The Pulse: We Are The Living Record

Blood Runneth Ov'r The Foundation of Americus (Pt 1)

"To own a land you didn't build, you simply need a story." They told you Christopher Columbus discovered America. But before we get to him, we have to discuss the Icelandic Sagas, and the contradictions buried inside the "official" history of how America was found. In Part 1 of this two-part investigation, Dainese DeFreynes examines Leif Erikson — the Norse Scandinavian Viking who was said to have stumbled upon America centuries before Mr. Columbus. Having come from a family of murderous opportunists, it's only right that we mull over the inconsistencies between the Saga of the Greenlanders and the Saga of Erik the Red, and ask questions about the suspicious Christian rebranding of a man history claims to know. How is possible that a family of exiles suddenly have birthright claims to a land that was already full of inhabitants? What does it mean when a legacy story was written by people who never met the person they were writing about? And why should we believe them? This episode is for the ones who always felt like something was left out of the textbooks. Because it was.

The Pulse: We Are The Living Record

"It’s that feeling of instantly knowing how to do something or recognizing a location you've never visited." In the premiere episode, Dainese deFreynes introduces the concept of Blood Memory—the inherited wisdom and ancestral intuition that shapes our identities on a cellular level. From the magnetic pull of the American South to the physical manifestations of history within our own bodies, this episode explores why we are drawn to certain places and behaviors without even knowing why. We look at the mass migration back to the Southern epicenter and ask the hard questions about what our ancestors left behind in our DNA. This is an invitation to look beneath our modern lives and recognize that we are the living record of everyone who came before us. It’s time to listen to the instinct.