The Blindboy Podcast - A dozen Bus Cousins

Episode Date: October 9, 2019

I discuss Climate Anxiety, and how to cope with it. I also read a new short story. Recorded on a park bench. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Get bent, you droopy Cusacks. What's the crack? Welcome to the Blind Buy Podcast. You may notice that the audio fidelity is fucking disgusting. Listen to this. Postman! Postman! Postman! Because I'm away on business on the continent. And, yeah, I'm in an apartment with disgusting acoustics, it's just a lot of reflective walls and surfaces, but luckily, I went out to a nearby park and recorded this week's podcast in an ASMR fashion, where we've got the lovely sounds of nature in three-way stereo, boys and girls, All right?

So, yeah, listen to this. There it is. Sound of air conditioning. Like, fuck that. And this is my good mic. So it's a long podcast. This is a very long podcast. It's almost two hours

because I had a successful rant. So the first half is me speaking on the topic of climate anxiety and how to kind of deal with it and other existential psychology. So if you're into that crack, into me talking about the human condition, that's the first half. The second half half which starts about an hour into it is me reading a a new story from from my book boulevard rain which is out november 1st a pretty dark story um so that's it it's kind of a two-part podcast but it all happens in one in the park which i kind of i enjoy i like these

outdoor podcasts where like like the one down by the plassey river because it's it's like it's like a it's it's less like a podcast it's more like um like a really bizarre radio play do you know it's just got that vibe like a strange radio play because all the fucking the sounds around me work as a type of foley artistry which is the if you don't know how would i describe foley artistry it's the generation of sound effects within recorded media okay right that's the crack okay first half climate anxiety second half about an hour in me reading a short story it's a long podcast

you might want to listen to it in two settings or one setting if you're a greedy cat yart hello what's the crack is that a little bit too loud I'll take down the volume I'll take down one volume I'll take that one two

postman postman postman postman postman businessman I'm a busy man but I'm not a businessman all alright that was a little sound check as you can guess by the sounds around me that this this is, I'm not in my studio we're having another little outdoor excursion which I'm starting to really enjoy these particular type of podcasts

where I take it outside you know sounds like I'm starting to fight with myself taking it outside but yeah sounds like I'm starting a fight with myself taking it outside but yeah taking the podcast outside for a relaxing ASMR experience

with my fucking shit hot recording equipment where we have three channels of audio listen to that there you go I'm not fucking around, so yeah we've got our stereo mic and I have my own little microphone up towards my mouth, so we've got fucking footy professional 360 degree audio quality where am I? I'm over in Spain I'm in Spain on business

because there's a lot of a lot of new podcast listeners based in Spain so I'm over here trying to organise a couple of gigs see where we might get some people to turn up for some blind boy podcast gigs over in Spain

so I'm over here doing that feeling guilty about it because obviously you know my job involves fucking travel and you know even using the ferry air travel ferry, like, air travel is a bit of a shit for, when it comes to the climate, you know, so it's one of those things

where you evaluate your own life and your own behaviour, and you just feel like a little bit of a dickhead when it comes to your own carbon footprint, and air travel is certainly one for me, but as I mentioned a few podcasts back I kind of settle it with myself by I'll go on there's another powerful motorbike I go and I get a carbon calculator online and I type

in my flight and it gives me the results of how much carbon my footprint was for that flight, and then it calculates it into money. Hold on, there's a fly crawling up my leg. It calculates it into money, and I can donate a certain amount of money towards a charity that will offset that carbon.

We'll say they'll plant trees or some shit like that, you know. So that's what I do so trip over to Spain isn't too bad I think it's like 12 quid so about 12 euro sometimes some airlines will be like do you want to give a charge

towards your carbon footprint but I don't trust the fucking airlines I just don't trust the cunts they'll find some, it's just a snake I don't believe, I don't trust the fucking airlines, I just don't trust the cunts, they'll find some, it's just a snake, I don't know, I have no evidence, to suggest any wrong doings,

but I just don't trust it, so I do my own carbon calculations, and a flight to Spain is about 12 quid, so I'll donate 12 quid now, towards a tree or two getting planted, because that's a huge thing we can do, to offset carbon, is obviously there's us adjusting our behaviour.

But trees are the lungs of the world. So there's a little small car coming over now. If he fucking parks here we'll be in trouble. Fuck off. You Spanish bastard. Go away. Two of them. oh lads so it's like it's called a piaggio piaggio what is that oh I'm thinking of Jean Piaget who's a childhood psychologist he's one of the most prominent psychologists in child psychology Jean Piagaget, who, at the age of nine,

had written a published paper on an albino sparrow. But no, so I'm in a public park, and these little small, strange vehicles went past. They're like vans, but clearly underneath, it's a motorbike. And people who work in parks have them have we got some loud Spanish boys sitting across the way oh lads would you shut the fuck up

that's very very loud now I'm a foolish foolish man for thinking that I could sit down in a fucking park again they're like they're 12 feet away from me imagine this what podcast are you listening to this fella this fella blind boy he goes and sits down in public places right and he records the podcasts and then and then he marvels at the fact that his own podcast is interrupted by people living their

lives that's the podcast that I'm listening to today. So, yeah, those lads are just over having a... They look like they're having a business chat. But because... There's a woman having a fucking phone call. Fucking GDPR, lads. See, I can't understand the Spanish, you know, so... For fuck's sake.

Hold on, I'll try and move now, I've a lot of wires hanging off me, I don't want to stop the recording if I can avoid it, so I'm going to move over to another seat over here, right, but the thing with this seat, this could be fucking Monty Python waiting to happen, because this particular seat is situated directly in front of a playground, but there doesn't happen to be any children inside there right now and as always I look like I work for the fucking CIA with all my equipment

ok so we've got a new bench right here no sure fuck it it's a Tuesday all the children are in school so there'll be no children in this playground and the only children who are not in school are children that have decided to mitch or bunk off

as you'd say in England and no child who's bunking off is going to come somewhere as suspect as a playground because that's where you if there was a truant officer the first place they're going to go is the playground okay sorry

okay nice chaotic start to the podcast there what was I talking about offsetting my carbon emissions so yeah then some two Spanish businessmen decided to sit down and have a conversation, as is their right in a public fucking park, as is their entitlement and right, I'm the one who's wrong, then, oh no, the park workers are here now, what are they doing, they're chopping down bushes, I'd love

to go over to them now and have a chat about biodiversity, but they speak Spanish and I speak English, so we can't have that chat today, he's got hedge clippers and he's, he's launching into a bush, I'll tell you what, I'm in the south of Spain, right, I'm in a park, the leaves are going brown, they're falling down all around me, right, so it's clearly autumn, now I've been in Spain at this time, it's the start of fucking October, it's 33 degrees, which is odd, we'll say, usually Spain at this time of year is about 22, which is gorgeous, no, no, no, no, right now it's 33 fucking degrees, which is proper summer temperature, and everyone's walking around in shorts but the leaves are falling

off the trees so I met someone in a bar last night who had a bit of English and they were just like how are you finding Spain and I'm like that's grand it's a bit hot

and they're like yeah global warming support the extinction rebellion protests please lads even though it's an inconvenience that's the whole point of it people are getting very pissed off saying like

why are they protesting why are they Extinction Rebellion protesters stopping bridges and why are they stopping traffic and people seem to think that like the protesters are trying to take their anger out on everyday people and it's like it's not they're trying

to create civil disobedience they're trying to they're trying to peacefully create huge fucking inconvenience and headache because most people aren't taking this shit seriously. Most people aren't taking the clear evidence from scientists seriously. They're either denying that it's happening or thinking that it's a hoax or a common one is this global warming isn't real, it's just a brilliant excuse for the politicians to introduce more taxes. The vast majority of people that I'm... Like most people aren't taking it seriously lads.

They're not taking the climate change thing seriously. So Extinction Rebellion are out in the streets making very loud noises and interrupting my day and your day and this is what they need to do because we're not paying attention

and people go well fucking China, China need to sort it out oh yes the leaf blower a fucking leaf blower how the fuck am I supposed to get China. China need to sort it out. Oh yes. The leaf blower. A fucking leaf blower. How the fuck am I supposed to get Right. I don't know. Can I get peace in this Spanish park? I'm in the middle of a

fucking city centre. That leaf blower is going to come towards us and it's only going to get louder I'd hardly be able to walk around for a bit would I hold on we'll see about walking around for a little bit what I wanted to do was to read you some of my my book so we're now moving away from

the leaf blower see I could go back over to the bench where I was a minute ago right here's another bench and there's no one sitting nearby it's still near the fucking leaf blower though okay we're walking away from the leaf blower Okay, we're walking away from the leaf blower.

You see, you don't want to sit on a bench whereby when you sit in the bench, it's in the middle of the sun. Right, I have a place over here. Sands leaf blower. It's near a tree stump. Apologies for the lack of edits, lads, but I didn't bring my studio with me, so you're just going to have to bear with me. So what was I talking about? Yeah, people aren't taking climate change seriously. People aren't taking climate change action seriously.

So because of this extinction rebellion people are taking the day off work another critique i'm seeing again not critique criticism begrudgery that i'm seeing about the extinction rebellion protesters online is uh i'd go out and protest but i actually have a job shut the fuck up Donald, shut up these people have jobs as well the vast majority of people who are out protesting

in the extinction, because it's I think the next two weeks are going to be global protests in cities all around the world for to get governments to like governments are being very performative at the moment with their targets for carbon

emissions like even our own Irish government it's very much all we give a fuck because the thing is the Greens had a big win this year in Ireland and not just in Ireland but around the world it's evident that people are starting to give a little bit more year in Ireland and not just in Ireland but around the world it's evident that people are starting to give a little bit more of a shit but not enough so

governments like our own are realising oh if I just talk about the environment people think that we're doing good but the problem is our own government are virtue signalling is the only way to call it about the climate and about climate action but their actions are quite different they're giving subsidies to fucking to the oil companies in my own hometown of Limerick they're after giving the green light for a fucking incinerator

to burn rubbish and tyres disgraceful activity up in Talla there about two or three weeks ago a vital wetland that contained a lot of Dublin spawning frogs the council just fucking

filled it in for no reason just insanity right and then our Taoiseach and our government came out about a month ago basically like 69 in themselves

like sucking their own mickeys saying like Came out about a month ago. Basically like 69 in themselves. Like sucking their own mickeys. Saying like. This government is going to plant fucking. 3 million trees. Aren't we class. And we're doing this out of our own pockets. For the interest of climate.

And then you ask the experts in tree planting. And they're going. you're planting 3 million trees of the variety Sitka Spruce, which is not a native Irish tree. It isn't great. It's not the best option for fucking absorbing carbon. And you're doing it for the forestry industry. absorbing carbon and you're doing it for the forestry industry but what needs to be if the government want to actually suck their own dicks or if they want to actually do something

proactive with the climate that will help plant native broadleaf trees, that's what's needed native deciduous fucking broadleaf trees that aren't going to get cut down that exist purely to absorb fucking carbon and to be forests right, don't build them Fucking broadleaf trees. That aren't going to get cut down. That exist purely to absorb fucking carbon.

And to be forests. Right. Don't build them over old peat bogs. Peat bogs are important to biodiversity. And the climate too. So we need to be re-wetting our peat bogs. Whatever that means. Reintroducing water I'm guessing.

So our own government are. Virtue signaling we'll say. With their climate action. So this is why the Extinction Rebellion protests are happening these two weeks. And I understand it is annoying, right, when you're trying to get to work and your bus is late because people are lying down in the middle of the road. It is fucking annoying. And it is inconvenient. Okay?

That's the fucking point, l lads that really is the point and the whole thing is it's not nice having to be late for work it's not nice if it's your day off and you're trying to relax and you can't get into town because there's protests it's very inconvenient and it's unpleasant

and it's okay to feel that way because that's what they're trying to do. But, don't fucking get pissed off with the protesters. If you are annoyed that there's protesters in the streets, instead of calling them lazy bastards who don't have a job, who have nothing better to do than fucking nail themselves to the ground for the climate, don't fucking get pissed off with them, you bootlicker. Get annoyed at why they're protesting, because they're protesting for you. Like, it's a minor inconvenience now to have protesters in the street.

It's a minor inconvenience. If we don't sort this shit out in the next ten years, if the world doesn't get together and sort out this shit in the next ten fucking years, and this is what science is saying, and climate breakdown occurs, which isn't just water levels rising, it's

the collapse of society, it's a very slow fucking process where there's like food shortages, water shortages. That will lead to rioting, violent rioting, and it will be very, very fucking slow and unpleasant, okay? So, right now, missing work in the morning because because your boss can't get to fucking work, because there's protesters, right,

that's a tiny inconvenience, compared to, what will face, you when you're older, and your children, if shit isn't done right now, so please, for the love of fuck,

if your boss is late, because of Extinction Rebellion protesters, get off the bus and join them, okay, and if your boss is late because of Extinction Rebellion protesters, get off the bus and join them. Okay? And if your fucking boss asks you where the fuck you are, you say to your boss, I was on strike today because I'm concerned about the climate. Is that okay with you?

And if your boss has a fucking issue with it, call him out. Call out the business that doesn't support fucking climate action. Because they don't want to be that business. Their branding does not want to... Businesses now want the virtue signal about how much they give a shit about the climate.

So your employer does not want to be called out on that shit. And I tell you what, if they fucking do, if you're trying to strike for the climate and you're getting shit at work or you're getting threatened to be fired go on to fucking Twitter tweet at me and I'll retweet that to a lot of people

okay, because it's fuck that shit everyone has a right to strike these protests need to happen so that governments get to a situation whereby they realise

if they don't actually act they will lose power or they may have difficulty running society that's what these things are that's what needs to happen these people aren't lazy these people aren't doing it to piss happen. These people aren't lazy, these people aren't

doing it to piss you off, these people aren't jobless, and even if some of them are, who gives a fuck? What does that matter? Be thankful that they're out there creating fucking noise for everybody's future, and we should all support them, and we should all join them. for everybody's future and we should all support them and we should all join them I mean there's an angry part of me I mean you're trying to get true to certain people about the climate and

you're kind of thinking well if science isn't working, if actual evidence right, science based rational evidence where you can science-based rational evidence, where you can trace and show fucking evidence, fact-based evidence, if that's not working, then you need to start appealing to people's emotions. Because we're not rational creatures. We'd like to think that humans are rational.

We're fucking not, okay? Elections, decisions, group movements, it're fucking not, okay elections, decisions group movements, it very much happens, it comes from a place of feeling a place of feeling that's often motivated by fear and the problem with fucking

climate change is like what's needed, right, is kind of an overhaul of society in how we consume and kind of a drastic peeling back of what we would call conveniences we we've a fierce amount of conveniences in our life that you know they're not really necessary for us that you can still have a perfectly happy brilliant fucking fulfilled life without the huge massive conveniences and disposability that we have in our society things that serve uh not just capitalism but consumerism you know consumerism

being um desiring and buying things not based on your actual needs, but on your desires, which is kind of silly. So, if you look at World War II, right, and this was in both America and in Britain in particular, because the Nazis are a very clear threat, it's like there's a group of humans, right? They're over there and they want to kill you. That's really, really simple. Humans understand that.

We deeply understand. There's a lot of people over there and they want to kill us. Sometimes with a situation like the Nazis, it's completely accurate. It's like, oh fuck, they're evil boys. They want to do some bad shit. We got to stop them. Right? Very clear and simple. Other times it's not. Other times, unfortunately, it's marginalized groups like refugees where people go, look at those people over there. They're different. They want to replace us with no evidence. That's where emotion comes in but emotions do drive action emotions drive action more than facts and logic i think so when it was like world war ii like they brought in like rations like food rations and shit where you know people didn't eat meat every day of the week

because they understood that the meat was needed for the war effort to beat the Nazis. People didn't rely on easily accessible produce in their supermarket because so much food was needed for the war effort. So people built victory gardens. They rolled up their fucking sleeves, the government put out a plan,

people learned how to grow things, and people used a determination based on the emotion of fear and wanting to win against a visible enemy. And people were not eating meat that much and growing their own produce out the back garden. Both things are massively environmentally sound, right? Firstly, we all know, I've spoken about it many times, the way that meat is currently produced,

it's not particularly sustainable and it has a huge toll on the environment and creates a lot of carbon, right? So that's why you know what number one of the number one things what can you do to try and offset your carbon footprint try and uh eat a hell of a lot less meat eat more plant-based foods right that's one way uh second thing even with a plant-based diet there can still be quite a large carbon footprint because of, just because of the amount of travelling that certain foods have to do. Especially with free trade agreements and shit, you know. When I speak about conveniences, like, you know, you walk into Aldi there today and you'll get your fucking, you'll get fucking, I don't know, what was the last thing? Basil grown in Greece

Grecian basil like that has a lot of a carbon footprint because all this produce because of free trade like

and again it's one of the benefits of free trade you've got like my dad who would have grown up in the 40s

like he he never saw an orange he he knew that he'd never tasted orange juice. He'd never seen an orange. He'd heard of oranges. And he used to have an uncle, Uncle John I think his name was. And Uncle John, who was older, used to say to my dad and his brothers when they were kids, he used to tell them stories about oranges

you know and he'd say oh I've seen oranges I was over in America and I've seen an orange and the boys would be like what do you mean tell us about the orange

I've heard they're amazing I've heard they're so delicious and Uncle John had a pocket watch in his waistcoat and he'd pull out the golden pocket watch

and he'd tell my dad and his brothers this is an orange and how the fuck are they supposed to know they don't know and uncle john then has probably never seen an orange himself he's probably talking out of his arse he probably had an orange described to him as a type of a round golden thing so he fucks out his pocket watch out of his pocket shows it to the boys and says this thing here is an orange so then anytime uncle john would have a few whiskeys and fall asleep they used to try and climb all over him when he was asleep in the chair and they'd pull his pocket watch out of his jumper and all the children would start trying to bite and eat the pocket watch until they damaged their teeth thinking that this was an orange.

And the thing is, it's because we didn't really have, we didn't have free trade agreements. We didn't have, you know, transport was a lot more restrictive, a lot more expensive. So something like an orange was a serious luxury item. You know? And it's a tough one to balance because, you know, oranges contain a lot of vitamin C, but so do fucking blackberries, lads, and you can get them on the side of the road. So we need to, society as a whole, things like how we get our food, where our food comes from, these are the things that need to be addressed in order to help the climate and it's something

not far off the victory movement that we saw in World War 2 where something was actually addressed as the genuine existential crisis that it is the Nazis taking over the world is a genuine existential crisis that would is. The Nazis taking over the world is a genuine existential crisis that would result in mass extinction

without doubt because that was their fucking plan. Climate change is of a similar climate change is very similar to the Nazi threat. It's just over a slightly longer time scale and

harder to see and a lot of current events in 10 years time we're going to look back at them and we're going to view them as things that happened as a result of the climate the Syrian war for example

the Syrian civil war like a driving factor for the Syrian civil war war was was climate it's people say oh it was fucking isis it was a sad being a prick yeah all of that's true of course but underlying it in 2009 2010 2011 syria saw three unprecedented droughts. And the thing with Syria is cities like Damascus, which are quite kind of modern cities, where a huge amount of the population were living, there was people living in Damascus, living, you know, modern kind of western style lives

with the modern conveniences that you have in the west. But then outside of Damascus, in the rural areas, in the village, you have people living kind of closer to how you'd live in Afghanistan, a much more rural, impoverished way of living. People who subsided on their own land. And if there was a drought, then you have people who fucking, they can't eat. People from the country in Syria. So what happened was, 2011, there had been three droughts and Damascus

and other cities experienced a huge influx of refugees from the Syrian countryside who needed to travel to the cities because they had no access to food or fresh water because climate change caused a load of fucking droughts. And this influx

of people into the cities of Syria caused the cities of Syria caused the destabilization of society. Damascus could not sustain this amount of people. So the Syrian civil war, while on the surface you can say, oh, it was Islamic fundamentalism, oh, Assad was a despot all true

but very much the the kind of the groundwork for it was laid out by the climate so we're already seeing this shit happening already I don't want to be fucking freaking you out

I don't want to be freaking people out and being all negative. Do you know? I'm trying to be real about it. The only reason I'm saying this shit this week, lads, is I'm angry and frustrated at the responses I'm seeing online

to the climate protesters. the protesting. I'm very annoyed, especially on the likes of Facebook. And yes, you're supposed to get angry. Yes, you're supposed to be annoyed that people are protesting.

They're supposed to inconvenience you. They're protests of inconvenience, lads. They're not doing it because they're supposed to inconvenience you they're protests of inconvenience lads they're not doing it because they're pricks they're not doing it to piss you off yes get angry yes get pissed off

don't get angry and pissed off with the protesters you're missing the point you're shooting the messenger if you want the protests to stop there's only one way to make them stop okay you need to fucking talk to your

TDs, you need to talk to the governments you need to make it clear wherever the fuck you are in the world that now is we can't just do it by ourselves okay individual action ladsads, is grand. We can all try in our personal lives to reduce our personal carbon footprint.

That's a brilliant thing to do. I try and do it as best I can. That's not enough. 70% of this shit is caused by 10 corporations in the world. It's caused by an utter hegemony on energy by oil companies. Okay? The governments need to stand up to their very, very wealthy, powerful buddies. The structures of power in this world are heavily intertwined and infiltrated

by the fossil fuel industry. And the people in power need to stand up to their good friends or maybe the people in power who have good friends in the oil industry need to fuck off and some new people need to get in power who are not good friends with people in the oil industry. That's a big thing that needs to fucking happen. That's one way. And the other thing in the meantime governments need to be seriously planting native wildflower

native broadleaf forests in order to absorb the carbon that is being emitted in the atmosphere and global warming is happening all around you lads I was in London a couple of weeks ago

fucking roasting it was roasting in Ireland some people say well it's freezing down in Australia in Australia at the moment it's pure cold in the sea it is yeah because the ice caps are melting around fucking Antarctica

and it's making the water cold global warming doesn't just mean everything is hotter that's why we're calling it climate change it's several mad things that are happening and kind of all happening at once and

most experts are saying we've got 10 years 10 years for radical action and I mean radical in a the Nazis are about to invade radical action a society Nazis are about to invade radical action a society wide change of consumption

led by governments as such, that's what actually needs to happen so how did I get to this I apologise now for the long ramble lads because this isn't edited and I'm in a fucking park, how long have I been recording 33 minutes, not too bad this isn't edited and I'm in a fucking park how long have I been recording 33 minutes not too bad

I got on to this because I emotion this is what I was trying to get at okay logic doesn't seem to work on most humans you know we're able to do a thing called cognitive dissonance logic doesn't seem to work on most humans. You know, we're able to do a thing called cognitive dissonance.

We all do cognitive dissonance. One of the reasons Greta Thunberg is so fucking on the ball with this climate shit and so angry and so defiant and so single-minded is Greta lives with a type of autism used to be called Asperger's syndrome but I don't think people who uh I don't think people who have it like to like it to be called Asperger's anymore it's it's it's they're they're somewhere on the the spectrum of autism and this is how they live their lives and this is how they live their lives, and this is how they experience their world. And Greta is one of these people. And Greta, sometimes people on the autistic spectrum,

they don't experience what we call cognitive dissonance. Okay? And cognitive dissonance is... Do you know, like, I know that cigarettes are bad. I know fucking full know that cigarettes are bad I know fucking full well that cigarettes are bad but if I have enough pints I'm looking for a cigarette

and I wake up the next morning and I hate myself for it okay but smoking is an example humans are able to do things that are bad for themselves in the face of glaring evidence our brain is able to lie to ourselves

and we can just go ahead and do it okay, cognitive dissonance and globally we're all in a state of cognitive dissonance about the climate where despite evidence we kind of just want to get on and kind of hope that someone else figures it out.

And Greta Thunberg is somebody, she can't do cognitive dissonance. And to be honest too, you know, you need a bit of cognitive dissonance too for the mental health situation. I get asked an awful lot about climate anxiety. People ask me, Blimeyy will you talk about climate anxiety which is there's a lot of people who are now experiencing mental health issues because the triggering

event for them is alright the earth is heating up we may be facing some pretty bad shit I mean it's one of the reasons I the earth is heating up, we may be facing some pretty bad shit. I mean, it's one of the reasons I... I'm kind of cautious talking about the climate on the podcast because I don't want to be triggering people's climate anxiety.

But I try and come at things from a position of hope, lads. From a position of hope and action. So... But people always ask me, Blind Boy, can you talk about fucking climate anxiety and you have to treat it the same way as

any fucking anxiety this cognitive dissonance that we experience about the climate it's our brains natural defence mechanism to stop us being utterly overwhelmed

by the facts Greta Thunberg it would appear like she is overwhelmed by the facts you know Greta Thunberg it would appear like she is overwhelmed by the facts you know Greta speaks about intense anxiety and depression that she experienced at a young age

from learning about facts about the climate, about what's happening and what's may happen in the future so for someone like Greta it's very single minded shit needs to be done what is wrong with the rest of you people? That's why she's so passionate and why we must defend her

and mind her because she's fucking 16 and we're adults and there's other adults that are taking fucking shots at her. That's unacceptable. But, yeah, we have this cognitive dissonance and it kind of exists to allow us to get on with our fucking lives because at the same time as well oh what have I dropped

at the same time you can't be focusing 100% on the climate and trying to live your life because then you'd be very upset and very scared all the time but for some people that's actually happening so people say to me blind bite talk about climate anxiety so what I'd say to you lads two seconds what i would say to you is now i know what you're hearing did he just take a drink out of a single

use plastic bottle yes i did however it is not single use it is a plastic bottle that i'm refilling because fuck single use plastic same my plastic bag repurposing reusing nothing wrong with single use plastic if you get multiple uses out of it then it stops being single use plastic so peoplebite, speak about climate anxiety. Because people are saying, I'm getting panic attacks, I'm getting depression, I'm having great difficulty finding meaning in my life, I'm having difficulty being happy, because I am forever and continually anxious about the climate. It causes me great worry for my future, for my children's future.

I wonder if I should have children all this type of shit and it is drastically affecting people's mental health and what I would say to you you gotta treat it like any other fucking anxiety lads I am deeply concerned about the climate

I go through periods of being concerned about the climate I go through periods of being frightened about the climate do I experience climate anxiety no I do not by which I mean do I experience worry about the climate to the extent that it prevents me

from living a meaningful happy life on a day-to-day basis. No, I do not. Okay? I won't allow that to happen. I use my cognitive behavioral therapy on these thoughts. Now, why won't I allow it to happen? Oh, there's a wasp.

There's a fucking Spanish long wasp. Fuck off. What the fuck is he? Hold on, we're moving now. Did that stop the recording? No, it didn't. There was a very long Spanish wasp. He's back.

Oh, for fuck's sake. Hold on. Because there's a bit of mud on the ground. He's got one of long arses I'm not fucking with him hold on now I don't want to turn off the recording we're going to move a little bit we'll go back over to that seat over there because those two business cunts are after going ironic that there's me talking about my my rational uh how I don't get anxiety no do you know what a long Spanish wasp came over.

I've never seen him before. He had a big long arse and a stinger. And I'm like, I'm not getting, I'm not having a meeting with this man today. That, that wasn't, that was a, that was a rational response to a perceived threat. So we're back at the other seat now. Let's just make sure I didn't fuck with any of the audio levels so yeah a long Spanish wasp came over there

right climate anxiety and you know what fair play to him I'd never hurt that wasp I don't want to fucking kill him he serves his purpose he's going to go over now and eat a dead rat or something or whatever wasps do

so best of luck to him best of luck to him. Best of luck. But I just don't want to get involved with him today. That's not what my day is about. Fuck, he's not over again, is he? No, he flew past. That was the second one.

I don't get on with wasps, lads. I'll be honest. I won't hurt them. But look, who likes getting stung? Not me. That's be honest. Alright. I won't hurt them. But. Look. Who likes getting stung. Not me. That's not what I want to do. With my day here. The other thing.

Yeah. I just. What if I'm allergic. To that particular type of wasp. This new Spanish wasp. How the fuck did that happen. In the middle of me. Talking about fucking.

Anyway. Climate anxiety. Okay. Um. Treat it like any other anxiety. Anyway, climate anxiety, okay? Treat it like any other anxiety. I won't allow my day to be ruined by my own irrational response to a threat. So here's the thing. Climate, you know, the destruction of the climate is real the seriousness of the situation is real, these are all facts

these are rational things that are happening right and these are bad things so bad things are happening real bad things are happening okay so what I do is I ask myself well what's an appropriate response that I should have to these bad things are happening. Okay? So, what I do is I ask myself, well, what's an appropriate response

that I should have to these bad things? To ignore them completely, and to pretend they're not there, to allow myself to be consumed by my own cognitive dissonance, right? That's an irrational response. It doesn't help me.

That just feeds the defense mechanism, and that energy will find its way out somehow in a more subversive, insidious expression of my behaviour so to ignore it is irrational similarly, to allow myself to be so consumed by fear and anxiety around the climate

that it prevents my happiness, it prevents me having a sense of meaning, a sense of purpose, it prevents me from living and enjoying my day in the present moment, that too is deeply irrational. And it's also unhelpful. It's unhelpful to me. It's unhelpful to anyone around me. It's unhelpful to it's unhelpful to me it's unhelpful to anyone around me it's unhelpful to the fucking

climate like imagine this podcast lads if instead of me being solution focused around the climate then instead I was just listing out my deepest fears and what ifs

what if this happens, what if that happens how the fuck, what good would that be what would that do you'd turn off the fucking podcast it would make you more anxious you wouldn't want to engage with it so therefore if I truly allowed myself to be consumed with

climate anxiety I'm now of no service to my community, whatsoever okay, now of no service to my community. Whatsoever. Okay. I'm no service to anyone around me. I'm now part of the problem. Even though.

It's an expression of deep concern for the climate. I'm expressing it. In an unhelpful way. Unhelpful to me. And unhelpful to you. So. By keeping my climate anxiety in check. I'm able to. Because you can get great meaning as well

from making the changes in your life like that's the other thing too take it back to I did a podcast on Viktor Frankl Viktor Frankl being someone who an existential psychologist who spoke about the book is called

Man's Search for Meaning and his whole shtick was that even in he basically his psychology came from his time in a concentration camp and seeing the horrors of being in a concentration camp and people starving around him and dying and being

executed and gassed and how he was able to observe how certain people throughout these horrors were still able to live with meaning, I won't say happiness but meaning right and meaning is what you're looking for if you live a life of depression and a life of anxiety you don't have meaning and that's often the most alienating and sad and painful part of it is you

don't like being awake because your life doesn't have a sense of meaning and that's one of the worst things about it being in the throes of a mental health crisis so you can find meaning in like let's just say next week it's like you're gonna go right okay i'm gonna see how i get on with this uh cutting my meat by 80% every week which is something I started doing about a year ago I only eat meat maybe one or two days a week or special occasions you know um like I'm over here in Spain now so because I'm here in Spain if there's some delicious meat later I'll eat it but then back home to Ireland and I'm back on my fucking my lentil bullshit but uh you can find great meaning in action so if you're if you're getting climate

anxiety you go how can I find meaning in changes that I can make in my life so you start to get interested in plant-based recipes you start to think about can I start growing some shit up my back garden do I have the space to grow some vegetables can I do this can I learn about canning and preserving them so these things that remove your carbon footprint you're now engaging in it in a creative and meaningful fashion with your world. As a way to manage your anxiety around the climate. And you can get meaning from that. And that proactiveness means that climate change and the threat is still going to be there.

It's still present. climate change and the threat is still going to be there, it's still present, but it's not destroying your present moment, the other thing with climate anxiety is, yeah it's frightening and it's scary lads, but Jesus Christ, there's a lot of other really fucking bad things that happen to people every single fucking day. That you seem to be getting on grand. How often do you worry about getting walloped by a bus and killed? Or it happening to someone that you love? Like that's statistically far more likely to happen to you in your lifetime than getting killed by climate change. Disease, tragedy, these are all parts of human existence.

Awful scenarios are a given of human existence. And you don't know if or when they will happen okay so there's already a bunch of shit in your life other than the climate that is potentially tragic yet we can live our lives and get on grand you can cross the road cross the road listening to fucking sepulchre and getting on fine, listening to tunes and not worrying about getting a slap of a bus, so, yeah the climate is fucking scary lads, but there's a load of fucking things, you know, if you're worrying about your children, what if my children grow up in a world where they can't have access to

fresh water and society collapses. There's that, but I mean, you can go, what if my children grow up into anything and keep yourself awake at night? What if your children grow up with severe addiction issues and have to live a life of addiction? What if your children grow up and you know, have to suffer homelessness? What if your children grow up and are in an abusive relationship? What if your children grow up and they become an abuser?

What if your children grow up and they become a criminal? What if your children grow up and one day they're down an alleyway and they get murdered? What if your children grow up and they're in a car crash so you can what if about a load of different things and climate fits into that category of fucking what if

lads, it really does so amongst all this the realities of climate change and it is scary and it is frightening. And it's okay to be frightened and scared of it.

It's still just one of many what ifs. In the world. With or without climate change. Pain and tragedy. And horrible terrible things. Are still. A given of human existence. They are fucking inevitable. And throughout humanity, we've tried to live, you know, what the fuck is heaven? This imaginary

concept where we can all live in a world free from pain and tragedy and uncertainty. It's not real. It's not real. Pain and suffering are part of human existence and climate change is now just a new one on the list and it's to be getting climate anxiety to be living a life

where you don't have quality of life and you don't have a sense of meaning and you're suffering intense anxiety and the depression that goes alongside it and now you don't have quality of life and the reason you don't have quality of life is because of your attitude towards a trigger. That's not a way to live.

Do you get me? That's not a rational response. It's not a way to live do you get me? that's not a rational response it's not a helpful response to you it's not a helpful response to your community ok what you need to be doing is climate change is here how do I react to it? well I'm going to react to climate change

in a rational and responsible way which means that you're going to be proactive you're going to be you're going to move it move from climate anxiety to climate concern concern is a rational response we all need to be concerned about the climate we need to be so concerned about the climate that we act on the climate that's where you need to be but from concern comes meaning from proactivity

comes meaning and then you if everybody live like that you move towards the new model of society where we have less conveniences our model of consumerism shifts

dramatically, we are no longer purchasing based on irrational needs and desires and that's the other thing lads our current way of existence okay it's a fucking invention it's a post-industrial revolution invention

that happened in the 1920s I did a podcast on it Edward Bernays Sigmund Freud's grandson since the fucking 1915, we existed in a society where we are being sold products not based upon our needs,

but based upon our desires. Often irrational desires. We purchase. We're being sold better versions of ourselves. People are insecure. We're all insecure. All of us are insecure and anxious and unsure of ourselves. This is part of what it is to be a human being.

And within this insecurity, it's very easy to exploit it. We all want to be better looking. We all want to be thinner, taller. We all want different fucking skin color. We all want a different haircut, we all want to be loved more by the people around us. This is being human, that's what being human is. And advertising exploits it. That's what advertising does, and it does it in the shape of consumerism. You're not buying a bar of soap you're buying a better version of yourself

and in a society that is truly addressing climate that shit's no longer a part of it, you'll go back to buying soap because it cleans you and it's going to take a radical overhaul but if everybody addresses it from a position of climate concern

I reckon it's possible um right addresses it from a position of climate concern, I reckon it's possible. Right. Did that record? Yes, it did. Certainly the most chaotic outdoor live podcast yet. The last one. What did we have going on the last time?

Interrupted by those buoys. This time... Yeah, this was a bit chaotic, lads. That wasp. Okay. What did I want to talk about just a little plug for the fucking Cork Podcast Festival I'm doing my own gig down there on the 13th in the Cork Opera House it's nearly sold out there's about 20 tickets left

but I just want to give a plug for the Cork Podcast Festival in general because it's their first year doing it and it's run by a couple of lads Joe and Ed who are promoters based down in Cork and they're just fucking sound lads

they're just really nice lads and I've worked with them for years in gigs and the thing is with the gigging community if you're a professional artist you have to work on a kind of uh the basis of trust so when you meet promoters that are nice sound decent people who care about putting on a good show then you tell you tell other people about them you continue to work with them and you develop

a relationship and everyone is sound to each other so joe and ed are putting on the cork podcast festival their first year doing it i'm one of the headliners, and I really want to see them do well on this first year, because first years of festivals, it's kind of an understanding that you're running at a loss, okay, so there's a load of shit happening in Cork this weekend, I've a tiny bit of a blurb here that I said I'd read out for the lads. And I'm not getting paid for doing this. I'm doing this to be sound because Joe and Ed,

who are sound bastards, are running the fucking Cork Podcast Festival. And this is what happens when you're sound to people. When you're a decent fucking promoter who looks after artists and puts in a load of work selling shows,

putting on a good show, then you're responding in kind, with fucking kindness, and that's the world I want to live in, lads. So, yeah, Cork Podcast Festival's happening from Friday the 11th to Sunday the 13th of October, and there's a load of shit at it, right? The West Cork, which is a really fucking popular podcast that they had on Audible. They're doing shows there. Alison Spittel, Gaspure,

Tara Noya, Tara Flynn, those conspiracy guys, the Creep Dive. There's like free podcasts that you can go and see as well. There's people putting on free podcasts and it's happening all over Cork. Corkpodcastfestival.com is where you go for tickets. They have an app as well.

If you're in Cork, or if you're near Cork, and you want to see some good shit, find out about some podcasts, see some live shows, go to it, and support sound people who are working in the industry and doing a good job. Okay, is it time for the Ocarina Pause? What type of pause will we have this week? Because I'm going to re-G a new short story from my book, which is, yeah, speaking about

fucking climate anxiety. Get ready for a pretty depressing story, lads. But I'm happy with it. I do enjoy it. We'll just have a bit of Spanish silence pause, will we? Listen to the cars and the birds. So there was probably an advert in there. For some shit. Right, you know the crack. This podcast is supported by you the listener every so often I might have a sponsor if they're sound

but in general I I don't want to get heavy into advertising because you start getting heavy into advertising and I can no longer deliver the podcast that I want to deliver which is on my own terms and something that's a back and forth between myself and yourself

I want to keep this space ours to be whatever the fuck it wants to be and that's possible because it's supported by the listeners it's supported by you via the patreon page so if you'd like to give me the price of a pint once a month right go to patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast and you can support this uh podcast by becoming a patron. Right? And it's a lovely model. It's based on soundness and kindness. If you can afford it, do. If you can't afford it, no hassle.

You can listen for free. No problem at all. Right? And I just like that. I like that model. It's working out great. So. How long? Is this going to be a long podcast is that an hour

Jesus Christ ok You must be very careful, Margaret. It's the girl. Witness the birth. Bad things will start to happen. Evil things of evil. It's all for you. No, no, don't. The first omen. I believe the girl is to be the mother. Mother of what?

It's the most terrifying. Six, six, six. It's the mark of the devil. Hey! Movie of the year. It's not real. It's not real. What's not real? Who said that?

The first Omen, only in theaters April 5th. Will you rise with the sun to help change mental health care forever? Join the Sunrise Challenge to raise funds for CAMH, the Center for Addiction

and Mental Health to support life-saving progress in mental health care. From May 27th to 31st, people across Canada will rise together and show those living with mental illness

and addiction that they're not alone. Help CAMH build a future where no one is left behind. So, who will you rise for? Register today at sunrisechallenge.ca That's sunrisechallenge.ca Let's read out this

short story. How's my battery? Half. Okay. I'll take a sip of water. so let me read out this is a short story from my new book Boulevard Ren and other stories which is going to be out November 1st please pre-order the book

you can pre-order it at look if you're in Ireland I'd recommend easons.ie I think is the one some of the orders I don't know the first however many get a free print an exclusive print that's signed by myself I don't know are they however many get a free print, an exclusive print that's signed by myself

I don't know, are they gone yet? I'm not sure, but regardless, pre-order the book, easons.ie and then if you're living abroad, Book Depository is a good one but other than that it's going to be in shops on November 1st I'm very happy with it, and I'd like to

read you the second short story from the book which, I'm very happy with it. And I'd like to read you the second short story from the book. I'm happy with this. I enjoy it. It's written in the third person, which allows me to be more literary. You can have fun with language when it's in the third person. You know, you can have a lot of fun with... You can have fun with prose. So I enjoyed writing this.

It's very dark. I'm not going to lie. There's not a lot of laughs in this one. It's incredibly dark. I don't know when it's set. Some people who read it. Think it's set in Ireland in the past. I don't know. It's like a, it's like just like a dream, it's like a waking dream I had about either Ireland in the past

or Ireland in the future, I don't know, but it's called Jolie, and hopefully, because I can read this out now and I won't get fucking interrupted by some Spanish bastard. Right, so let's fucking, let's say a little prayer to Baha'u'llah, the prophet of the Baha'is, for the crack. I've never said a prayer to Baha'u'llah, why would I? Baha'u'llah. Can I read this story uninterrupted by Spanish bastards, please? All right. Okay.

This is called Jolie. Bent over Gonzo Donlan has a string of pure frozen dribble that's hovering down between her lips and the few small stones she's arranging on the mass rock. Dented convections of dawn air threaten a thaw on the spit stick. A sermon hasn't been said on the altar for the best part of three weeks. Herself and Jo Lee Heffernan are searching for

the priest Scanlan. Gonzo's arms are splattered with pricky scabs and itches, made worse by the greasy twine that's holding the burlap sack across her back. Her head is a mouse-brown mad wire halo drooped over a gaunt face of green teenage skin, and her heart is in the past, and her teeth are a shore full of shattered shells. Her heart is in the past and her teeth are a shore full of shattered shells. Jolie whispers out that the cold will have kept the priest tucked away for the warmth.

Gonzo hardly raises the neck at this. Sound enters her ear holes as underwater dumb muffle. Her chest drums a thump of fear up into her mind a purple hum of cloud skirts off a heather bearded mountain three fields over by Garmin lock with no promise of glimmer bursting through its belly pure pregnant with rain Jolie flakes her eyes up at the fat cloud and feels a jealousy towards its size and girt

watch that big dirty heap up above, Gonzo. Gonzo's eyes stay fixed on the stones. She's on her side, with one hand fidgeting them around, and she imagines that they're a half-dozen scuttling lumps of turnips on a plate. She's undecided on whether the six pieces of flint should converge in the configurations of a cross or as some class of triangle. The mind on her is gone blood dumb from hunger. Her activity is interrupted by a violent retch of green sputum, which dribbles down her chin and onto the pebbles. An attempt at a groan is made. This is met with numbness from Jolie, who is now scowling at

the imposing cloud, mauve as a brain in the sky, trailing down dirty lengths of distant smudge, broken by a mustard smear of sideways sun that doesn't reach the grass below it. I saw you sucking down a thistletop twenty minutes back at the gate of Aldersmith's plantation. Gonzo doesn't listen to this. She splays out on the mass rock, exhausted from the strain that the ring of puke put over her body. Jolie is still fixed on the direction of the cloud and the smell of the wind. If it brings a wetting in their direction, all the journey and work is for naught. Rain brings worms and activity from birds and foxes and martins

that wet won't come over this way Gonzo get up the fuck and start looking for six hours in November cold they had followed the edge of the river Bine in search of the mass rock crawling over the frost hardened earth every grasp at the soil was a horizontal climb up a sheer cliff. Only

last Thursday, Jolie had gotten her mouth on a ladle of sheep's broth from the soup kitchen in Navin Town. Gertie Laffin threw whispers about Father Scanlon missing three Sunday services. At Scanlon's Mass, he was known to hand out rations of parsnip, which he stole from the landlord Bide. It's this parsnip bounty that has the two women up at the Mass Rock. Save for a few ill-advised thistles, Gonzo hasn't eaten a patch of food in 14 days. The soup and naven kitchen is unreliable. Once a week, the town blackens in a congregation of starving gaunts, lines the length of fortnights, a pointless endeavour. The soup is a diluted shimmery broth over a scant mystery meat brawn, brewed for hours in large batches, its nutritional value is questionable. value is questionable. When the anatomy is famished, normal digestive mechanisms cease to function correctly. The starving can suffer a painful esophageal fungus that causes any

ingested food to be rejected, followed by an acidic verdigris bile brought up from the liver. The sheer effort that a starving bastard endures to digest food is enough to trigger a state of shock to the nervous system and a failure of the heart. Eating carries a risk with it. The dead are left where they die. Others, dazzled by the famish, follow suit, knowing that a drink of soup will put them down too. Snap out of it, Gonzo.

No mind giving up now. There's a trinket full of priest parsnips round here that'll keep us going till the spring Gonzo drops her head dozy from the hunger journey Jolie lets her rest she has a few days on her she has the blast of energy left from Thursday's soup in her

her eyes gander around the tangles of emerald bramble that surround the grey mass rock her friend is sprawled across. In front of the monolith the ground is scant and the muddy footfall from previous parsnip sermons spells out death in the clay. Jo Lee is a day or two away from collapsing. Every flex of her limbs has currency. She won't stand to her feet. The effort and exertion of placing the weight of her torso on her legs would consume too much energy. The very act of focusing her attention,

the task of asking her mind to search for parsnips amongst thickets of wilderness is a measured investment. On hands and knees, Jolie takes considered wipes with her palms in the grass, sloth-like, pushing apart green blades, inching forward, using the full splay of her frame to investigate as much ground as possible without expending too much energy. Her crawl takes her to a depression underneath a black torn bush. Her eyes turn up from her nose to discover the scrunched corpse of Father Scanlan. The priest lies all bird-like, protruding bones under see-through skin, claws curled round a ragged leather satchel. Jolie falls forward onto Scanlan's chest and stretches out,

making desperate pinches at the bounty. Her heart feels a loneliness, and she rolls on her back with the satchel held above her face, and she scratches at the inside pockets. Wooden rosary beads and bag lint fall down onto her neck. Jolie rises up on all fours and starts tugging and pulling at the dead priest's rags frantic grasps

searching for the treasury of parsnips that had initiated her and Gonzo's quest a feathered dome affronts her forehead when she lies back beside the corpse of the priest there is a tart cotton desert inside her gob and she becomes back beside the corpse of the priest. There is a tart cotton desert inside her gob and she becomes aware of the barren howl of her location. It is clear to her that the priest had eaten any food he had before he died of the sickness. Low wind rolls a growling drone over on

a distant hill entrancing her into her own weak thoughts. The boost of adrenaline from the promise of food has left her deflated. The limbs ache with a wavy pulse each time the chest beats. A frost wind cuts the right-hand side of her face. The faith she had in her and Gonzo's survival is gone she will die here on her back beside the curled priest she thinks back to a year ago before the crops grew dirty and wrong she sees her son Dunica on bended knees

with clumps of straw between his tiny hands turning and wiring them into the shape of a man Dunica's back felt hot when she placed her hand on his shoulder. A breathing sun graced them both with a wave of security and happiness. Across the way was Patrick, skinning peas from their pods in a wooden bowl. His jaw smiled, but there was a worry on his mouth she fights the blinky visions of his crippled body and dry hair him howling spew into wet mud

the wicker basket in the corner hiding the sight of young Dunica's stiffened body from them both each attempt to bring back memories of happiness are assaulted by visions of Patrick's skeletal face and wide open mouth as he crawled over her thighs and out the door of the hut in search of something to eat or drink.

Death all around her under the threat of a distant orange sky. Her memory is interrupted by a splutter from Gonzo who was still alive on the mass rock. Jolie feels an anger. As if autonomously Jolie's left hand stretches out with an energy that she didn't know she had. She feels around the body of the dead priest and envelopes a clasp of short

fabric, pulling it taut. In her fingers she feels buttons which she pinches off, the freezing skin of the priest's stomach under her palm. With a force she begins pulling herself towards the corpse and up onto her knees. She looms over the body and sees the faded green copper buckle on the priest's baggy trousers. She removes the buckle which has blunt edges. Holding it between both fists she plunges it down below the chest of the corpse into the soft vulnerability under the ribcage she begins to drag and belly flesh unfolds before her

revealing scant dashes of yellow fat and purpled casing she cuts as far as the belly button and stretches the skin back opening the priest up like curtains innards exposed beneath her nose and she's thinking back to the butchering goats every November and the lie of the land when it comes to offal. Reaching into the priest, moving past the guts, piercing unknown membranes, touching the spine and searching around the back, exhuming the liver and kidneys,

the kidney is offered up towards the lips saliva warms the walls of the mouth for the first time in weeks she pauses understanding that something as rich as a kidney could kill a woman in her state she'll be dead in under a month anyway she thinks to herself it's worth the risk

it wobbles brown and purple in her hand which is gawky from thick black blood the top of the kidney is placed in her mouth. She begins to suck gently. The taste of iron invigorates her to her core. She moves her teeth around the freezing raw morsel. It has a rubbery resistance like a grape. Her mind darts back to memories of full meals,

to the experience of satiation. She is remembering the aesthetic joy of eating, the feel in the mouth of a clamber of buttery spuds, the ejaculation of saliva from under the tongue, the heavenly sensation that is a combination of both taste and smell that causes endorphins to shoot off from the brain and arrive in the stomach as an empty cavernous rumble. She's forgotten what eating felt like. As her teeth bite down on the resistant, chewy kidney, she feels orgasmic with the tension, the expectation, chewing down slower and then pop. Her mouth fills with a sharp burst of piss and iron. She chews and savours the penny-sized lump of offal before the agonising swallow down her gullet. The kidney scrapes and scratches the whole way down. She is aware of the culinary journey this tiny piece of food is embarking on as it makes its way down her disused food shaft.

She feels her stomach muscles whimper from disuse as they push the piece of kidney down into her barren gut. It makes the ringing in her ears rise to a hell crescendo, makes the headache pound harder. She rests in shivering anxiety, waiting for that familiar wretch, that kick in the underneath the belly button that travels all the way beneath your carriage to your arsehole, the kick that pumps it all back up with that acidic green bile and a painful throat and a nose full of snot and bulging eyes and face sweat that bursts out cold and gasps for breath and a desire to scream it all out, to shout it out. and gasps for breath and a desire to scream it all out, to shout it out. But it doesn't come.

She waits. It doesn't come. Slight sparks of life dart around her skull. Breathing feels easier. Saliva drums around her tongue. She's keeping the kidney down. She feels the hunger again. Not the sickly hunger from weeks of no food, but the familiar hunger from before the earth got sick. From when she had plenty. From when she'd be so full, she'd leave the leftover buttermilk in the bowl for the cat. The hunger a woman has for a second spoon from the plate after a hard day's work. She bites into the kidney again.

This time with relish, with purpose and without fear. She chews it down, savouring the iron, the kidney again, this time with relish, with purpose and without fear. She chews it down, savouring the iron, the offal, the urine. She feels scant energy, she feels her life coming back. She feels survival. Gaping down at the disemboweled priest, she cannot find any feeling of inhumanity. The agony of injustice fights back the rules of society. Her pride has had her blinded.

There's food all around. On the roads, in the ditches, in the brambles, in the cottages. She's just never seen it as food. Food has no personality, no thoughts or aspirations. It's just meat. She becomes the worms in the earth. The fungus, the bacteria, the crows. She is nature.

After munching both of the priest's scanlan's kidneys, she takes the liver in her fist and crawls out from under the brambles towards Gonzo on the mass rock. Gonzo lies flat in a state that can't be referred to as either consciousness or unconsciousness. In the distance the fat mauve cloud cracks a groan of thunder and Jolie's contempt and jealousy for the

thick mass of elevated wet is gone. She hears the thunder as a celebration and she identifies with it. She drags herself up beside Gonzo and pushes away the pebbles that her friend has been arranging so neatly. She pulls away a piece of the priest's liver, pinches it in her fingers. It wobbles cheerfully under Gonzo's nostrils. Her eyes open. There's an anxiety in them. For all her deathly condition and her weakened brain and body, in Gonzo's eyes is concern of morality that's been triggered from far off in the back of her mind. Gonzo knows that this is human flesh. Eat it, fucking eat it or die on the rock. Gonzo is not responsive. Jolie wipes the liver piece on Gonzo's lips

and in around her yellow teeth. A tongue darts out and a puff of breath. Jolie notices the wretched fish egg stink from the breath and is enamoured by it. Feels a sense of victory that her body is registering smells again. Jolie has a determination, driven by fury and tears. She thinks back to her son Dunica, dying from the sickness and hunger in her lap. Patrick, pulling his hair in balls sickness and hunger in her lap. Patrick pulling his hair in balls and hysterics in the corner. Jolie offers the liver to Gonzo's lips. Gonzo chews. Jolie

uses her new strength to wrap her arms around her friend. She gently sits her up. Pulling the fibre in Gonzo's body won't have the strength to pull the liver down, and that assistance of gravity is required. Jolie has Gonzo in a hug. Her head is resting on her shoulder. Behind Gonzo in the distance is the furious bastard of a cloud, roaring out thunderclaps and letting out flashes of activity in its fat folds. The cloud is Jolie's brain, taking nutrients and vitamins and energy, flashing activity and electrodes sending power to the muscles. She can feel the activity in Gonzo, can feel the liver working down her esophagus and producing a resonant rumble that she experiences

empathically in her own chest. The liver is animating Gonzo. They both rest on the mass rock. The cloud has spread out, gone from black violent purple to that cynical Irish grey. It rains down on top of them. The freezing rain is a welcome sensation on the skin of the two women who've just got their energy back. They feel it dance on their bare toes and tickle down their cheeks to their chins. Gonzo sucks rain from her lips to wash down the liver. Her eyes stare at nothing, pupils like a stagnant pond. The flesh taste is carving a future trauma into her mind. They both get to their feet and make work on the rest of the priest's scanlon, eating with fervour each of his lungs.

The rain washes out the blood from his body and pools into the open hole of his belly. Jo Lee reaches into the blood water and tugs out the heart, places it in the leather satchel for later. Gonzo watches on, her teeth gritted together, her wild tangle of curls flat

and wet against her forehead. Have you no respect at all for that man? Would you not leave the heart in his chest? What use or difference is a heart or liver or a kidney to the dead? We'll both see fucking hell for this day. We're living in hell, Gonzo. This is hell. The only heaven I see here is the maggots, getting fat off the priest if we'd have left him. You had this planned, didn't you? You'd no intention of coming up here for a bounty of parsnips. You knew he'd be fresh from the cold weather.

If I had it planned, then I wasn't aware of it. But some force guided me, brought me around to my senses. While I was dying with humanity, with pride, fuck that shit. I'm out here surviving. Look at you, standing up straight with a sparkle in your eye. The second you're back around to your senses, you're throwing guilt at me. Gonzo backs down. Jolie stands tall, her skeletal hands enveloped like a parcel, tell tales of her past life, breaking horses by the lock,

jocking wild fillies, shoving ropes in their mouths, tugging a tameness out of them until their lips bled and her hands burned. Fine money at the market for a tamed horse. Tough fucker as Jolie. She looks down toward the sparkle of the bine, a quarter mile away, and both women bend down the hillside, erect with bellies full of priest.

The sky has darkened to a curtain. The road near the river is a carved out mud pat. Every dandelion, thistle or tree bud has been stripped by the starving. They spot a gang of mudlarkers crawling on the silt shore, up to their oscars in stink sludge. The air smells like eggs. It is the Dennehy crew, their numbers diminishing by the week. Paddy Dennehy once made a fine living from mudlarking, crawling through river sludge with his brothers, retrieving bottles, vases or scrap metal from the ships that made it up the Bine. If they were lucky, they'd come across a Bellarmine jug

a ceramic vessel of odd shape given to natives to navvies for rum rations with carved out effigies of wild woodmen overgrown with hair fluttering around forests like animals the jug thrown overboard by a drunk scut

whose sea legs give him a blast of anxiety when he caught a glimpse of coast for the first time in six months. Annie Jai, Paddy, calls Joe Lee. Paddy Dennehy's white eyes look out from a body covered entirely in thick black mud. There is no verbal response out of Paddy. The hunger has him ready to go. Paddy is searching for mussels on the shore to no avail. The river life in the Bine has disappeared over the

past six months. When a man dies in his cottage, leaving behind a horse or an ass, the starving animal instinctually travels towards water. Hundreds of ownerless horses and asses have gone to the Bine to die on the shore since the hunger began last year. Their decomposed bodies fill the current with a putrefied effluent, poisoning every parched eel or mussel for miles downriver and putting the thirst on Navin Town. Give him the heart, Joe, says Gonzo. Tell him it belongs to a sheep. Look at the state

of the poor cunt. Jolie obliges. She reaches inside the leather satchel and removes the priest's heart. The black mud dangle of Paddy's face cracks a white smile that looks like a half moon on a June night. He carefully places the heart in the crusting pocket of his tunic, in among the mud, as though he won't eat the heart in the presence of another for fear of having to share. Paddy then hands a bellarmine jug to the women. We'll take that into Navin Town and sell it to a sailor who's lost his, says Gonzo. We can't go back into town, says Jolie.

They'll see the life in us. They'll think we've been robbing food from a landlord. What if we crawl says Gonzo. I'm not getting back down on my knees. We have to continue what we started. Twenty minutes away down the fields by Gorman Lock is a collection of abandoned cottages. The two women venture down to rest their heads for the night. When they get there, the familiar signs of death are present. Disused milk churns, scraps of fabric in the muck that probably had bones underneath. They push open a door to a barren space. The tin roof will keep them dry, but the open window lets in the cold.

I'm feeling the hunger again, Jolie. Where will we find something fresh? There's nothing around here, Gonzo. We might have to travel as far as Drogheda. Anyone who was here is long gone. Their remains would only make us worse. A silence comes upon them. Their hopes dashed. The priest was a lucky find. Anyone alive is going to be congregating near the towns in hope of soup. The towns are a hostile place, for two bures with a look of satiation on them. As pitch darkness wipes over the room, a small blast of yellow light becomes apparent in the distance. A cottage above and near his hill has a distant hint of a candle in the window.

The pair leave the abandoned hut and venture up towards the light. As they draw closer they slow down. Their pace so as not to spook the inhabitants inside. Jolie creeps up to the gable window to take a look inside.

Sitting around a single candle for warmth is an elderly woman. Not long for the world by the looks of her but clearly in ownership of some type of food if she's the only one left. I think that's Ida O'Donovan the cooper's wife says Jolie. Hasn't she sons says Gonzo. From the emptiness of the joe lee can tell that ita has sold every possession she owned from her husband's tools to the kitchen table and the cooking pot these are all the signs of a woman whose sons have been given the money to leave the country she's alone gonzo has the rumble in her tummy. Her previous morality has drifted away,

and the urge to survive has overcome her. What'll we do? Should we wait for the hunger to take her? Lamp her frame all shivers. She has no hope. We could go back to that hut for a day or two and wait. Then come back up when she's dead. If she can light a candle, we could light a fire,

and then on the hearth and roast her. An old one could hold out for a week, Gonzo. Look at the eyes on her. Every wrinkle on her face is a past bitterness. She'd be stubborn. She could last longer than us. You'll have to go in and kill her. I'll have to kill her.

Why would I have to do it, Joe? Because I ripped open the priest and saved your galling life and you embarrassed me down by the mudlarkers putting me on the spot like that forcing me to trade the heart for a fucking ceramic jug you're the reason we've the hunger darting back on us Gonzo creeps off like a

bowled cat towards the door of the hut while Jolie bowsies outside the window. Jolie notices a small brass box under the old one's chair. Gonzo has the adrenal bulging veins of someone who's about to murder. Jolie worries that Gonzo's thumping heart might send a rush of blood to her head and that would knock her unconscious and alert Ida O'Donovan. With a gallant foot, Gonzo buckles through the door bolt and has the old one on the ground an instance. She kneels over the woman's chest and dashes her head against the hearth several

times over. Overcome with the famish, Ida's limp skull pulls blood around the honest slabs and Gonzo bends down to suck it off the ground. Her mouth is tingling from the memory of the priest's liver earlier that day. She's gone greedy. While Gonzo is contorted on top of the woman, Jolie appears behind her, taking the priest's buckle that she stashed in the satchel with the heart. She pounds it into the back of Gonzo's neck juttering and staggering it into the cord of her spine killing her in seconds like the way you'd kill a crab.

Now Jolie paces back and forth with a loathing dread across her. She reaches for the brass box under Ida's chair. When she opens it up there are metal kinds inside. Either the old one's sons are still around or they died before she could give them the money to leave. Jolie takes the buckle to both of the bodies and removes the soft organs. She teases a vulgar

kidney over the flame of the wax candle that the old one has huddled over for a month. The forgotten smell of cooked meat floods her nostrils and translates into her mind as hopes and dreams. She feeds herself good. She fills her belly until a sleep falls over her. Cornflower morning light excuses itself into the cottage that honks of iron from the cooked blood the candle is extinguished Jolie Phoenix is up with a strength in her legs that she hasn't felt in months, with the strength

comes a guilt, she refuses to let her eyes hit the floor a dull sickness maroons her torso, followed by a fear that the guilt will make her puke up all the fullness in her tummy. She leaves the cottage, with a refusal to look back or think about what has happened. She thinks back to her son Donica, with his bowled smile and curious eyes and fidgety hands. Patrick with his fine shoulders and unapologetic laugh

that would howl across a valley. Whenever one of the cats did something gas. His deathly face and sickened posture. Do not intrude on her memory this time. She has the strength in her. To push those thoughts back. To remember them in life. And not in death.

She heads south below the bine. Across the heather dells. Through the mud. The sky has cleared from the day before and a blue frost is back. She passes a ragged donkey with a dumb stare and protruding ribs, heading for water to die. Upon reaching the glen-cool bog, she comes across the triangular-shaped rock that leads to her old holding. The tiny hut where she lived a happy life comes towards her from the distance. She carefully walks up the yard of the farm.

Nothing lies where it was the day she left. Her horse reins are gone, taken by scavengers. The butter turn gone too. Only the stone hut without a door is as she remembers it. Vinegar Dread climbs up from her chest to her forehead and tingles down to the end of her limbs. Her breaths are large and laboured with the terror of seeing the remains

of her son and husband. There they are as she left them. Patrick's rags and pressed against the floor. His skeleton and the brown skin taut across the bones like a boughron. His mouth wide open. She carefully pushes over the wicker basket to see the collection of bones and fabric that had been her little son. The body she and Patrick refused to acknowledge. Such was the distraction

of their sickness. Going out to the bog and the side of the gable she gathers armfuls of dry heather from under logs and places them in the heart of the fire. On the mantelpiece she finds the naps of flint she had used to light many a fire to keep her family warm. With purpose she cracks them together and bright sparks flicker onto the dried matter a flame engulfs the fireplace she carefully collects the remains of her son and husband and burns them down to dust

the funerary respect she affords the remains brings about an internal queasiness she wonders why these remains are people but the priest, Gonzo and Ida O'Donovan were just food she wonders why these remains are people but the priest, Gonzo and Ida O'Donovan were just food she wonders if she can ever live among other people again when the fire is burnt out

she takes the Bellarmine jug that Paddy Dennehy's mudlarkers traded her for the heart she wipes it clean it is a tan ceramic with a custard glass. Its raised edges depict a bearded man with hair all over his body, a mad savage of the woods. With a careful hand, she flows her family's ashes from her palm into the jug. Jo Lee screws it closed. She pats the old one's money in the satchel she's taking the ashes on a ship

okay thank you very much that was Joe Lee yeah a bit of a fucking dark one there actually having done a podcast there around climate change and hope and purpose and climate anxiety

that's speculative fiction right I don't know when it is it's either during the famine or it's either in 200 years time but there you go I hope you enjoyed it

I don't think I've ever read out a third person story before go I hope you enjoyed it I don't think I've ever read out a third person story before so I hope it was easy to follow and I did I get distracted by some

there was a few Spanish children there's some very aggressive birds doing a bit of continental continental fucking chirping here

how long was that I can't even see it because the sun's after moving around to point at me probably long yeah Jesus look this was a fucking ramble in a park because I didn't have notes and I went on many many a tangent one of the things I said at the start

that I wanted to get back to I was talking about cognitive dissonance and emotion and the importance of we tend to we tend to respond to emotion rather than we do logic and reason and facts and this is one of the issues around climate anxiety and climate change the vast majority of people are don't give a fuck about the facts because cognitive dissonance is creeping in, but emotion does work, and I was comparing it back to World War II. When you've got the Nazis, when you've got a group of people saying, we want to kill you and fuck up your way of life, we all very easily change everything about our existence to try and fight it and not allow it to happen so we need something like that for climate change so there's an angry part of me

that started to shame fucking climate deniers online especially the older ones baby boomers and what I say to them is if I see them complaining about fucking protesters

or saying that climate change is a hoax I just say to them is, if I see them complaining about fucking protesters or saying that climate change is a hoax, I just say to them when the Nazis were invading, you were hiding in your fucking house and you weren't fighting. You coward. And I reframe their refusal to acknowledge climate change

and their ignorance as a type of unpatriotic cowardice. You reframe the climate threat as the emotional threat of an invading fucking army and you say something to them. If it was the Nazis you would have been hiding and all of a sudden it works. I hate having to stoop to that because it's not honest. It's essentially what it is is it's propaganda i'm using tools of propaganda at that very moment propaganda is is when you appeal to emotion instead of logic and rationality that's that's why propaganda fucking works bringing it back to edward bernays the inventor of of uh consumerism freud's fucking grandson or our nephew

whatever the fuck he was, straight up, propaganda before the Nazis was not a negative word, and he used propaganda to advertise. So I'm starting to use emotion to shame climate change deniers by simply saying, if this was the Nazis, you'd be hiding. Your inaction and refusal to acknowledge the clear messages from science is cowardice. And you are not fighting the enemy. And that seems to get through to a lot of people. It seems to work when I frame it in that way.

Or what I've started saying to, you know, Irish people. Older ones again in particular. But like, they're complaining about, oh, these fucking protesters up in Dublin, Extinction Rebellion, time wasters, they don't have jobs, standing in the middle of the street.

I say to them, when the 1916 rebellion happened, there were people in the streets roaring abuse and hurling fucking food and rotten tomatoes at the 1916 rebels who were trying to fight for the freedom of Ireland under British oppression and the vast majority of people

in Dublin begrudged them they hated the rebels for their act of great inconvenience of taking over Dublin for the day to have a fucking bloody war of conflict. To try and fight the Brits. The thing with 1916.

It wasn't about winning a war. 1916 was about creating a spectacle. So large it couldn't be ignored. An inconvenience so large it couldn't be ignored. And it fucking worked. And I do compare the Extinction Rebels. To the 1916 Rebels. Because they're not laying down their lives, they're not doing

it with guns and bombs, but they're creating a gigantic spectacle of inconvenience that must not be ignored, so I say to these people if you were around in 1916 you'd be throwing fucking rotten tomatoes at James Connolly's crippled body as the Brits pulled it

out of the GPO, you'd be one of the begrudgers in the crowd throwing fucking throwing rotten apples at Michael Collins and when you frame it like that it gets their attention it's why a few weeks

ago I had the podcast Chuckie Garland trying to reframe climate action in an anti-colonial sense and yeah I'm using the our lawn, trying to reframe climate action in an anti-colonial sense and yeah I'm using the emotional logic of propaganda to get through to certain people

because it's just not good enough anymore if you won't listen to scientists if you won't look at evidence what else can you do? you're a person of emotion then your cognitive dissonance is too strong so I need to draw attention

I need to get your attention through your world view and when you say to them you'd have hidden and cowardice at the Nazis or you'd have spat on Padraig Pierce or James Connolly, that gets fucking attention. And you have their attention then.

And, I don't know, it might work. I don't know. I don't know how comfortable I am with it, but maybe there's better ways to appeal to emotion. Logic and facts doesn't appear to be working on the vast majority of people you need the emotional thing to get the widespread climate action

and awareness and concern that's needed alright, God bless for anyone that joined late on this podcast yes, I'm in Spain yes, I know that flying to Spain is not great on the old carbon footprint, but what I do is I calculate the carbon, and I donate money to someone that fucking plants

trees based on my carbon emission, alright, this anti-climate change bit of... I notice you are caring about the climate, however... Certain aspects of your life are not environmental. Yeah, I know, Donald. Sorry, but... You know, it's like that meme. It's like, oh, I see you want to improve society somehow yet you participate in society yeah i i can't live my life with a zero net carbon footprint it's not fucking possible it's not possible it's not possible it's even even if i was to

decide to turn into buddha and sit against a tree and meditate with no food until I fucking die right even if I decide I'm gonna sit against a tree and just meditate and then die and consume no food

a truck's gonna have to come along and fucking drag my corpse away and then a JCB's gonna have to come along and fucking drag my corpse away. And then a JCB's going to have to dig my grave. So it is not possible right now to be 100% carbon neutral. And just because certain aspects of how I live my life are not environmentally friendly does not mean that I or you don't have to take action or call other people out because that's another thing you wear a plastic bag on your head

yes I do it's a repurposed plastic bag Donald, do you know what I mean alright I'll leave you go, I'd say this was very long was it I'll leave you go go I hope you enjoyed that I hope you had a nice ASMR podcast hug this might be one that you listened to over a couple of days I hope I didn't freak anyone out

I hope I was positive I hope my message was one of action and positivity and meaning rather than despair fuck climate despairists to mind them they're only agents they're up there with the deniers. Yart.

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