Jesus In Japan

This week on Expanded Perspectives, the guys start the show off talking about how researchers writing in the journal Science this week are warning us about yet another ecological issue caused by us resource-hogging humans: sand extraction. It’s hard to limit people’s sand use. As human demand for and use of natural resources has grown, sand and gravel have become the “most extracted group of materials worldwide.” Then, a number of hotels have begun offering in-room fish-for-rent service. The latest to join the admittedly modest trend is the Van der Valk Hotel Charleroi Airport in Brussels, where a photo of one of the room companions—just €3.50 per night—recently took off on social media.

Then, a guy named Sonny in Peoria, Illinois recently called into Coast to Coast to tell of a Bigfoot sighting he had back in 1969. Apparently the large beast chased him and his two brothers out of the woods. Then, the cave systems underneath the Antarctic ice could be home to an “exciting new world” of plants and animals. After analyzing DNA retrieved from a cave system underneath the Ross Island volcano Mount Erebus, scientists at the Australia National University found samples that could not be fully identified—pointing to the presence of unidentified species living in the subglacial terrains. After the break Cam brings up the mostly unknown story of Jesus in Japan. On the flat top of a steep hill in a distant corner of northern Japan lies the tomb of an itinerant shepherd who, two millennia ago, settled down there to grow garlic. He fell in love with a farmer’s daughter named Miyuko, fathered three kids and died at the ripe old age of 106. In the mountain hamlet of Shingo, he’s remembered by the name Daitenku Taro Jurai. The rest of the world knows him as Jesus Christ. It turns out that Jesus of Nazareth—the Messiah, worker of miracles and spiritual figurehead for one of the world’s foremost religions—did not die on the cross at Calvary, as widely reported. According to amusing local folklore, that was his kid brother, Isukiri, whose severed ear was interred in an adjacent burial mound in Japan. All of this and more on this weeks installment of Expanded Perspectives!

Show Notes:

• Earth Is Running Out of Sand, Apparently
• Business Travel Got You Down? Rent a Goldfish to Keep You Company
• Sonny in Peoria, Illinois called in to tell of a Bigfoot sighting he had in 1969
• Antarctica’s Hidden Caves Could Be Home to 'New World' of Plants and Animals
• Jesus in Japan

Sponsors:

• GAIA

Music:

All music for Expanded Perspectives is provided by Pretty Lights and Electus. Purchase, Download and Donate at www.prettylightsmusic.com and Electus.

Songs Used:

• Pretty Lights vs. Led Zeppelin
• Color of My Soul
• Temple of Light
• Sweet Long Life