All right, welcome everyone and thank you for joining the New America Fellows program for this discussion of Daniel Berger's excellent book, The Mind and the Moon, My Brother's Story, The Science of our Brains and the Search for our Psychees. I'm Katie Engelhardt, a 2018 New America Fellow and author of The Inevitable. Before we start, a few housekeeping notes. If you have questions during the event, please submit them through the Q&A function and we'll get to them in the second half of the event. Most importantly, copies of The Mind and the Moon are available for purchase through our books that link partners, solid state books. You can find a link to buy the book on this page, just click buy the book. Daniel Berger is, as many of you know, a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine. The Mind and the Moon is his sixth book of narrative nonfiction.  And I think to start, Daniel, you were going to read a short excerpt from the introduction of your book to set the stage. So I'll turn it over to you. Thanks so much, Katie, and thanks to the New America Foundation and thanks to all of you for being here. So, yeah, this book is both an intellectual exploration about mental health but also a very, very personal narrative that starts with my brother, and we were in our early 20s was diagnosed as quite severely manic depressive. So I'm going to read just a little bit from the opening little section of the book. All you really need to know is that he's on a ferry crossing Puget Sound. He's wearing a military jumpsuit with little black dance shoes. And this is the scene. The impact of the rough water against the bow created a steady emphatic beat. And above that the engine delivered not only a churning rhythm, but something bordering on a melody, deep and ancient, like a Gregorian chant. It was a small part of my brother's gift that he both heard at swelling intensity, this music of water and machinery. He allowed himself to be inspired and electrified by it. His body responded with a physical visceral version of a child's wonder as she holds a conch shell to her ear and listens to its elemental communications for the first time. He stood on the lowest deck near the front of the cars and the slung chains as the boats combination of Gregorian choir and pounding drum surged through him. He lifted one foot to knee height, then left high off the other and landed on the first foot so that there was a simultaneous vaulting and transferring of weight, followed by a reversal and more repetition back and forth melded with the strivings of his torso and arms, amounting to movements at once airborne and sinuous. A few passengers who watch from their cars, his mix of military jumpsuit and elephant shoes may have looked odd, compounding the oddity of his dancing, but all of this strangeness was countered by the broad solidity of his body and by his resistance to the sporadic boat, which should have pitched him off balance and made him grab as the chain poles or brace himself against a car, but never did. He hung in the air, stomped his heels on the steel deck, spraying from side to side, spun and elevated again, athletic, animalistic, ethereal, impelled by the pulse of the water and the echoes of medieval worship. Soon, he was on a psychiatric ward with a heavy dose of Haldol seeping into his brain. This is his book, and it is the story of a few of the many who, over the past several years, his story sent me out to find. And then just for a moment more I want to flash forward. I want to take off medication against psychiatric advice because as a musician, particularly as a pianist, he couldn't perform and play because of the side effects of medication. And to arrest and a further hospitalization later, I, he was homeless. And this is his voice describing that experience. On the days I didn't work, I lined up for dinner outside a church across from the shelter. That was something. The guys who slept next to me, who spent their days in the park, they wandered over, and we all waited on the street to get in, waited to be fed. We filed into the church basement and took plates of spaghetti and chunks of bread. I wasn't was too crowded for anyone to sit alone, but I didn't talk to anyone while I ate. Most of the guys didn't. For those men, there was a lot of solitude. Afterward, I sometimes watch TV. But mostly I read a biography of Dwight Eisenhower that I found in the nursing home library where I was working. I loved that book. The idea that Eisenhower knew D-Day would probably be a calamity, but that he went ahead with it because he had no other choice. There was a quote of Pizz that I've never forgotten. This probably isn't exactly it. But for me, it became sort of like a cradle. We did what we could with what we had when we had it. That's how anyone would see me. I was a guy lining up on the street for my dinner. I was a guy taking my wrinkly white button down shirt into the shower with me to wash it at night. I was one more homeless person hard on his luck, but I didn't feel hard on my luck. I felt like I was escaping from this crushing fate and that whatever happened was going to be better than what I was leaving behind. The idea that there was something wrong with me, that I needed to take drugs, that even with the drugs, I couldn't trust my own judgment that I was broken.  I thought, not for the first time, but this time it was a clear calculation.  And even though I had just been arrested, and even though I had just spent weeks on a psych ward for the second time, and even though I was going to be living indefinitely in a homeless shelter, this was better than the other narrative. That was a life I just did not want to live. Thank you. I'd love to start broadly for those who haven't had a chance to read the book yet and pick up on the first part of your reading. Your brother, as you write, has had a decades long struggle with his mind. The struggle deepens in the 1980s. He as you read is eventually institutionalized. I'm hoping, could you talk about what was happening at that time in the 80s in American psychiatry and how your brother's experience started to shape what became your understanding of the psychiatric profession. So there was a real convergence, personal and public psychiatric. So around the early 80s, psychiatry made a concerted effort to claim scientific objectivity. It was losing ground in various ways and in disarray in various ways, and it decided that to claim hard science as its approach was going to be, in a sense, salvation. Meanwhile, there have been developments on the pharmaceutical side, some of them going back to the 50s, but culminating around the same time and allowing psychiatry to prescribe medicines and to claim that these medicines could cure. I want to be careful. There is nothing in this book that proclaims medications are invaluable. Put your medications behind you. That would be grossly irresponsible and fully arrogant of me to maintain. But what happened was, my brother was having these struggles and he would I should say now after decades of a really flourishing life which we should get to my brother was having these struggles being diagnosed in a way he would reject my parents. My dad was a public health physician, my mom a medical sociologist so utterly rationalistic in their views and terrified as all parents are in this situation. Clung to what they knew and what they were told and what they were told is if your son doesn't adhere to a heavy medication regimen is likely to take his own life. So your parents, as you write were great believers early on in what you call biological psychiatry. But you describe as the idea that the mind like the body can be broken in certain ways and that this brokenness can be repaired with pharmaceutical drugs. And that you were always skeptical. And as someone who's interested in reading about mental health but not an expert I mean it seems to me like skepticism of the biological model, even hostility towards psychiatry is sort of having a moment you know there's your book there's a few others. It seems like that moment sort of mirrors the turn against Freudianism that preceded it at the same time of course more and more people are being prescribed psychiatric drugs so I'm wondering how you understand that kind of tension. I think there really is a paradox at this moment. I do think we might be at a turning point so a couple of indications as I began this project at the New England Journal of Medicine published a lead opinion piece, which declared as a crisis in both clinical and academic that is research psychiatry just saying we don't know how these drugs work. We're making a progress in our medications. This can't be the only way to go we need other approaches. Interestingly, as I set out and unexpectedly to me, the people I was learning the brain science from and who spent their entire careers multiple decades searching for better pharmaceuticals were consistently saying, we haven't made progress in 50 to 70 years, in antidepressants anti psychotics and the anxiety medication. So, there's that side of things that does suggest we might be at a turning point or at least at a deeply reflective point. On the other hand, you're absolutely right. I mean we are prescribing more and more. We are diagnosing more and more and just for one glaring example of that, that number of young people being diagnosed with bipolar over one recent decade increase by 40 times. It's worth just pausing on that 40 fold increase in the diagnosis of bipolar disease. So, again, even the most hardcore scientists who devoted their lives to this biomedical mission, we're saying there's something going awry here. I mean, certainly one of the shocking conclusions I came to reading your book was, you know, there is just very little evidence for the efficacy of a lot of the drugs that are commonly prescribed for some of the basic models of psychiatry. You interviewed Mark Stone, who was a deputy director of the FDA's division of psychiatric products. He did a meta analysis that covered tens of thousands of subjects. He found that SSRIs used to treat depression do very close to compared to a placebo. How is it, do you think that these models have been able to persist in this field supposedly devoted to science? How is it that these drugs that seem to work so poorly have become so popular? Right. So, it's, on the one hand, the smartest thing to say is it's a mystery. On the other hand, it's worth acknowledging there are people who argue fiercely the other side of this. But yes, Mark's study, tens of thousands of subjects from within the FDA would say that SSRIs outperformed placebo for about 15% of people. And here's the new sort of revelation out of that research. We had thought that at least we could pinpoint who those limited people are who really do genuinely benefit and that it would be the severely depressed. That had been kind of the common wisdom, but his research calls even that into doubt so that yes 15%, but it's very difficult to pinpoint or predict who that 15% will be. And yeah, here's, you know, what my New York Times magazine editor has always asked me, she's like, how do you reconcile that data, which is pretty solid, but with the anecdotal data that we all know that our friend, our family member, was helped. I have family members who say, you know, I've gotten off it now, but that drug helped just lift up the bottom as the one person I'm thinking of. And to it just of my psyche just kept me from going lower than I was able to cope with. I don't have the answer but the scientific answers are fairly consistent. So do you have a long discussion of the placebo effect and you talk about how culture sort of contributes to it. I mean despite some very good evidence to the contrary and obviously there's there's evidence on both sides we collectively believe that drugs like SSRI work and so it seems they they work. I mean is that is that how you understand it as well. That's a variety of factors so hope is a big factor that we're all subject to. Another one that's in Calculable is just the attention of a practitioner or even a nurse who might be administering to subjects in a study that is so powerful and that brings us to a bigger, you know, theme in the book which is whether you're in a serious set of conditions, those that tend towards psychosis or severe bipolar, or whether you're dealing with a much more common set of conditions like depression that I won't say we all but many, many of us are reckoned with and deal with. And B connection can have a tremendous value, I mean human connection. And so it may be that in those studies. What we're seeing is the effect of just even a brief doctor patient nurse patient relationship. And Mark Stone the FDA director, we just discussed he, you're right that he worried when he published this, his findings that they wouldn't be well received, presumably not just by drug companies but by other psychiatrists. I see psychiatry as a self critical profession I mean the researchers you interviewed, certainly have pointed to problems with the evidence but does that trickle down to clinicians do you think. I wonder. So I think many of us had the experience of a clinician the 15 minute visit the walk away with your psychotropic medication for whatever the condition may be and that's not a great indication of nuance, attention, individual thinking, etc. I'm somewhat hopeful just because the level of deep reflection itself criticism was so powerful among a range of researchers that I spoke to so again when you think about turning points. We may well be at one. I mean one of the really powerful moments for me as I spoke to one of the preeminent researchers into depression research who was now and for the past decade looking at this fascinating question of, I think we all know there seems so resilient against depression like nothing gets to them and sometimes that's just so frustrating like how, how can he be so impervious to, you know anything that the rest of us, you know the darkness of the rest of us kind of at least touch upon if not sometimes get submerged by something that for brain mechanisms at the molecular level inside the neurons that might determine that kind of buoyancy so he's a hard hard core scientist, but what he said to me is look when I started out my career in the early 80s. What about cancer would be solved, and I thought psychiatric issues solve right behind it. Well, cancer is so dumb as simple he said compared to the issues we're dealing with. Of course, we haven't come too close to solving cancer we've made progress. Another thing he taught me is this from the 80s onward, and we're still living with this idea. We equated the brain with the mind. The brain is not just another organ. So you take any other organ in the body you said and I can cut out a tiny piece of it and I can even take its individual cells and they're generally doing what the organ does so if you go Google a heart cell it will be pumping. Neurons brain cells are not thinking. There are 100 billion 100 trillion connections, and somehow they are creating consciousness, the psyche, the self but we have no idea how and so to equate these things is just to merge to some other two things that are in completely different orders of magnitude he would say, and it sort of led me to think about our minds in totally different ways, led me and has led scientists to think in spiritual terms that made some of the scientists but nevertheless, they pursue those ideas. But it's something to keep in mind brain and mind just aren't the same. Your book obviously looks at this, maybe turn within psychiatry but but a lot of the book is devoted to patients to people who have been treated by psychiatrists for a long time and who eventually struggle against their diagnoses or the treatment recommended for them. And presumably patients now have a lot more access to information about the drugs are on about side effects there's the internet. Do you feel like that's another kind of movement. People who are diagnosed who are recommended really serious drug regimens, challenging their doctors, or is that something that's always existed. I think it's always existed nearly as much on one evidence bit of evidence for that is the peer support movement where people with lived experience are involved in the treatment process and in meetings and in determining the causes of treatment, but that's still fairly marginal I think that more typical approaches, you're in crisis, and the psychiatrist comes in and says this is the way to go and partly the reason for that is we as a culture are so concerned with managing risk. I do want to talk directly about this but you know, death. And it's good that you're my interlocutor because you thought a lot about this, but death, the possibility of death however slim overtakes the calculation. So, the idea is, I'm going to medicate you. The calculation may severely sedate you it may cause debilitating side effects but it may help to simply keep you alive it will may raise the odds of that now there's debate, even about whether that's true whether the long term outcomes, just in terms of life or death are proved, but that's the idea, and I think that really still determines the course that's taken, just to give you a sense of how problematic some of these drugs are I mean we know the SSRIs have problematic side effects, particularly with drug companies and people like to talk about which is about 50% of people are affected sexually by the SSRIs in one way or another. But okay, we can say that's a calculation that people make and live with her just to center on the anti psychotic side, and often bipolar kind of brings us toward anti psychotic drugs, even though it's a somewhat not to blurry distinction. On the anti psychotic side, those side effects can really really really be debilitating massive weight gain uncontrollable ticks there's a billion dollar industry now drugs to address those ticks even that only works, you know some fraction of the time. And just as evidence that this is problematic 30 to 60% of patients will abandon their anti psychotics now some would argue that's because those patients can't make decisions for themselves. They have no insight they're denying their illness, as my brother did and we can come back to that. My experience is that much more often than not if you sit there and listen long enough people are more living in two worlds and living in an entirely in an alternate world. So there are moments of crisis that are exceptions to that. So that 30 to 60% are probably voting with their feet and we should pay attention we can affirm all those decisions but a lot of them are really worth listening to. Well, I wonder to what extent the health care infrastructure dictates treatment, as in, I would imagine in many situations and insurance company will cover a prescribed medication but not, you know extensive talk therapy and inpatient treatment is that what you were finding to I mean, as you say it's hard to let let someone live in two worlds if they potentially pose a risk but there are places where they could probably do that safely. Safely as always, like what is safe I mean hospitalization is safe for the two weeks you're there, you're unlikely to have the wherewithal to do damage in that hospital, but is there anywhere near decent research say that the outcomes are better after hospitalization than if you hadn't been asked bless there certainly is not. And yes this insurance question is a big one so insurance will cover those prescription drugs will it cover a program like turning to the second major character book Caroline, who's suffered every imaginable onslaught of voices that you can think of including very violent ones. Hearing voices movement and alternatives to thinking about suicide prevention movement. And does that movement get support from either conventional psychiatry or the insurance industry, no it doesn't I don't know that that's a matter of being profit oriented that certainly pharmaceutical industry comes into play here, but it's a matter of this is a really different way of thinking. I'll give you a quick example it's easier to talk about the suicide prevention movement, because it's more straightforward so. And caveat, I'm not speaking against calling a suicide hotline if you need help. I'm not not not doing that. But if you call a suicide hotline the most heavily funded federally funded one. I will think it's confidential but in fact someone is scoring your risk and if you score high you police car and ambulance will be sent to your door and that happens about 20,000 times per year. The idea being we are going to move in coercively as a society in order and and impose involuntary care to prevent death. Caroline's approach this other movement completely different. She's setting up groups across the country where the pact is no matter what you say you intend to do no one will call 911 or or a clinician for that matter. And the idea is that the more candid. The sharing is and the more connected and the more understood you feel the less likely you will be to take your own life and the calculation is, is isolation that finally leads often to suicide, rather than, you know, well, that. And what we need to do is to counter that isolation with a deep kind of connection. I want to talk about pick up on that idea of involuntary care. So in the context of legal decisions, all the time someone is forced to receive psychiatric treatment, maybe in a hospital, or in the context of a legal system someone's declared, medical, legally incapable of making decisions. So in our understanding of, you know, capacity in, in psychiatric patients or patients receiving psychiatric care how's that changed in over time. In what context can someone be forced to take pharmaceutical drugs for mental illness at this point. The last question is easiest to answer so once you're out of the hospital of course it's very difficult to force to you can't there are means to monitor there's a program called AOT assisted outpatient treatment here in New York that tries to monitor that and empowers family members to monitor it, but it's difficult. I'm not sure that ideas of involuntary care really have changed that much there are legal protections that set limits on it, but for instance, in New York and Cisco with the recent crises of violence that's attributed to the mentally I want to be a little careful there. The response has been more psychiatric beds, more avenues for involuntary care on those approaches will run into court problems for obvious reasons, there can, it can be argued they're really impingements on human rights, but that's been the response I'm not sure our culture has shifted that much except that what we're seeing with movements like Caroline's what we're seeing with peer movements. I went to Israel and visited a place called a site. So Terry house that can, you know, takes it also very progressive approach. When we're thinking about mental health in terms of the neuro diversity movement, which it does have some convergence with. We're starting I think to see signs of reconceiving and we're starting to see, for instance, former head for 13 years of the National Institute for mental health Thomas in so has been widely quoted as saying, you know I spent $20 billion on all this amazing research to move the needle one bit in terms of suicide and hospitalizations, we have not so that's one indication that people at the forefront of science are saying, we need to rethink. Right. Sounds like a move away from suicide prevention at all costs. Move away from let me hold on to you. I mean one of Caroline's models is if I'm controlling I'm not connecting. And that's the problem like go back to the parents go back to my parents. They needed to control how could you need to do it and want to do anything else when your child is at risk. But the minute you're doing that and Caroline's been through this I mean as I said she's, you know suffered. You know the symptoms that we would consider fearful, the minute you're doing that you're unable to fully hears, you know she would say take your cape off, you cannot fix this, but you can listen, and in that process. You can help to bring someone back. I'm going to keep going here but just a reminder to everyone that you can submit questions we've had a few come in already. In your book talks about this push to prescribe medication. I'm wondering, to what extent is what what some people would refer to as an over prescribing problem to what extent is that an American problem. So, I mean, you give a really interesting example, looking back to the 1950s you're talking about the growth of a market for so called minor tranquilizers in the US this was initially an American phenomenon. You talk about the introduction of Thorazine as psychiatry's, you know for big pharmaceutical breakthrough in the 50s. What's fascinating was that in the United States the drug was marketed as a treatment for mania was understood as something that would make patients more relaxed in Canada, it was understood as a chemical lobotomy as something, you know, far more serious. So yeah I'm wondering to what extent this this is a problem in the United States compared to other countries. So, again, I just want to say, since the publication of the book and excerpt in the New York Times magazine received a lot of nice comments but also some comments which we need to note from people who've really suffered and really stand by medication. To answer your question, there does seem to be a particular American hunger for the quick fix that pharmaceuticals professed to supply dosages have been particularly high here particularly of anti psychotics. And there's some indication that even rates of diagnosis and rates of prescription are higher so there's interesting study showing, you know, same after sent out same symptoms across several countries, receiving much higher rates of diagnosis and prescription here that in countries in Europe. ADHD to just take a quick detour, depending on the study up to 10 times more prevalently prescribed here than in a country like France, other studies have it at two to one but no one has it at at an equal rate. Yeah, there seems to be something about us. There's also side note here in the early studies particularly of authority, which was the first anti psychotic in the 50s. There were just wild claims, but those claims emerged from seemingly rigorous studies such that 90% of subjects were either completely cured, or almost fully cure. And no one would claim that now for any anti psychotic whether the old form, which is Thursday and held all of the newer forms known as second generation anti psychotics, no one would claim anything except but somehow that study, which sort of held the argument for quite a while, and was able to make that claim and was also reported to found side effects that were fairly minimal bad dreams nasal congestion now this has nothing to do with, and I mean, really emphatic tech so you feel Caroline felt like she was losing control everybody so there was a dissonance there that's hard to explain. I mean, we've talked already about the faith that clinical psychiatrists have had in some of these in drugs and how have some researchers are starting to question that faith. You know about the consumer side of things, you write that in the 1980s federal laws were loosened they let drug companies advertise drugs directly to consumers something that only one other nation New Zealand allows. I mean I worked for a few years in American broadcast television, I would memorize different advertisements for diabetes drugs and whatever it was I mean they're on all the time. They're marketing directly to patients. Do you think that has contributed in a significant way to the popularity of some of these drugs is it that American consumers are demanding them more maybe than in other places. I think there's possibly a kind of circularity that is psychiatrists are diagnosing and prescribing with maybe unwanted unwarranted emphasis but certainly that then there's a demand and drug companies have known this certainly since the 50s when they started marketing some of those quote mild tranquilizers. Yeah, and on the unnamed morning news show that I tend to watch there are an inevitable stream of drugs, both marketed for primarily bipolar. Because those bipolar drugs often cause movement disorders ticks etc. There's a steady stream of advertising for drugs that can in some cases counter those movement disorders. So yeah, and that's prime time so there's you can imagine how much money is being spent on those campaigns. Yeah. I want to ask you about de institutionalization so then move away from offering in treatment, you know from in treatment psychiatric facilities I mean de institutionalization is seen as by many people is a successful movement in the United States that you know patients prefer to be treated in community. And then reporting for my book I went to a few countries in Europe like Belgium and was surprised to find that the institution I mean they're moving away from institutionalization but but still these institutions are common I met young people in their 20s and 30s who'd spent time as children in psychiatric facilities. How do you understand that the institutionalization trend in the US is it all positive have we lost something. I didn't have a chance to spend time as you did in European institutions. Like I said I did think a lot about it alternative institutions but those are really experimental open door. So, I don't think anyone really argues that de institutionalization itself which happened in the wake of thorazine and held also 60s up till kind of the Reagan era was in itself a mistake what people do argue is that there wasn't the funding to build the community level services that were supposed to come in and take the place of those institutions. So I don't think we should have a rush back to institutions I know we're in fear I mean shootings yesterday I mean shootings on the subway in San Francisco that kind of anarchy. All that raises questions I don't think the answer is re institutionalization I think it is though, and even fairly mainstream people to say this so I spent some time talking to the new head of the Department of Health here in New York and I think that our background is in mental health. And even he though he's a relatively centrist mayors Department of Health director was saying we really need to think upstream we need to think not about the crisis moment at that point we're dealing with a criminal situation. We need to think way upstream about why people are abandoning their medication that's number one, and number two is how can we whether on medication or not, how can we battle the isolation, which is really haunting you can imagine if you're hearing this, you're I mean I, for me I'm careful I mean, many people just call these alternate realities and I'm drawn to that idea, but whatever we want to call them psychosis, you know, non consensus realities. There are situations that since childhood have brought shame, isolation, self laceration, etc, and you can imagine what years and years and years of that does. And his point doctor for science point was look we just need to focus on the beginnings if we're going to avert the terrible endings. I'm about to throw up into questions from the audience, but as my concluding question. Daniel and we spoke on the phone last week you talked about an earlier New America meeting. At which you were asked you know what would you do as a parent if your child was diagnosed with a mental illness and strong psychiatric drugs were were recommended I mean your book with a lot of caveats with a lot of people there is skeptical of biological psychiatry. But you know as you write that you know some of your characters they started hearing voices and dealing with psychosis at you know as children. So I, you told me that at that time you didn't really have an answer to the question. That's fair it's a really hard question but I wonder if you have a more concrete idea now of what you might do. Yeah, the question that stump me actually raised the stakes even further what, what would you do if you had a child who was talking about suicide. And for good reason, and have an answer. But I think what I've learned here is maybe to advise against all the terror that I know from my parents and from parents who've written me since I was to advise for at least sort of metaphoric moment, taking a breath. What's being said to you. Can you afford to just listen would listening just listening help. I know this sounds trite and simplistic, but I can say from my brother's experience, and it's an end of one but it's, but I've done enough research over the last several years to have an end far beyond that. The minute, especially with a relatively grown child teen, the young adult, the minute you put that person on a locked war, you are communicating something that might be damaging. And I think for my brother tries he did tries we all did that relationship with our parents was never quite healed. It's an entirely different thing I should say if that child. People like this asks him or her themselves for that respite of hospitalization. I think that's an entirely different script with an entirely different I would guess outcomes. Yeah, I would go back to what Carolina has so much experience with this says and people can read she's now so involved with outreach the book contains a lot of her conversations with parents. The more we control the less we connect. Just, I would say to parents just at least keep that in mind. Right I'm going to turn now to some of the questions we've been getting from audience members. An anonymous viewer asked, how do psychedelic treatments for various mental health problems fit into the landscape, you describe. Yeah. And it's true. And it's really interesting and it's going to bring us trigger warning of people are really, really adamantly atheistic that's going to bring us into some spiritual territory so there have the New York Times, my paper recently published the psychedelic revolution and it, and it fascinatingly linked to two major studies, saying that both have been successful that is not true and if you just go to the conclusion sections you'll see it one of them was not successful and one of them personally was, and I really borrowed deep a clear difference between the two is that the successful study offered, I want to say 30 but it may have been way more than that hours of therapy, and that therapy, as you can learn if you read that therapy manual is very particular. And this is where we get in the spiritual. It talks about guiding the person toward a sense of self within one surroundings and a sense of quote oneness. It is all about using the psychedelic as an opportunity to position oneself within something larger or whatever we want to call that something larger the cosmos. And that power, you know we can go to Eastern or Western terms here. But it's fascinating to me that I think that is one of the places that psychiatric researchers student and moving in. One of the key researchers in that area apologize to me she's like, again it's hardcore as it gets in her background.  And she spoke about this spiritual aspect. So did the research I mentioned earlier that the depression researcher he's, he would never say is religious he draws a clear line between science and what he just said. I'm fascinated by what it is what's the ingredient for religious people that seems to help them and he just said it may be the ability to find order, or the ability to find meaning, because one is placing oneself within something larger. Oh, Katie, I'm not hearing you now. Oh, yeah. There we go. Okay. I have a question from another anonymous viewer. Have there been advancements in the prevention of mental health problems and crises as opposed to diagnosis and treatment. Wait, so what was the first part before the diagnosis and treatment and the prevention of mental problems as opposed to diagnosing. I mean, I would say again these are not rigorously studied but I would say that, you know, this whole idea about finding ways to connect. I'd say this idea that I just referred to about finding meaning and something larger. And there's a little bit of research about things like diet that might help certainly for my brother and this is important to note, you know, he adheres to a pretty strict regimen of meditation prayer exercise and for him because he's a musician music. When things begin his day, and it would be difficult to sway him from that that is a really centering or those are really centering forces in his life and I think if you think about those four things, you'll find, you know, at least one of them as themes in ideas about prevention. And kind of going off that point, Kelvin asks, what structural changes within our health care system today are important for us to address in order to support a relationship based approach to psychiatry. Right. So, I might not be smart enough structurally to answer that question, but I will say that humility would be a substructural element so I'm thinking of Steve Hyman, who I arguably is one of maybe the leading scientists and in psychiatric research he's a psychiatric physicist he ran the National Institute of Mental Health for many years he's now head of psych research at the Broad Institute, Harvard MIT organization. And what he called for after years and years and years of research was epistemological humility. We don't know, we don't know, and that can sound like a nihilistic starting point he didn't mean it that way at all he's a scientist he's going to continue to pursue the science of psychiatry. But he felt like starting from not knowing, rather than an assertion of expertise might be the way to go it allows that doctor patient relationship to be individualized in a way that we just haven't really done institutionally systematically. I'll just add one caveat to that. Of course science can't institutionalized to a complete degree science classifies right and without classifications and categorizations, it's lost, you can't study anything. I think Hyman's idea, the idea of others was, if you can push back toward the individualization of clinical practice, and perhaps even there's a way to do this at the level of research, we might find new and better methods. David Rubin's question kind of follows off that point he would like to know. You talked about Carolyn who said that we cannot connect and we are trying to control. Are you optimistic that more people will learn the skill I guess you optimistic that they'll be this turn towards more of a relationship based model. Right, so people hear about what I'm writing about and this happens not only with Facebook, but with others and think I'm a really dark person I'd say more that I'm just comfortable in dark places. And that's different than being terribly pessimistic. I actually do think so. And that's been affirmed. So the recent excerpt in the New York Times magazine has drawn just a huge amount of traffic and some of it's been very critical and some of it's been wrenchingly critical like I've watched one particular video I'll tell everyone, if you Google Freddie DeBoer, you will hear everything that is wrong with the story I've told and it is worth listening to. But that said, there have been a lot of people who've written back in very, very thoughtful ways so yes. I'm optimistic. Another anonymous reader had asked if any of the responses to your book or I guess to that to the Times excerpt surprised you. Yeah, the fierceness of Freddie divorce response caught me by surprise, even though I knew that sort of thinking was out there. He's someone who's really suffered and is clearly in pain right now and who I'd love to connect with but want to connect with me. So that took me by surprise. No, I'd say after all the years of doing this and then all the years decades of thinking about it ever since the early 80s. So I wouldn't say surprise it's not surprise it's more like each response just deepens my understanding so I love getting those responses I hope readers will just go to my website get my email and send me their thoughts that's a kind of connecting I love that deepens my experience as a writer. Another question just came in which I think I'd like to ask and and you touched on it earlier but the anonymous viewer would like to know, can you tell us the rest of your brother's story as he thought better. You know I'm always torn, because I like people to read the book. I just say my brother's story. I think is both a lesson and really really moving. Sometimes when I read that passage that is being homeless. I get choked up because at that point in our lives so we maintained a lot of close contact I kind of checked out maybe it was too much for me to deal with. It's a lot of transformative story that follows and I'm going to leave it at that for now. We are approaching the end of our time here. You know your book charts these these different sort of revolutions and psychiatry from pre Freudian times Freud it's biological model. It's not an optimistic person, but of course, the brain is a complex organ I'm wondering do you feel like we're, you know psychiatry will kind of crack it or at least make significant advances in our lifetimes, or do you feel like the move forward is to become as it earlier more humble with the limitations of the profession. So look my mind's reeling back to the enlightenment, and we don't have enough time for that lecture but ever since the enlightenment it's interesting we've thought that we could somehow excise mental illness from the brain, or rebalance the brain and current terms and think about, you know, balancing out chemical imbalances and rectifying them. And in many ways the enlightenment created the world we live in it created checks and balances it created the country we live in. Hasn't its faith in rationalistic materialistic science hasn't fully been born out and that's not to say that that science isn't fascinating. I can sit all day and did many days with those scientists who are looking at how our realities are created. I mean, Don Goff who's ultimately he and I, you know, kind of agree to disagree but I mean he was an amazing teacher showing me that it's not the frontal areas of the brain alone that create consciousness it's the hippocampus and just leading me deep into the brain primitive areas of the brain absolutely fascinating. But in answer your question Katie I, I, I'm not sure we can crack it there's not, you know, we've been trying to crack it for a very, very, very long time I think we will make incremental process, but I guess I find something affirming and knowing that the self is beyond cracking. I think that's a nice note for us to end on Daniel it was a pleasure to speak a real pleasure to read your book, I'll remind everyone watching that there should be a link at the bottom of your screen. That will allow you to buy the book, understand what all the controversies about. Thank you Daniel thank you to New America, and I will throw this back to the organizers. Thank you Katie.


How's it going guys welcome back to the channel and I do appreciate you being here today I bring you another Destiny 2 community highlights video and damn some of these clips are truly incredible and insanely lucky too now if you guys have any amazing clip you'd like to share with the world send it into the email or just a link at the top of the video description if you do enjoy the video leaving a like really helps out but guys I do hope you enjoyed the video and hopefully I will see you on that next side amanda oh no amanda goes rogue and we'll have thrall buzzing the control center inside of a week but uh let's stronger as you fight i love it hey skyburner oh i got him both i got him both yo i got them both no i got both catalyst i got skyburner and acrius yo oh zone advantage is yours don't see lost zone being captured better as a dian mediante zone don't see capture two zones of yours and that's how you go down two down in your brain and another one off the victory is a matter of will we're inseparable and it deserves another and i cannot wait to show you what she asked for three minutes left is long but there's always hope fight it's a power play you took them now hold them come back some made off fight for it se acerca el final lucha ya no quedan más ya no queda


Hello everybody. Welcome back to Esoteric Atlanta. I'm here with my good old Georgia Southern friend Angie Tillman. All of her links will be down in the description box below and we are, we have a very special Monday mystery for you guys because we are going to revisit a story that I covered. It was one of the first stories I covered on my channel back when I started my channel and I've been prompted to recover it because I think my opinion has drastically changed since the first time I covered this story and I haven't even rewatched my video yet. I just read to the research all from scratch to talk about this legend, this folklore here in Georgia and this is the Georgia werewolf. Now Angie, you had not heard of this, right? When I first brought this up to you. Yeah, I hadn't. I think I did see parts of your old video like a long time whenever you posted it in the beginning and I just cook and supper and had it play in and I went really, honestly, paying that much attention. I was just like, huh, whatever. It didn't really pay that close attention. But yeah, and back then I probably wouldn't have even believed it. And now I question everything. Everything. I'll tell you guys like because obviously the concept of a werewolf is shape shifting and we know that this is a big awakening. Part of the awakening is understanding that there are humans that have this ability to shape shift. And I've talked to a lot of people who don't have YouTube channels who work high and high spiritual places that talk a lot about this ability that humans have to shape shift. And apparently a lot of people actually do have this encoded in their DNA. They might not know it though. And I was thinking about it too. I was thinking, okay, well, what's the logical thing about shape shifting? Well, if you think about it from just a very basic human perspective, the time a baby is born, we are constantly changing our shape anyway. We're growing and changing. And when we work out, our muscles change. I know when people start a yoga practice, they typically grow a couple of inches because they're releasing those knots. And so what's to say that we can't actually change the physical makeup of our body, especially if the body is the Shakti is the expression of the soul. Now from what I understand and people can correct me if I'm wrong, it depends on what bloodline you're born into as to what you can shape yourself into. Does that make sense? Like reptilians, werewolves. Now from what I understand too, and I actually do believe this, if someone is a shape shifter, they know how to change their shape, even for werewolves, and we're going to talk about this with this case, not all werewolves are bad. Somebody said to me, you know, there are people that are shape shifters that you know in the world today that are werewolf shape shifters and they're here to protect. And so they go into protection mode when they change into this wild animal of a werewolf, which I thought was very, very interesting that there is that perspective that some of these people, I mean, we look at angels, angels, we both Angie and I grew up in a Christian faith. I'm sure a lot of people watching grew up in a Christian faith. There was a lot of debate over what an angel is, is an angel an offworlder? Are they celestial beings? We don't really know. They question mark there, but we know that they have the ability to shape shift. We know that an angel can come into a human form in order to help or to do what needs to be done. We know they have that ability. I was touched by an angel and then went highway to heaven, both of those shows about like an angel in human form. They come into human form. And there's so many stories. There was this book I read a long time ago called Angels Watching Over Us. And it was all these stories of people who had had experiences with angels and some of them actually saw the bright light, but some of them saw them in a human form and knew that they put themselves into a human form in order to not scare someone or to do what needs to be done. And so this idea of a soul, so regardless of whether a human being or an animal or a celestial being, we all have this soul. And that soul is really who we are. But the outer shell of the soul, which for us would be our body, is an expression of that soul. So what's to say, we can't learn how to change that from time to time. And I know my friend, Jesse Zaboder, has said that kids in the dark arts that have this ability or of this blood light, typically learn how to do this at very young ages. When their brain is it completely soul, like for us, Angie, it's probably hard for us if someone tried to teach us because we're so stuck in our ways, right? We're so stuck in our bodies. But for a child, they learn how to do that, how to weave in and out of that when they are children. And again, and I'm going to say this again, it's not all for people who do know how to shape shift, they're not all bad. If you guys remember from the Saphio Code, Mary Magdalene's story, she was a shape shifter and she talked about changing into a lion to hunt demons. We see with that with celestial soul system, a lot of people are a lion. Their soul comes from a lion rod, that is the Christ consciousness. That's why the Christ is often displayed as a lion. And so where do these ideas come from? They obviously come from something. And as I said, I'm going to tag my original video in the description box below. I have not rewatched it though. I made the decision not to rewatch it because I wanted to see if I could look at things from a different perspective, now that this is a couple of years later and my thoughts around this have changed a lot. But yeah, I'll put that in the description box below. They did think, the family did think this girl suffered from an issue called Lycanthia, which is basically a mental disorder where people think they're werewolves. However, I think that's just an excuse and we'll get into the story. Now I am going to say this guys, these are real people. Even though this happened in the 1800s here in Georgia, these are legitimate people. This is not made up people. I actually was telling Angie before we hit record that I actually spent all day yesterday going through court documents, marriage licenses, graves. I actually traced down the multiple generations. There are descendants of this family still in that area of Georgia to this day. And so I'm going to ask, I know our audience is very respectful, but I'm going to ask our audience, if you do live in Georgia and you are near this place, please have respect for the family. We don't know the full story. And so we always want to remember to stay within those lines of consent. And the werewolf of Georgia herself did not have any children. So this would be her great, great, great, great, great nieces and nephews or whatever. But just remember that we're going to talk about the family graveyard, which is very common here in the South to have family graveyards, which is the Owens family graveyard. From what I understand, it's blocked off now because so many people have tried to break into this graveyard and will explain why that they have actually roped it off. The family has roped it off. And if you do break into the graveyard, just be aware they will call the police because this, this legend has been around for a very long time and people are trying to get into and see where this woman was buried. And so let's kind of get into it. I'm going to start by sharing the screen here. And what I am going to show, I'm not going to show all the records of the descendants because they, they need their own privacy. I did that for my own research just so I kind of knew what boundaries I had and in presenting a story. So we're talking about this woman named Emily Isabella Burks. Now here they say she goes by Emmy. Some records, you're going to say that they're going to say that she went by the name Isabella. We're going to call her Emmy just for lack of a better name to call her. So you will, but you will see both Emmy and Isabella went and speaking about her. She was born on the 29th of July, 1841. She died on the 18th of June, 1911. She is buried at the family cemetery, the Owen Cemetery, which is in Woodland, Talbot County, Georgia, which is very rural Georgia. This area of Georgia only has like a thousand residents to this day. Very rural. It's about an hour and a half-ish from where Angie grew up in Albany. Albany is a bigger town. So I'm just going to read you what it says about her just in this grave marker. Emily Isabella Burk grew up in an area known as Pleasant Hill, in our Talboton, Georgia. Although her name is mentioned in several books as being known as a Georgia werewolf, it is important to note that those stories are pure fiction. But are they? Emily Isabella Burk was not mentally ill. She did not suffer from the mental disease known as lycanthropy, which the story is back to defer when it comes to that and we'll get into that a little bit later. She lived and learned from her mother, who was a great and kind person, an extraordinary business woman. Isn't that so southern to say about someone? Her mother was a great and kind person. That's so southern. At the time of her death, Emily Isabella Burk owned about 300 acres of state in Talbot County, partial ownership of a warehouse in Talbot County, a house in a land in Bullockville, and a house in Columbus, Georgia. I don't know where Bullockville is, but Columbus, Georgia is literally, so Talbot County is literally 30 miles northeast of Columbus, and Columbus is a pretty decent sized town here in Georgia. It's right on the border of Alabama. So that would have probably been the big city for them to go to and get what they needed is only 30 miles outside of Talbot County. Her obituary reads, Miss Emily Burk of Midland, Georgia died at the home of Miss Benson and Marietta, Georgia. Now Marietta, Georgia, for those who are not from the state of Georgia, Marietta is right outside of Atlanta. That's where my sister actually lives. And so it's quite a bit of ways from Talbot County. So and Miss Benson was her niece. Okay, so she had moved in later in life with her niece. Sunday, January 18, 1911, her remains were brought to Woodland for the burial Tuesday, June 20, 1911, and more extended notice of her death will appear in these columns next week. Death of Miss Emmy Burk, Miss Emmy Burk was born and reared in this county midway between Bellevue and Pleasant Hill at the Burt Homestead. We're going to talk about this, what this means, the Burt Homestead. For more than half a century, this dear old home was the seat of hospitality and neighborly cheer. That's very summer. Very hospitality, neighborly cheer. A few years ago, she made her home with her widowed sister, Mrs. Mildred Butts. About a year ago, the two sisters moved to Marietta, Georgia, to live with Mrs. Butts daughter, Mrs. Luther Benson, where Mrs. Butts died on June 18 after several years of failing help. Everything that devoted love and care suggests or best medical skill could accomplish was done to prolong the life of this dear one, but all in vain. How southern is this? Death, though, inevitably is always sad. But when it takes us from one who has grown dearer with such a passing year of a lifetime is doubly distressing. The death of Miss Emmy Burk sorrows to many of the hearts here in Talbot County where she lived for so many years and where her name is a synonym of Christian greatness and great. Her ministering hands have brought comfort and cheer to many sick beds and her unfailing sympathy hope to the sorrowing and afflicted. Wherever she went, her noble, unselfish nature was a proverb among her friends. God bless her precious memory and consecrate it to the eternal good to those who love her and bring peace to the stricken hearts of her only sister and other near and dear ones who consider her loss irreparable. She was buried by the side of her father and mother of the family cemetery near Woodland. Okay, so let's talk a little bit more about this. That is very southern the way that was written. So Emily, Emmy was one of four children. And it's interesting they talked about her one and only sister. Yes, she did have one and only sister. Let me see if I can go back because I actually first started looking through the graves because I was looking for her mother and father's story because that's that's really where hold on a second that is really where we see the beginnings of this. So let me find, okay, so here are siblings. Alpheus, Joel, Bert, Sarah, Bert, Goodman and Mildred Owens, Bert, but which is the sister she ended up living with. So she had three other siblings. So her mother was a woman named Mildred and Owen, Bert. Now the Owens family cemetery is where she is buried. Okay, her husband was a man named Joel Hurt, Bert. So Joel Hurt, Bert himself, what a name, Hurt, Bert was very, very wealthy. And if we know anything about the way family cemeteries are in the south, it's safe to say that Mildred and Owen, Bert also came from a very, very wealthy family. When you say so, Angie, if they have their own family cemetery? Yes, if they have their own family cemetery.  Very powerful. And my mom's family, the Bryce's have a family cemetery in South Carolina. And so we, we would talk about that a lot growing up as kids, how you would have these family cemeteries on these homesteads. So, and Angie and I have spoken about this before that the south, there's a lot of freaking money down here in the south. There is a lot of money down here. And so at the time, if we're looking at the timeline of when this took place, this was right before the Civil War. Now it's interesting, I don't really know what the Civil War was anymore, now that we're talking about tartaria. But what they did say in a lot of the research when I looked into Talbot County, was that the Talbot County used to be a pretty well populated county when there were slaves. Once the civil war was over, that's when the population decreased. So if I had to guess from the mainstream narrative, both the Owens family and the Burt family probably got wealthy off of agriculture from their plantations. Now with that being said, now that we know about tartaria, I'm not so sure anymore. And that's one of the questions we, I want to do a follow-up with Stephanie. I don't know how we're going to ask this because we want to be very careful about privacy, is who exactly were these families? Maybe she was an able werewolf, not a good one. Maybe she, I don't know. So we're going to talk about her dad too because this is where it really gets interesting because Joel Hurtburt who's also buried in the Owens Family Cemetery. Now this man was born on the 7th of January 1807 and he died at only 40 years old at 1847. So he died young. Even in this time period he was considered to be a young death. And you can see his brain was kind of cracked here which is very concerning if this is where the line of werewolves comes from. The reason why I say that this is where the line of werewolves come from is because it said that Emmy, unlike her other sister and siblings, looked just like her father. So Emmy apparently had very hairy bushy eyebrows which now bushy eyebrows are in vogue. I don't have bushy eyebrows.  And she was just very shy. She was not social. And something that was interesting is that she was said to have very sharp white teeth that made her smile very as scary for a lot of people like fangs. And there was even a story in my research that Mildred, the mother of Mildred, tried the best she could to get her daughter's teeth fixed by whatever dentistry was available at that time to know to know success. And so now a lot of the pictures in the 1800s people don't smile anyway. They're very statuesque and solemn in their pictures but that was so I don't know if that's just added exaggeration to the folklore or if that really is the case. But I thought it was interesting that she looked just like her dad and her dad died so young. So there's a possibility I'm just in speculation because we know these are bloodlines that if she were a werewolf she inherited from the Burt family because her three siblings there's no stories about her three siblings displaying these behavior traits. And what behavior traits are these?  All right so okay so when Joel passed away at 40 years old his wife I'm assuming was already probably independently wealthy but then she also inherited all of his wealth as well. And that was the Burt homestead. They had a huge property they were very prominent and Miltred herself was only 37 years old when her husband died. Now at that point I'm assuming 37 was not as young it was still young but not as young as it is today that's younger than me and Angie. So here she was this woman very prominent had all this money and so she sent her four children well some reports say all four some reports say just the daughters she sent them off to school in Europe okay so she's packed them up sent them to school in Europe. Now that's not to be able to do that you I mean you have to be very wealthy. Yes and that's not I mean we have like I went to a very prominent private school we have private schools all around the nation that's not really common for white rich people in the south to send their kids to school in Europe. I don't see that happening that much so there in my opinion if she what most women would have done in that time period would probably if it was just her girls she sent away she probably would have sent them to like a what were they called schools for girls where they learned how to be social there was a name for them. I forgot what they were called they're like you know you know the girls would go away to these schools where they would learn how to like be the the how you know and there were those schools were in Atlanta and up in the northeast and that would probably be where a refinery school where these girls were set in most cases so the fact that either all four or two of the girls were sent to Europe is very interesting to me very interesting. Now it is also said that Emmy was an avid reader as was her father so part of the inheritance was a collection of all these books now that might sound crazy today but back then this was a status thing and so Emmy would stay and read and apparently she loved supernatural books as did her father which kind of gives a lot of intrigue into this mystery. So after the kids first were sent off to Europe and they came back home which think about that that would have been getting on boats and traveling back across you know on a boat. She started to show signs of a sickness and so the sickness caused Emmy to suffer from insomnia where she could not sleep at night.  I remember like it was yesterday if you're I mean if it would only work sometimes so if the opium is not working all the time then this is something very serious. Now what was crazy is when she would have these bouts of insomnia according to what I found she would not remember like she would come home and she'd been out in the pastures all night and she wouldn't remember she was like she's in a trance she wouldn't remember being out in the pastures all night like she wouldn't remember this I mean you guys like okay let's talk about being in the pastures at night in the middle of nowhere we're all Georgia that is not comfortable is it? Probably full moon. Now we're gonna talk about that too but yeah like we were talking in this and they had those long heavy dresses on we're talking y'all like in the south when it's 90 degrees in the daytime it's also 90 degrees at night too like there's it's not that big of a difference and it there's mosquitoes there's gnats there's cow patties everywhere snakes very poisonous snakes everywhere as a kid we had to learn rhymes about snakes when we were playing outside so we knew how to spot them so the fact that she's not remembering roaming around the pastures in the middle of the night when it would have been super uncomfortable and hot anyway it's wild and so her mother according to some of the rest the research her mother started to suspect something which tells me what did her mother know about maybe there is there a family secret here that she knew about her father her mother started to suspect that something was going on now around this time a man named William Gorman now I'm gonna go back to the grave here because William Gorman is a legit person again so Sarah Burt Gorman this was her husband okay so William Gorman around this time he started courting Sarah her sister and Sarah her sister they were the only two girls Emmy and Sarah was she was a few years older than Emmy she was born in 1836 where Emmy was born in 1841 now that's what I found interesting is all these stories these people are legit people you can look through the records they legitimately existed that we have it right here so William Gorman was like 11 years older than Sarah so at this point and we know in the south of this time with the white people the south your kids are only going to court kids within their same social background it's not like Sarah is going to go off and marry the farmer's kid down the street that didn't have two pennies to rub together so that's just not how it was done so obviously this Gorman fella was probably came from another prominent family and he was 11 years older than Sarah which is fine a lot of men I date are a lot older than me too so I get you girl I get you so he already had established his own homestead where he had livestock sheep cows and something was going on in the town so all of a sudden the town spoke their livestock was getting mutilated at night and nobody knew what was going on now William Gorman went over to the Burt's homestead because he was courting Sarah and he was concerned about Mildred the widowed mother because she doesn't have a husband there's something happening to livestock this is obviously the better bread and butter for most of the town in rural Georgia and so he's coming over and explaining to Mildred that there's a wild animal that's killing the livestock and he is going to arrange for a posse of men to go hunt this beast well they try setting up all these traps they can't catch the beast and so as good stories go in the town was also this very weird Eastern European man and this Eastern European man started saying you're not going to catch this beast because this is a werewolf and from what I understand werewolves come from Eastern European Europe so that's where they originally like it's the song werewolves of London or where was it Georgia now? Yes exactly that's my thing we're going to get back to that so this Eastern European like town weirdo as they called him was saying oh this is a werewolf this is not just some beast and so after this posse of men could not catch this wild animal they took this weirdo from Eastern Europe a little bit more seriously and were like how do we catch this werewolf and so they said it had to be on the night of a full moon you had to melt down silver put it in the bullets to shoot and so as William Gorman is trying to keep Mildred his future mother mother-in-law abreast of what is happening Mildred is is understanding that this is her daughter doing this and so Mildred decides that she's going to go out with the men to hunt this werewolf okay so she loads up her which I'm telling you guys like this is the 1800s in Georgia that would have been a sight to behold see a wealthy white woman in her puppy skirt is her scarlet O'Hara skirt with a bunch of men and a rifle but it shows you what a mother will do for her child and so she's trying to protect Emmy well somebody shoots the god and hits the beast in the left hand and the beast scurry beast scurries and runs off well that next morning when Emmy woke up apparently she had a wound in her left hand and so what Mildred did next was Mildred packed up Emmy and sent her to Paris for a couple of years to work with a doctor in Paris who worked with people who suffered from light like like can't three hour however you say at the disease where they think that they think they're aware of that's the story and then when Emmy came back it all kind of died down now of course as we saw from her obituary she did um she became a very successful woman in Talbot County and our right she never married never had children but she was a landowner which again was huge back in those days but I will say I will say in the south it does seem like in that way I think the south was a little bit more progressive than the rest of the world because women were given inheritance right they were not you know in some in some uh areas culturally at that time you know your husband would inherit your wealth as a woman it would just pass through to your husband but in the south we did actually see that where women were wealthy within their own right and so in that way the south was pretty progressive and of course she moved up to Marietta with her with her sister and her niece when she got older and probably needed more help and then she passed away and she's buried again in Talbot County at the Owens family cemetery now here's where it gets interesting too so people in Talbot County still say that on a full moon Emmy's werewolf roams around the town as a ghost and I've been I was watching some YouTubes of people and I'll I'll place these in the description box below people from the area and one woman said I'm not a believer I'm a knower I know this is happening I know it now another interesting game is that on her on her tombstone it talks about now that she's dead she can keep to her own form that is on her tombstone and so you guys that on the tombstone on the tombstone it says now she can keep to her own form so my opinion now is that she was a werewolf she was a shapeshifter I don't know if the her father's family was corrupt or evil but I don't think Emmy was I think maybe something triggered in her DNA and she started started shapeshifting or maybe something happened to her when she went to Europe and something got activated and she didn't have anybody to teach her and then when she went back to Europe she was trained in how to control it right and because all of a sudden the livestock started vanishing and those teeth those teeth I mean she doesn't look like that I mean they talked about her being like a very unfortunate looking woman but I am not I don't think she looked that unfortunate to be honest with you guys I thought she she looks like a fairly attractive let's see here a fairly attractive woman from the 1800s I don't see an ugly woman here now of course we can't see the details of her face and her body but that was spoken about and a lot of different here's the full tomb here now notice it is in the shape of an obelisk now we know obelisk aren't always bad obelisk do harness energy so what are your thoughts Angie well I kind of believe it I never believed in these things before you know I just thought it was all just made up stuff and I mean yeah I mean I've heard stories of not necessarily the werewolf but I had heard stories of other things furry things that people see and I don't I don't think it's false I mean like the bigfoot thing I think is possible now exactly exactly and so and that's why I want to be really careful with it the descendants because if this is a lineage then it could be their descendants are also shapeshifters and I don't want to you know I don't know I don't know you know from what I from my friends who specialize in this they say most of us are we just don't know it we don't know that we can change into something else and and I am looking at her picture and what they say like no she was a very kind Christian woman so that that me that tells me that she probably did have a good heart and I'm thinking like when she was younger again she didn't know what she was doing all she was changing she was hunting she didn't know she was hunting but when she was taught how to control it then she could control it but it's interesting to me that this happened in the mid-1800s and it's still an active legend in 2022 in that area of Georgia to this day it is still an active legend and so that that's me where there's smoke there's fire yes so I don't want to go but like you said we can't go see the the graves or anything I was looking at kind of the homesteads and things trying to find that kind of thing too I didn't really find anything much did you yeah a lot of the I followed so I I really went through all the records and I followed to see like how many people I mean there were four again there were four children and they didn't have children but the other three did have multiple children so you're talking like multiple people that are descendants of this family some are still in the area in like the Columbus area but somehow moved to Florida so um and obviously I don't think they're gonna say how would you I mean I don't know how I'd react if my ancestor was the famous werewolf of Georgia like would I ignore it or would I laugh about it like what would I do you know in that situation and so and of course she lived with her sister up here in Marietta which Marietta again is right outside of Atlanta it's the suburb of Atlanta it was its own town at one point before it became a suburb very old town but I don't know of any claims of Marietta there being sightings of a werewolf you know but then Marietta is a lot bigger than Talbot cannot have been when later in life after she learned to suppress it control it yes so and so I definitely I don't think and it makes me wonder more about this disorder like like anthropology because what is like campathria according to science it's a mental disorder where you think you're a werewolf but if you're showing the signs there'd be so many people that they even have a name for that like exactly like is there no I mean there are one person out there in the whole world that thought they were a freaking werewolf and they weren't I could understand but if there's a whole group of people in this world that suffer from this is there something more to this story well and now you've got like in our high school here you've got the furries oh yeah like dressing up as animals and things I mean there was even one getting on the school best in my neighborhood a couple of years ago okay um I mean so my question what do you think and I'd love to hear what the audience has to say about this too like so moving forward and we start to understand more about shapeshifters in that shapeshift I mean Stephanie and I just looked into Jersey Devil apparently the Jersey Devil's a freaking shapeshifter too like if we if we can do this or I mean listen if I could shapeshift I just want to shapeshift my stomach into a permanent six pack that would be or make my legs a little longer like that would be my desire I would I don't want to change species I just want to like fix what I got you know make my boobs a little perkier without having to go under surgery but um but how if this is something that human beings and if we think about that so if we think about the fact that us on earth earthlings as we're called um what makes us so powerful is that genetically we're a hodgepodge of all these different galactic groups the lyrons the platians you know the avians the series like and these are all have different looks about them right they're all humanoid but if we carry all those genetic dispositions can we then tap into a genetic disposition and change into the shape of that does that make sense that's to me it used to wouldn't I know I know listen I've I've always you know I kept when I was researching this against Angie I kept thinking about the show true blood did you ever watch the show true blood no it's a vampire show but they talk about shapeshifting were all sorts of stuff and of course takes place in Louisiana and all this stuff takes place in the south well there's also an interesting thing too I wanted to bring up as well so if we're and when I first covered the were covered the werewolf of Georgia I did not know about tartaria so I was very much sold on the history that we had been taught in school now I question everything and if we're looking at the tartarian history in Rome Georgia where I grew up right outside of Atlanta there is let me see if I can pull it down here we have a Romulus and Remus statue right in front of the city hall now we're told that Rome Italy gifted Rome Georgia a copy of this statue because we're a sister city but now I question everything is Rome Georgia the real Rome Italy and why what's the story of Romulus and Remus that fed off of a wolf and does this connect to the werewolf of Georgia with Emmy Bird I've never thought about that I've seen this I've only been to Rome maybe twice and I remember seeing this and thinking it's just so weird it's so weird it's so weird and it's right outside of the city hall which is also the city auditorium so it's like where all the kids go and Rome Georgia is like population 25,000 it's not a big town so it's you know you got the kids going there to have like their dance recitals their piano recitals and there's this freaking Romulus and Remus of these naked baby boys and from the animal which again is a famous story from the Roman pantheon I get that and it's how you know I've been to Rome Italy I love Rome Italy and it's a big part of their heritage as to how how the city of Rome was established but you just start to rethink everything like to me when I see these kind of things now like used to because I never really knew that story I would think that is so gross and then but now I'm going it's probably really true right well and that's what we were going to do in part two with Stephanie to have her pull the cards on some of this stuff and I don't you know with Stephanie we she doesn't want to hear the story because she wants to be completely free mentally to channel we will be talking about this again on Aquarius Rising Africa too but as you know and Rome Rome Georgia is also Woodrow Wilson his wife was from Rome Georgia and what where's the statue of her right here and Woodrow Wilson was the president that signed the Federal Reserve Act so super interesting like it's it's it's all I'm just like there has to be more to the story so we have the famous Romulus and Remus statue a copy of it a copy of it in Rome Georgia where Berry College is where we know we've done a deep dive into Berry College and the Berry family and then we have this Georgia were werewolf down in Talbot County these are two Rome Georgia is also a very wealthy city you know and and this there's a lot of money in this state guys there's a lot of old old family money I mean I think a weird that you know I'm always like putting these all connect connections together but like the movie remember the old book song of the south yeah like the end and all that but I remember like that there's an uncle Remus library in um um if it's Eatonton Georgia the uncle Remus library and then there's a whole like little there's a little museum the uncle Remus um museum down there um gosh I went when I was really young so I don't really remember it too much but um it's a pretty dude uh did you ever see the movie oh yeah yeah did they ban that movie for like racism at some point I think I've got the book somewhere I I re saying that my mom would sing that with those kids yeah it's shit's not adding up basically like shit's not adding up with these stories I mean it is kind of adding up but not in the way that we were taught and doing that movie from what I remember they had like the man you know uncle Remus but then there were these animals so you and they talked that wasn't there a wolf and then a a rabbit and I can't totally I've seen it but it was like a rough cartoon half yeah I mean that he's almost like okay since we're since we're questioning the whole civil war thing and uncle Remus is this black man right in my I'm remembering right um and so but he was not a cartoon but he was real but then all the animals that could talk and everything they were fake they were cartoon I don't know I don't know I'm just saying I'm gonna try to get I'm gonna try to get a hold of this book or this movie and watch it again and I'm thinking well you know because that that's not the real song of the south that's not the real story of the south or maybe it's just not what we were told no it's not what we were told at all and there is I mean I've said this before Angie you said this one of my good friends who is um not originally from the south but lives here now she's very shamanistic will tell you out of all the places in the world she's been everywhere the south is the most magical there's something about this the southeast there's something about it there is something the south is alive I say that a lot when I go to Charleston South Carolina where my mother's family is originally from you walk down the streets of Charleston and the city greets yeah like the city's alive and um I find that a lot down here in the south there is a there is the south is not dead it's like that William Faulkner book The Unvenguished and um I said we and I talked a lot about Egypt and the uh you know because I'm studying thought now for the animal tablets and if this area is Egypt you know and if the Egyptians were the leftovers from Atlantis you know we know that Noah's Ark story that was supposed to be about the flooding of Atlantis which was the apocalypse we we've already been through the apocalypse guys good news we've already been through we're in Gog and Magog now which means we're gonna ascend but when that flooding of Atlantis came through um a lot of people went to high ground so it wasn't just no one in his family that survived there were a bunch of of humans of all different races races which we now know to be galactic origins uh Angie and I are not white because our ancestors from North Europe did I tell you that I googled my you ever just google yourself and just see what google comes up with you know every year like oh it's always different so went too long ago I googled my name and it said that I was um in Middle Eastern and a Jew like yeah that's what you know it's so funny I did 23 of me before and it was bad yeah I don't want to do that that's why I just googled myself I was like what do they think I am I mean I'm not sending in my blood but or my slava but I had a ton of Egyptian Coptic Egyptian pop up in my reading um you know and but the thing is is like we've been sold this story of evolution that we all originated in Africa and we migrated elsewhere and that's why Angie and I are white blonde-haired peoples because our ancestors went to northern Europe and over time they changed the climate and blah blah blah blah well that's not true that's just not true and even before I woke up when I believed evolution I I've been to South Africa a few times and I was always very curious at the Afrikaans people I've also been lived in Europe for a while Dutch people are pretty petite like you and me Afrikaans people who are descendants are brutes and I know that they're they're bigger people because of their land their their water their air but their skin hasn't gotten darker their hair's actually gotten blonder so it's like the sun hits them differently like when I when I'm in the in the sun I get dark and my hair gets yeah yeah my hair gets even blonder it doesn't shake its blonder it doesn't get darker and so that always was weird to me like well then how would hair change like how does this work and so then when I started to wake up and I started to study uh the galactic I was like oh because we come from different galactic constellations and some of us like a lot of my friends who are technically black have a lot of white in them as well my friend um she has an Irish grandmother so her hair's got a bit of a red in it and so we are caring when we look at that we are a melting pot of all these different galactic nations and so with Egypt the Egypt that we think of which was the remains of the fall of Atlantis we're talking there were white people black people all there as I was saying with Stephanie there were blue people like no one talks about the blue people but in these pictures they're freaking blue people where are the blue people you know um but they all lived harmoniously together people will see that in paintings and things and don't even question they're just you know I'm like there's blue people like expression no even at Abe Lincoln let me see that I could pull that out so the Lincoln Memorial in um DC Lincoln Memorial uh it's favorite monument I think that I went to for some reason well it's the one I could kind of feel something there Stephanie and I both got like chill bumps there it's a nice it's not it's nice as temple and you even stay in the back it says in this temple I'm seeing so in the Lincoln Memorial up up so like right here you kind of see in the background there's like a little there's paintings here they're old Egyptian paintings and they're blue people in those paintings like how many thousands of people walk through this memorial every single freaking week and nobody's been like why the hell are there blue people it is well like zombies but I mean whenever I'm there I'm like I didn't want to leave it I wanted to keep like because I could just feel something you know and this was back it was like 22 years ago when I was there and I still remember the feeling like yeah it's it's it's not okay you kind of see it up here too like it's for the paintings right there they're on either side and it's it's like okay so the original Atlanteans must have known that our skin color and our hair color were just significant of where our lineage came from in the galactics right equal to each other they all work together but then with the controllers they obviously like to divide conquest and divide and divide us and control us that they obviously created these you can see it better here there's a painting here um that they wanted to create this idea of like a race issues when it's literally no we're not none of us are really from this earth we're all a collection of all these different which is the original 12 tribes of Israel we're not coming from Jacob they were the 12 galactic tribes that make up the population of this earth so you know if we're looking at the south all the way up to DC as being part of Egypt and we're looking at the back to the Romulus and Remus statue back to her as a shapeshifter is there a connection I kind of feel like there is how do you do and um if her if I want to know if anybody watching this from Talbot County and you've had an experience with the ghost of the werewolf please send me an email I would love to I was trying to figure out if I knew anybody from Talbot County and I did not ask my Facebook friends yet but I should do that because I've got people I don't really know personally but on my Facebook that are from all over Georgia and there's got to be somebody somebody it's got to be I mean I know it's like less than a thousand residents today even if you're from Columbus because the Columbus Georgia is literally 30 miles north of Columbus so if you're from Columbus and you know of this um let us know because I'm I'm thinking there my opinion has completely changed I don't think this is folklore I don't think it was just a girl who had social issues I think this was a family bloodline of werewolves and I think it has something to do with tartaria and I think it has something to do with the Romulus and Remus copy of a statue that Georgia has because I'm doubting everything now that the controllers have told us and so I want to know too from anybody else if it is their werewolves in your neck of the woods do you have legends of not just a general werewolf but is there a story of a person just like we have here in Georgia an actual living person actually lived that's carrying this tradition of being the werewolf um let me know because and I want to know is this strictly so we talk about shapeshifting coming from particular bloodlines our particular galactic bloodlines if this comes from Eastern Europe are werewolves then let's say just a white people thing and are there other species people can um shapeshift in if they're Asian or if they're black let me know because this is wild to me and we're all trying to relearn this together because they they don't teach you this in school I think school would have been way more fun if they taught you about this kind of stuff it really would it really would be they don't teach I just can't even go there right now no so bad that the controllers that they have their own history books and their own school books and we have ours so I'm sure that the kids that grew up in these families learned about this stuff obviously because they learned how to do it I want to get a hand on their books yeah like when we know the bible there are stories of shapeshifting in the bible um King Nebuchadnezzar shapeshifted into a wolf so our cow or some some animal I can't remember I need to look that because that's you know that'll help me explain this to my friends that are like what are you doing on there with Bryce Bible it's in the Bible guys like this is what's wild so please let us know guys I'm so happy Angie you got to revisit the story with me I've been really I've been really feeling like been pushed to revisit the story and I think the story is going to open up Navy Pandora's box in a good way to to having us collectively start to understand that this is a possibility and again I'm just going to reiterate guys there are still people in this family around just please be respectful um you know we don't know the full story and people are um they're they they need their privacy so um when we meet with Stephanie Stephanie has a good way of figuring out how to devinate because we're not going to channel anybody alive we're not going to do that or any or Emmy herself we're not going to like invade that privacy um because I can imagine that this could have been a very traumatic thing for someone to go through especially for a girl because especially at that time in the south you know I imagine it's pretty lonely to not to be a woman and not be married um in the south Stephanie could come up with answers to you know why it was hidden or why you know why we don't why we were told that these people are just thinking that they're were werewolves instead of you know why is all that hidden well yeah you know why are they labeled as crazy is that fake news yeah when they're not there's something wrong you know most of the time when you think something's wrong something's wrong you know and there are people having these these activations like oh my god I'm not fully human and they're not and by ignoring it is that creating the furry sensation because they don't have the proper way to channel their own oh this makes me think a little different about the furries yeah is it not just some weird fantasy or fetish but is it because they've been so neglected into like their own abilities that they've now channeled it into like more of a negative fetish type of thing uh-huh that makes sense so because we know that the darkness can't create anything and it can only still from the light and invert it and so is that part of inverting it is making people who perhaps would be good werewolves and would be able to protect instead of allowing them to understand what they are they've created into like a fetish that is not healthy that makes sense yeah I never thought it would be when I started yeah I'm like werewolves lives matter too we need to make that a t-shirt werewolves lives matter so yeah so you guys let me know um if you have any stories thank you so much Angie for joining me for this mystery today and we'll do a part two with Stephanie and see if we can get some answers from the cards um again always hit the cards with the Grand Assault but it's the is literally one of the only tools we have since we don't have all of the resources um academically yet I think we will have it soon but yes so all right guys I hope you're having a wonderful Monday and wonderful start of your week Buckalock Mercury retrograde's been a bitch this time around but we're almost through it we're almost at the end so anyway again please go check out Angie's channel especially if you love southern women because she's got one of the best channels it's so entertaining and I love southern women so much because they're the funniest strongest most savage women on the earth are southern women and so go check her out all right bye guys


The study analyses spatial and temporal variations in annual and intranual precipitation at 33 stations in the Three River Headwaters region from 1967 to 2016 using empirical orthogonal function and wavelet transform coherence methods. Results show that mean annual precipitation and mean dry period precipitation increased over time with a spatial southeast to northwest decreasing trend in annual and intranual precipitation. Two main precipitation patterns were observed. A dominant pattern with high and low value centers located in southeast and northwest TRH respectively and a dipole pattern with more precipitation over southwest TRH and less precipitation over northeast TRH. Precipitation changes were determined based on changes in weather systems affecting the area with different indices being correlated with different components during different times of the year. This article was authored by Yang Dong, Chie Chie, Yong Zhao, and others. We are article.tv, links in the description below.