chart based on Chinese astrology as well, because time factors in a lot with traditional functual way more than Western. Again, Western is very um, quick to the point and just put some stuff here, like another example that people criticize Western functual and kind of point like it's just basically UM. Interior design is plaid is considered a form of the wood element. So if you have too much plaid, like a plague couch in a room, you might need to encounter that with like a little fountain or something like that. But where where did the idea that plaid was would come from. It's definitely not traditional Chinese. No, I don't think so. No, I don't think they have plaid in China, do they? I don't think so. But that raises another thing to another criticism of Western functual is that very frequently um functually consultants in the West will be like, oh, you just need to add a food dog, you know, like that kind of lion looking dog. You need to add some you've seen a million times. Was it like a little statue or something, Or you need to add like some Chinese pottery or dragon mural or something, And traditional function practitioners are like, yeah, arc ounce, but um it doesn't have to be Chinese. Right, So if you're consultant is selling you Chinese art and this is right, this is essential. Yeah, that's not that's not correct with the red flag. Yeah, alright, Well we have some more um uh tips from fung 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, and they also correspond to aspects of your life or chi it sounds confusing. It kind of is. Let's just say it. But here are some things that functual A practitioners say will help unlock that q um. Black, which is your career. Uh, they say a fountain or a mirror might be a good thing to have. Their 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, Um, you're gonna have misbehaving kids. Yeah. Actually that's the white zone. That's children. Oh sorry, that's okay, but yeah, that's that's that's what they say. If you want good kids, keep those photos nice. Right. I'm not sure about that one. Uh. 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 um sailing towards prosperity. I guess maybe don't don't put a painting of a sinking ship. No, that that's that is western function there. Yeah, sure that you don't like that. That whole kind of psychology would be detrimental to the health of the area. Yeah, why would you want that anyway though? Like good painted sinking ship Yeah, um, a depressed sea captain probably guess would be my guess. Red is famine reputation. That's where you want to put your various awards. Um so yeah, we got a couple of those, and your jackalope head your jackalope yeah, animal animal related things. You're right, we should lay out our next studio like according to Functui dud, we totally should you know? I just noticed is red supposedly is what you want to put on the back of your chair to block a badge. And we've got a huge red foam thing in between us and Jerry. Oh so we gotta get rid of that. Oh I was gonna say, that explains why I've been able to put up with her cheeks for so long. Now, Jerry, she has the good flow our way, So we need to open that up in our new place. Um, 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. Paradig items that's cute, that makes sense, like bookends, salt and pepper shakers. Uh, boxing gloves, Um, that's where you hang your boxing gloves. Remember Joe Garden from The Onion with those giant boxing gloves he had. Yeah, those were so much fun. He had a thing where he just wanted to get as many people to pose with those as possible and take a swing at him. Uh. 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. Um gray travel um or helpful people. But you're 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 though. Uh and yellow finally, health um pottery and stone objects will help unlock your chee there. Yeah. But speaking of Disney, Hong Kong, Disneyland, they apparently had a functual expert consulted, and uh they made some changes because of that consultation. Yeah, probably that was probably a nice paying gig. The Yeah, you know that consulting was like good che yeah, or they were saying e jing. Anyway, the they opened on September twelve because they were told that was a lucky day according to the astrological chart. Their consultant drew up. Yep. They changed the entrance by twelve degrees. Obviously it was a traditional um functual practitioner uh, and added some boulders. Apparently one of the restaurants has a projection of a fire, which to me that wouldn't count, but maybe it does. That's gonna that seems pretty Western to me because one of the big bases of Western function is psychology. If traditional function is based on magnetism and astrology, Western functuali 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 because the mind makes those kind of associations and it messes up your cheek. That's right, um, And a lot of this stuff as well, Like we said, um, I think, like you just mentioned maybe like it just seems like common sense. Um, Like a horseshoe shaped building that opens up into a courtyard, it's gonna feel good, it's pleasing. Um. Functually practitioners say that's energy. Or hey, don't don't build a house on a dead end street, um, 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 you end up killing his whole family? He did not. He did move though. Um they were saved. They were thanks to him moving. Um your office A lot of a lot of times, he stays, people will um their new offices. They will take this into account. Some very famous people like Richard Branson and Donald Trump have enlisted the help of functual 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. UM, so that you can maximize the flow of chief 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, UM, that way the chief flows correct towards you, not towards your back. Yeah, you don't want the cheat you're back. No, remember the Southern China um, the Southern China functui placement, the form school. Yeah. Um, 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, so the chief flows correctly. Same thing. You want the entrance to your office to be flowing towards you, facing it if you If you can't do that, then you just put up a mirror so you can reflect the cheat towards you. Yeah, that makes sense. Like you said, you want to put something red on the back of your chair to block the chief from your back. Yeah. Actually, now that I think about it, this isn't so bad in here because the chief, the red is to our side. It's coming in that door and bouncing off of that right on us. So Jerry is really the one is getting the short end of the cheese stick. Here, a short short into the cheese stick. Um, what else can you do? You can put a fountain or a plant. Um, honestly, water and would uh And they said even the 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 FUNCTIONI it's like 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, I know anything about cheet to know that fluorescent lights are terrible for you? Agreed? Do you anything else? No, there's it's a pretty good overview, I think, right. Sure, you feel good about it. I feel better than I expected. How's your ch It's fine? Yeah, all right, it's it's not out of balance, it's not jumping for joy. It's just it is today. Got you. Uh. If you want to know more about chi or fung shui or any stuff like that, you can type those words in the search part how stuff works. And since I said that, it's time for a listener mail, I'm gonna call this G E D success story. Hey, guys, got my G E D way back in six so I could attend college. Back then, the University of Illinois Chicago co Flames allowed you and as a freshman, if you graduated high school and had a pulse they called 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 pH d in archaeology there and worked in the field for a few years. UM. I am now a stay at home dad of three boys, five three and one living in uh Karl's Ruhe, Germany. One of the things I love most about the American education system is that a guy who dropped out of high school at seventeen 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. Has been listening since two thousand eight and actually remember the before Chuck days. Uh and that is from Chris, So way to go, Chris, Way to go Chris. That is pretty awesome story. G d 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 s Y s K Podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know. You can send us an email to Stuff podcast at how Stuff Works dot com, and, as always, join us at our home on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot Com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Hi, everybody. I hope your couch is in the right place, and I hope the door is facing the right direction, and I hope everything in your house is set up exactly how it should be to bring you great peace and relaxation tranquility. Because with the show from February, we will tell you all about the ins and outs of fung sway from our episode how feng Shui works. It was a good one and I think we got it mostly right, which is not bad for us, So please enjoy it all over again. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w. Chok, Bryant uh and Jerry's over there. So this's the stuff you should know. URCHI is one baby cheer or key. Yeah. There's a lot of different pronunciations that are gonna happen today. Well supposedly, Um, it's just the different spellings same pronunciation. Q I and h i are both cheap. Yeah, um, unless they're saying kai for c h I, in which kids had something totally different. Yeah, that's that would be the Greek letter correct um that means energy. Are we going to pronounce this fung shui. I usually say fung chui fungi, but they could go either way. I mean, it depends. If it's Mandarin that we're speaking, Chuck, Yeah, we should say fong shui funui. I guess I usually say it in Mandarin fun hui. If we're speaking in Cantonese, we would say fung sui. Okay, So I guess we're gonna go with the Mandarin. Alright, great, Is that okay with you? Yeah? And Uh, I even looked up because I've always said Tao is um um 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, Derrek Lenn had a nice little thing. The first the misconception, he says, is that the first letter in t a o daw is an approximation of a Chinese sound that does not have an exact English equivalent, because apparently in England, I think they say Taoism. 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 has he had high academic standing. Jathan friends in and so he said, it is Taoism if you're speaking in English, and that this author has uh spread a mistruth that there is no real translation. So that was fun. Nice. There you go. That was the glossary of this episode pretty much. So well, let's talk about chi first man, because fungi is the the practice of allowing chi to flow in the best possible way. And she is the Chinese concept of the energy that pervades and permeates the universe, including us, and it is linked to Taoism and goes all the way back to sixth century BC. And um, like you said, it's uh, it's supposedly something that can't even be described in language, so I even try. But you did a pretty good job. I think, thanks for someone who uh supposedly is not supposed to be able to do that. The thing is, well, I'm obviously an incredible person. The thing is, um, this chi, this energy can be blocked, it can fall out of balance. There's it's not self correcting necessarily. Sometimes it needs help, that's right. And so when we inhabit an area, build a home, community palace, what have you. We need to build it in such a way that it's not going to block this chet or it's not going to um throw things out of balance, because we will be impacted negatively if it If that happens, that's right, because in the East there is a long held belief that the space we inhabit is not just a space we live in, but we are actually connected to that uh spiritually and with our energy and UM 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 very important part of it. UM. That is functual, which is translated literally as wind and water, right, pretty neat UM. A lot of people in the West have jumped on this train since the nineteen eighties. It's very a popular thing to do. UM. Often misguided attempts. UM as far as traditional functuation, Well, it's like a completely different school. Yeah, basically, um, not basically entirely, yeah, but UM. A lot of people in the West also will poopoo this, and a lot of people in the East poopoo it. Now apparently only about a third of people in modern China even believe it is a thing. Um, well, Chairman Mao rooted it out during the Cultural Revolution. Yeah, I mean it is. It is. It's not illegal to practice it. It is illegal though, to start a business in China, modern China, where you say that you're doing functuation. Um, but they can't really like, well, I guess it could allow the practice. They outlaw lots of stuff from what I've been told. But um, apparently the younger generation it's even less than a third. It's just kind of going the way of the Dodo. But hey, we picked up on it in California and ran with it, you know, especially in the eighties. Yeah, sure, man, that was a super eighties thing. But lot of people poopoo it though, as they do a lot of things in the East and saying this is just a bunch of superstitious gobbitygook. 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 uh, We're just gonna explain it to you exactly. So just save your emails people. So, um, what's interesting about fung hui initially is that not not just China, but also India lay claim to its origins. Actually that's um. And remember I think you you did a pretty good job defining it, but we should it's bear saying again. Funcui is this practice of arranging your inhabit, your your abode, your life, your workspace, UM in a way that allows che to flow freely. That's right, okay, Um, And there was there's evidence I think back three thousand years ago, no, sorry years ago, so about BC. Yeah, 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 uh, this is um been seeing many times. I've read a great article in uh, I think it was history today by guy named Anthony Evini 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 uh and m hmm. This place of Mexico that I will pronounce as d O t hua Kan. I don't know if that's right. It's like in myan ancient Mian city, and they all have the same um philosophy and mine, which is apparently if you go to Beijing, it's very famous for its layout, as is d C. You can stand in Tienamen 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 Masoli liam of Mao z Dong on a perfect north south axis, like everything is planned out. And this is I'm not saying Washington d C was necessarily fun suid functuad, and I know that you shouldn't use that as a verb, but I'm going to. But it's it's the idea like Stonehenge, that the it's the cities are aligned cosmically somehow with the stars in mind. And it can be as simple as um, 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 sure that that is the basis of fung hui, and it does show up in other cultures across time. Yeah. One of the one of the famous cities that was laid out according to UM, this Indian version of it, Vastu Shastra as um ankor Watt in Cambodia, very famous temple. Those were built and I think the thirteenth century CE. So it's not evidence that the Indians were first, but there is evidence elsewhere that 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 too bed or Mongolia or China and started spreading the vast Shastra And that's when China got their hands on it and turned it into what we now recognize as Functui. That's one interpretation of the origin of the whole thing. Yeah, And and either way, what both of them are doing is looking and taking two accounts uh the five elements earth, water, fire, air and space and how they affect uh, your your pad and um or your city, like you said, our community or temple UM. And some people might say, well this is you know, you might want to call it functual 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 functional, I would say, brother, that's functuate A T S. You know, it's just how I like to build my house. And they, you know, that's functual. And then they fight, that's right, they lay wrestle or domination. So that, though, would be more Western functuation. We'll get into it. But basically, the distinction between Western functual eighties function way and classic functui um 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 functual is functual light and not even l I G H T like L I T E like that kind of eighties light. Yeah, well we might as well talk about the schools. Then it's a great seg before we do. Though, sorry to interrupt the segua because it was pretty good. We should say that. Um. Most historians now believe that it was actually China that came up with. Yeah, just the evidence is is just earlier for the idea that it originated with burials in China, Like you bury people a certain way, and you built the burial grounds in a certain way according to functui. So what you're saying is they leg wrestled. They won the leg wrestle very good. So the different schools, um, 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 functional, 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 is build a safe place for your house to be. UM. So maybe you uh set your house up with a wind block at the mountains with that landscape that slopes or you know, the water flowing down to you is super important, so you may want to open your house up to that. Yeah, but it was. It was practical though, right exactly. UM. And another practical way of um figuring out where to put your house is found in the compass school. That one just forget about it. That's 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 it's kind of like the form school where you're looking for different features of the landscape to to most benefit where to build your house. Sure, but this is this is using that same kind of thought process but aligning it with magnetism and the stars. To write, right, well, you're using the stars to determine magnetism, like which way is north and south and that kind of thing. But it does combine some math, Chinese astrology, and then fung shui together and you get that what's called the compass school, which is also very frequently known as traditional funcui, 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. There's just a ton of thought and calculation put into what we'll learn later is called the Bogue map. So that's 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. Where as far as your entry way, yes, okay uh. And then we have, um what the Westerners have latched onto, um the black Hat sect or that'shenmos it does or the black sect esoteric Buddhism Functui, which was founded by Professor Thomas Lynn Jun who was known UM and believed to be an enlightened man. And um he basically came to the West and founded this sect of Functual and it blew up and um. Westerners love this one because it's the one that most easily translates to an h G TV show, right, you know, like put this plant there, put a fountain there, put your door here and painted this color, and and you're going to be wealth unsuccessful. Don't put this there, don't put that there. It's 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. So Chuck the black hat school. That's hilarious to me, 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 functure, and a lot of functual practitioners pooh pooh Western there like this this is some like perversion of an interpretation of functui. Yeah, it's it's americanized um, and it's taught by people who don't even necessarily aren't functual masters. Even they'll just if they can set up a website and say pay me a thousand dollars, I'll come and tell you where to put your plants exactly. But Thomas lynn Un and his followers say, no, we had we hit the basics, Like yeah, definitely, traditional functuation is very detailed, very um mathematically oriented, but we're still getting the same point across and coming to the same conclusions and 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? Good point? Uh? So should we talk about um the five elements a little bit? I guess yes, um. Like I said, there is earth, fire, metal, water, and would. And these are the phases through which the energy or the chi or the key moves and um, 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 um way in which these elements can interact. Uh, you have would producing fire. Uh. Fire produces earth av as an ash. Earth produces metal, um metal produces water, water produces wood, metal producing water. Don't get that one, mm hmm, all the rest of them, like, yeah, made sense. My refrigerators metal and it has a water dispenser. In the day you have it, is it? Uh? And then you have the destructive. This is when the it's bad. Che And if you look at the little illustration on how stuff works on the 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 um would burdens earth. Yeah, nobody wants that. Water douses fire. That's a clear one. Sure, um metal chops would, Yes, it does. There's there's Uh. So, the 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. 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. Our fire melts metal and earth blocks water like a damn. You don't want a damn. You want that water flowing, baby, You know you forgot hulk smash? Was that the other one? The final one? And then uh, 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 cheek, light and dark, night and day, young and old man woman. Sure, And there 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 when it's yang by the way. Yeah, oh yeah, we didn't point that out, and it's not yang yang by the way. We I used to say it that way. I think everybody did it, sure at some point. And yeah, I equipped in my early forties. Um, it's it's yin and yang. Yes. Uh. The yen uh 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, it just looks nice. It's not jagged. It's like it's like two people just cuddling up, 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. Uh there, Um, well, I guess we're at the bagua, right, Yeah, so this has made sense to me. Right. Um, Remember what we're dealing with here is she She flows through the five elements, 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 UM of functional Yeah, nine squares three by three right, uh? 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 as center, and then the eight boxes around it become eight sides of a hexagon if you shave off a little here there, and all of a sudden, what you have are is a bogua. Yeah. And they can represent color as well as UM these elements as well as for the actual map that you're going to use, UM 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. So there's multiple meetings 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 Bogwa grid with the yin yang in the center right, and the yin yang is frequently represented in the center is yellow, correct, yep. Yellow is the center of the Bogua map, which is actually the center of this nine squared box called the low shoe square UM. And in each of the different boxes there is a static representation. So this is this is what you need to know about the Bogua map. It is hexagon that the placement is always the same. What you do is you take your Bagua map and you oriented a certain way over your house, over your your actual house or the room in your house or something like that, and that's what changes. So if you look at the Bogua square, the yellow is always owner and then black, which represents water and career. UM is always at the bottom. Okay, yeah, a k A 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 placed 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 uh square. You want the bottom which is uh. 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. So it's it's not like you move the map over to to to help yourself out. Like where your door 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 um with the black on the entrance right. No matter where the entrance is, the black is on the the black is there. So when you orient your your black box onto your entrance, what you're doing then is using your Bogwa map to show you how you need to change your house in order to maximize the flow of che 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 you're living room has a big new addition to the lefty like, you shouldn't even include that. So basically you're what you're doing is you're 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 gonna make money on TV that didn't exactly happen. Uh. My couch is the knowledge and self cultivation. I'm not sure what that means. And then my sun room would be helpful people in travel, that's what that means either. And in the center is my coffee table. The if I wanted to have good chea to 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 like it, like what you just said, Well, now I know where I should put a yellow rug in my in my house like you would want to put that in the center of where the Bogua map falls over that room. That's right right. Um you might also so for example, um, if you just kind of had a dead space where the red boxes which is for fame and reputation and you want to fall auster that kind of thing, Man, there's a dead space there. Would um you would put something like awards there, animal related items, maybe a stuff jackalopet or something would be a good spot for that or a good thing for that spot. Yeah. Um. And so you basically what you're doing is using the Bogue map to say you're just cross referencing spots of your house. And when you add these things and basically do interior decorating, um, you can maximize a Flowchi. Yeah, if you look at my master bedroom and bathroom, I have a bad functual 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. 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, because again, Western functional has a lot to do with interior decorating, and so too does to an extent um traditional functional, but a traditional functional practitioner um, if they came to your house and they used the Bagua map over your house, they would they wouldn't just align it to an entrance, they would align it to a magnetic direction. I'm pretty sure it's north. I think I think you're right. But the black the black um square in the Bogua map would be oriented in that direction, so it wouldn't necessarily be facing your entrance. And so there's this kind of It reveals this really big distinction between Western functional and traditional functional. Whereas with Western functional it's like, oh, we'll just line it up to the entrance, and maybe you've got a problem with your toilet flushing, your your fame away in your bathroom, or your money away in your bathroom. With traditional functional, there's no getting around it. It's once it lays over your house. According to Magnetic North, what 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. Um, it could reveal a lot of real problems with your house. UM, 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 functual, there's UM, you're not gonna find quite as many problems in a lot more easy solutions. That makes sense also with a traditional functional consultant who um 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 gonna find out when it was built, when the roof wasn't closed. That's a big one too. And then they're going to also create this Baguo map and a chart based on Chinese astrology as well, because time factors in a lot with traditional functual way more than Western. Again, Western is very um, quick to the point and just put some stuff here, like another example that people criticize Western functual and kind of point like it's just basically UM. Interior design is plaid is considered a form of the wood element. So if you have too much plaid, like a plague couch in a room, you might need to encounter that with like a little fountain or something like that. But where where did the idea that plaid was would come from. It's definitely not traditional Chinese. No, I don't think so. No, I don't think they have plaid in China, do they? I don't think so. But that raises another thing to another criticism of Western functual is that very frequently um functually consultants in the West will be like, oh, you just need to add a food dog, you know, like that kind of lion looking dog. You need to add some you've seen a million times. Was it like a little statue or something, Or you need to add like some Chinese pottery or dragon mural or something, And traditional function practitioners are like, yeah, arc ounce, but um it doesn't have to be Chinese. Right, So if you're consultant is selling you Chinese art and this is right, this is essential. Yeah, that's not that's not correct with the red flag. Yeah, alright, Well we have some more um uh tips from fung 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, and they also correspond to aspects of your life or chi it sounds confusing. It kind of is. Let's just say it. But here are some things that functual A practitioners say will help unlock that q um. Black, which is your career. Uh, they say a fountain or a mirror might be a good thing to have. Their 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, Um, you're gonna have misbehaving kids. Yeah. Actually that's the white zone. That's children. Oh sorry, that's okay, but yeah, that's that's that's what they say. If you want good kids, keep those photos nice. Right. I'm not sure about that one. Uh. 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 um sailing towards prosperity. I guess maybe don't don't put a painting of a sinking ship. No, that that's that is western function there. Yeah, sure that you don't like that. That whole kind of psychology would be detrimental to the health of the area. Yeah, why would you want that anyway though? Like good painted sinking ship Yeah, um, a depressed sea captain probably guess would be my guess. Red is famine reputation. That's where you want to put your various awards. Um so yeah, we got a couple of those, and your jackalope head your jackalope yeah, animal animal related things. You're right, we should lay out our next studio like according to Functui dud, we totally should you know? I just noticed is red supposedly is what you want to put on the back of your chair to block a badge. And we've got a huge red foam thing in between us and Jerry. Oh so we gotta get rid of that. Oh I was gonna say, that explains why I've been able to put up with her cheeks for so long. Now, Jerry, she has the good flow our way, So we need to open that up in our new place. Um, 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. Paradig items that's cute, that makes sense, like bookends, salt and pepper shakers. Uh, boxing gloves, Um, that's where you hang your boxing gloves. Remember Joe Garden from The Onion with those giant boxing gloves he had. Yeah, those were so much fun. He had a thing where he just wanted to get as many people to pose with those as possible and take a swing at him. Uh. 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. Um gray travel um or helpful people. But you're 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 though. Uh and yellow finally, health um pottery and stone objects will help unlock your chee there. Yeah. But speaking of Disney, Hong Kong, Disneyland, they apparently had a functual expert consulted, and uh they made some changes because of that consultation. Yeah, probably that was probably a nice paying gig. The Yeah, you know that consulting was like good che yeah, or they were saying e jing. Anyway, the they opened on September twelve because they were told that was a lucky day according to the astrological chart. Their consultant drew up. Yep. They changed the entrance by twelve degrees. Obviously it was a traditional um functual practitioner uh, and added some boulders. Apparently one of the restaurants has a projection of a fire, which to me that wouldn't count, but maybe it does. That's gonna that seems pretty Western to me because one of the big bases of Western function is psychology. If traditional function is based on magnetism and astrology, Western functuali 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 because the mind makes those kind of associations and it messes up your cheek. That's right, um, And a lot of this stuff as well, Like we said, um, I think, like you just mentioned maybe like it just seems like common sense. Um, Like a horseshoe shaped building that opens up into a courtyard, it's gonna feel good, it's pleasing. Um. Functually practitioners say that's energy. Or hey, don't don't build a house on a dead end street, um, 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 you end up killing his whole family? He did not. He did move though. Um they were saved. They were thanks to him moving. Um your office A lot of a lot of times, he stays, people will um their new offices. They will take this into account. Some very famous people like Richard Branson and Donald Trump have enlisted the help of functual 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. UM, so that you can maximize the flow of chief 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, UM, that way the chief flows correct towards you, not towards your back. Yeah, you don't want the cheat you're back. No, remember the Southern China um, the Southern China functui placement, the form school. Yeah. Um, 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, so the chief flows correctly. Same thing. You want the entrance to your office to be flowing towards you, facing it if you If you can't do that, then you just put up a mirror so you can reflect the cheat towards you. Yeah, that makes sense. Like you said, you want to put something red on the back of your chair to block the chief from your back. Yeah. Actually, now that I think about it, this isn't so bad in here because the chief, the red is to our side. It's coming in that door and bouncing off of that right on us. So Jerry is really the one is getting the short end of the cheese stick. Here, a short short into the cheese stick. Um, what else can you do? You can put a fountain or a plant. Um, honestly, water and would uh And they said even the 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 FUNCTIONI it's like 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, I know anything about cheet to know that fluorescent lights are terrible for you? Agreed? Do you anything else? No, there's it's a pretty good overview, I think, right. Sure, you feel good about it. I feel better than I expected. How's your ch It's fine? Yeah, all right, it's it's not out of balance, it's not jumping for joy. It's just it is today. Got you. Uh. If you want to know more about chi or fung shui or any stuff like that, you can type those words in the search part how stuff works. And since I said that, it's time for a listener mail, I'm gonna call this G E D success story. Hey, guys, got my G E D way back in six so I could attend college. Back then, the University of Illinois Chicago co Flames allowed you and as a freshman, if you graduated high school and had a pulse they called 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 pH d in archaeology there and worked in the field for a few years. UM. I am now a stay at home dad of three boys, five three and one living in uh Karl's Ruhe, Germany. One of the things I love most about the American education system is that a guy who dropped out of high school at seventeen 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. Has been listening since two thousand eight and actually remember the before Chuck days. Uh and that is from Chris, So way to go, Chris, Way to go Chris. That is pretty awesome story. G d 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 s Y s K Podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know. You can send us an email to Stuff podcast at how Stuff Works dot com, and, as always, join us at our home on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot Com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.