Welcome to Karen Hunter. It's awesome. I am Karen Hunter, and today is January 29, 2025. It is Chinese New Year. Happy New Year. I am marking this day, which I normally won't do in this

space, because in my mind, I'm keeping this podcast very evergreen. I want you to be able to

explore it whenever you come in, whether it's episode 19, episode one, episode 50. I want you to

have an experience that is not trapped by time. A lot is happening.

The last couple of weeks, we actually had the inauguration of Donald J. Trump again last week.

And I wanted to use this day as a time to reflect on what it means to be an American.

That was going to be my entree into it.

Because I've been studying the Chinese culture and Chinese New Year.

It is the year of the Woodsnake, as I mentioned, and it kicks off today a 16-day celebration.

And I find it fascinating with firecrackers to ward off evil spirits.

And there's going to be parades and all kinds of honoring festivals through the next 16 years.

But I also was like, today is not 2025 on the Chinese calendar.

It's like year 4,000 and change.

And I find that interesting, too, that there are whole nations, whole cultures,

whether we're talking about the Jewish faith that believes it's another year on the calendar, the Ethiopians have another calendar, the Egyptians have another calendar.

Well, we center 2025, you know, this Eurocentric Roman Empire date that the world is in alignment with.

And I was asking this question of myself, like, how did that happen?

You know, and it's something to study because it wasn't always this way.

10,000 years ago, nobody was thinking about the Romans, the Romans controlling all of the things in the year.

But the Chinese have had dynasty after dynasty many different. I mean, hell, they have a hundred year plan, which we've talked about on this podcast that informs how they're going to be moving geopolitically. But they actually, as a nation, they have a thousand year plan.

China has a thousand year plan.

That's wild to me.

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