E7 - La China Poblana

Despite drawing the borders of Hinduism as more of a philosophy than a religion, this episode explores how symbolism plays a role in helping us focus on the principles that Hinduism offers us, often in the form of rituals and "gods". We focus on one of the most popular Hindu deities Rama, and how, in his story, he models our desired actions and virtues.

We all know about Thomas Edison and the lightbulb, and electricity, and perhaps even his famous rivalry with Nikola Tesla, but this episode of Ancient Stories fills out our understanding of Edison's life and his friendships with Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone and how that friendship shaped American industry.

We wrap our mini-series on The Indian Holocaust which saw the British and the East India Company ravage the nation and people of India for hundreds of years, leaving a path of deprivation, poverty, and famine that resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of women, children, and families all purely for greed. It's a story that rarely gets told but the horrifying effects linger on in current-day India.

In Part 2 we explain how the vicious deprevation of salt from Indian people by the British, purely for greed, devastated a cultural and its people, with echos of the horrors lingering to this day.

We begin a multi-episode series that attempts show England's pillaging and decimation of India in a more accurate context. We begin with Robert "Clive of India", the East India Company and a deadly Salt Tax, enforced in part by the Great Hedge, a 2,500-mile-long hedge to help prevent evasion the of the onerous tax, which led to tens of millions of Indian deaths.

Learn the history of the Gnostic Gospels, first-hand accounts of the teachings of Jesus which were hidden and suppressed for the better part of 2000 years. Hear about their discovery after World War II, their authentication by the Vatican, and the now Saint that fought to discredit them.

In part two of our exploration of Edgar Cayce we learn how Cayce's readings turned to reincarnation, past lives, dreams, the afterlife and enlightenment.

In part one of a two-episode series we introduce you to Edgar Cayce and American clairvoyant from the late 1800s who spent decades identifying miracle cures for people remotely from a trance-like state, despite being raised by uneducated farmers. Cayce's feats were documented extensively including secretaries assigned from two US Presidents. And as "Part 1" suggests, that's only the beginning of the story

China Poblana is a traditional style of dress for the women of Mexico, recently featured in the Disney animated movie Encanto, but the story of how it became so begins on the shores of India in the early 17th century as a 10-year-old Indian Princess is kidnapped by Chinese pirates and sold into slavery.

The fascinating story of the Pollack twins born in England in the late 1950s may be one of the most straightforward illustrations of reincarnation. The twin girls were born to a family that just 17 months earlier had watched their two young daughters be killed by an erratic driver while they were on their way to church. Are Gillian and Jennifer reincarnations of Joanna and Jaquelin? We present the evidence in this episode of Ancient Stories