Auntology: The Waystation of Red Pill Sanity
William Liu (Liu Zhongjing, 劉仲敬) is a historian who is often called “Auntie (阿姨)” by his audience. Auntology is Liu's study, works, and philosophy. The Waystation of Red Pill Sanity is a podcast series created based on Liu's articles, speech, lectures, and book chapters. The original materials were documented in Mandarin Chinese at https://www.lzjscript.com, translated into English by DeepL and human translators, and narrated by Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services. The podcast was produced by Lumina Society, which is a nonprofit organization aiming to provide insightful and alternative narratives of history.
Episodes
28 episodes
S04E07 The Islamic State in Inner Asia
This episode is the second part of an article - The Triple Faces of Inner Asia, which was written and published in early 2015.“...The export of the Roman order is not free of cost. It must be at the cost of consuming the domestic po...
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Season 4
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Episode 7
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8:15
S04E06 Inner Asia in International Relations
This episode is the first part of an article - The Triple Faces of Inner Asia (內亞的三重面相), which was written and published in early 2015. "...Pakistan maximally demonstrates the dilemma that Inner Asia presents ...
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Season 4
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Episode 6
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9:29
S04E05 Dealing with the vacuum left by the withdrawal
"...Most of the fund has to be used to feed the troops and there is no cash left to buy oil. Yet Iran has already sent the oil to Kabul. Who is advancing this money? Surely not the US. Iran is extremely short of dollars and it can only be d...
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Season 4
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Episode 5
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13:26
S04E04 China's imperial gamble in Afghanistan
“China is an inexperienced neo-imperialist, so almost everywhere it has pursued neo-imperialism, going beyond the US framework and building its own framework, there have been serious political crises. Three typical examples are Afghanistan,...
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Season 4
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Episode 4
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11:07
S04E03 The Islamic State is more like the Communist International
"The Taliban can be converted, integrated, and disbanded while the Islamic State is a lifelong vowed professional revolutionary organization that cannot be disbanded but only annihilated... Judging from IS documents seized by the US, the Is...
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Season 4
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Episode 3
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9:20
S04E02 A closer look at the Taliban
"In order to counter the American-trained security forces, the Taliban also had to break from the beyond tribal traditions by training their own elite soldiers, the so-called Red Unit... The Taliban cannot possibly afford a large troop like...
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Season 4
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Episode 2
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10:17
S04E01 The Modernization Paradox and the Taliban's Emergence
"...In fact, an impoverished Afghanistan governed by tribal alliances formed by warlords would be more stable, thanks to the lack of money. What problems did the unprecedented influx of money bring? It brought with it modernization, a new o...
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Season 4
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Episode 1
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14:12
S03E04 Closing remarks: facing death
"...In the competition between man and nature, man will always be the loser. Every partial success prepares the ground for a larger collapse in the future. It is, therefore, wiser not to be really able to cope with epidemics or any future c...
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Season 3
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Episode 4
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12:00
S03E03 The vaccines
"...This is a typical human mentality. At first you are afraid to die a miserable death without vaccination. You consider yourself mistreated if you don't get the vaccine, and those who do are privileged. A few decades later, you take it fo...
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Season 3
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Episode 3
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12:10
S02E07 Cold War liberalism and neoconservatism
“...What is meant by the divine will? The divine will is that the forces that oppose you will eventually work for you. Although FDR and his New Deal allies did not want to make America an empire, although McCarthy and the opponents of the N...
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Season 2
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Episode 7
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10:34
S02E06 Building an empire that mirrors the Communist Party
“...At the same time, because of the existence of such institutions, it is hard to avoid becoming an empire because the system itself had its own power... This institution, which can scare the Communist Party, should probably mirror t...
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Season 2
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Episode 6
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12:40
S02E05 New Deal-era America
"...Such an America could not have played a major role in world history. The key to this significant role lies in two events: the New Deal and the Second World War... If you only treat this phenomenon as a dichotomy of the left and the righ...
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Season 2
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Episode 5
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12:05
S02E04 Ayn Rand voted for FDR
"...The good guys around us are just like those in the movies. Senator McCarthy was then such a Judge Hardy. At the same time, Ayn Rand was a wanderer who first found her way to New York and California, with a little bit of achievement and ...
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Season 2
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Episode 4
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12:17
S03E02 The modern welfare state: risk and protection
"... What is civic education? The people are the rulers, and what is the task of the rulers? A ruler is someone who takes risks for the ruled, just as a parent is someone who takes risks for a child... The people of a truly sustainable democrac...
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Season 3
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Episode 2
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13:14
S03E01 [SEASON PREMIERE] Dense but homogeneous populations
Season 3 Pandemics and Beyond Episode 1 Dense but homogeneous populations"... The spread of infectious diseases requires densely inhabited conditions, which is tantamount to requiring civilization itself. Civilization has the in...
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Season 3
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Episode 1
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12:10
S02E03 A discussion on the speech "A World Lacking in Lords"
Season 2 - Lords and WanderersThe third episode is a part of a casual discussion between William and Zhensi Yuan taken place in 2014. The full script for the discussion (in Traditional Chinese) has been published as a book《文明更迭的源代碼》and ...
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Season 2
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Episode 3
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11:02
S02E02 A world lacking in lords: why we need more lords
Season 2 - Lords and WanderersThe first two episodes are excerpts from an invited talk of YiXi, which was first published on April 12, 2014. The full video (in Mandarin Chinese) is at https://youtu.be/edB7ly0_KSc ."One...
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Season 2
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Episode 2
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13:04
S02E01 A world lacking in lords: lords and wanderers in China
Season 2 - Lords and WanderersThe first two episodes are excerpts from an invited talk of YiXi, which was first published on April 12, 2014. The full video (in Mandarin Chinese) is at https://youtu.be/edB7ly0_KSc ."One...
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Season 2
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Episode 1
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15:10
S01E09 The end of the Cold War and closing remarks - The Reshaping of the World Order after the First World War
"...In this regard, I suggest that all of you: first, do not believe a word in Chinese history textbooks; second, for the books produced by Chinese scholars, even though we must respect their ability to verify and collect information, you'd...
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Season 1
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Episode 9
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12:40
S01E08 Mao pulled the U.S. in - The Reshaping of the World Order after the First World War
“...As a very cunning man with a deep understanding of imperial court politics, under the desperate circumstances of 1972, I believe, Mao had no better choice. China was in the same situation as Assad and Damascus today: the Soviets wanted ...
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Season 1
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Episode 8
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13:50
S01E07 Mao's gaming strategy in the 1950s - The Reshaping of the World Order after the First World War
“...Only from this angle could you understand the rationale of the Cultural Revolution. Mao wanted to groom purely localized Chinese cadres, to replace the former overseas students who returned from the Soviet Union and the veteran Communis...
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Season 1
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Episode 7
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10:01
BONUS EP: China's census mystery and its population policy shifts
This episode includes excerpts from an interview with William Liu, which took place on May 2, 2021. The full-length video with subtitles of this interview (all in Mandarin Chinese) was exclusively released at
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Season 1
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Episode 10
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19:34
S01E06 The Chinese Civil War - The Reshaping of the World Order after the First World War
“...This war was completely tilted to one side. There was almost no doubt as to the outcome. As soon as Chiang exhausted within one or two years the military resources he accumulated in the latter part of the Anti-Japanese War, the war was ...
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Season 1
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Episode 6
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14:27
S01E05 The Sino-Japanese War - The Reshaping of the World Order after the First World War
"If we look at the entire matter from Japan’s standpoint, Japan had actually gone too far. If it had been satisfied with attacking China and the Soviet Union only, just as Israel now only hits the Arabs, it would not have been opposed by Br...
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Season 1
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Episode 5
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15:22
S01E04 The triumph of Leninism in China - The Reshaping of the World Order after the First World War
"...That is, the intelligence arms of both the communist and the nationalist parties were single-handedly built by Li (Kenong), an underground agent of the Communist Party...This gives you an insight into the true nature of the relations be...
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Season 1
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Episode 4
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17:07