The Blindboy Podcast - A house built by ghosts and a car made of hash.

Episode Date: April 21, 2021

A house built by ghosts and a car made of hash. I answer yere questions by trying to think of the most interesting facts I know. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ja bless you blistering Christies. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. If you're a brand new listener, maybe consider going back and listening to some earlier podcasts to establish yourself with the lore of this podcast. Plus there's tons of episodes. There's almost 200 episodes on many varied topics. And I try and make each podcast in such a way that. It doesn't date. They're not. They're not.

Some bits are specifically rooted in the time that the podcast is made. But in general I try and make a podcast that can be listened at any point. I often recommend people to go back to the start. And listen to the podcast from the start. To fully establish yourself. If you're a regular listener. You know the crack. And what's the crack. so the last two podcasts were rather deep dive hot take historical podcasts about

history and about art and i had i had a number of conflicting hot takes for this weeks podcast I had a couple of potential hot takes but they're not ready yet they're still boiling away on the pot and I don't like getting into a hot take until I've got a decent thesis formed I need to have a story to tell I need to go into some research and find a story

for the hot take so I don't have that that don't have that right now so this week what i'm gonna do is i went to instagram and asked you for some questions so i'm gonna do a question answering podcast which traditionally as you know if when i do a question answering fucking podcast i always end up answering only one question, and promising you that I'm going to answer more questions, I'm really going to try this week to answer multiple questions, okay, and I got asked hundreds of questions, absolutely hundreds,

so I'm going to try and keep the questions around things to do with interesting facts, that's what I'm going to do this week i'm going to answer any questions whereby the answer might be an interesting fact let's see if we can do that so scott asks can you speak about glasgow celtic football club an irish institution in scotland that is a reflection of irish immigration to sc. Well, Scott, I know fucking nothing about football or soccer or whatever you want to call it. I tell you what I do know. I generally call it soccer because in Ireland we reserve the word football

for Gaelic football, so I tend to call it soccer, even though that pisses some people off. But I know nothing about soccer. Now, I'm not saying I wouldn't do a podcast about Glasgow Celtic at some point because I am interested in I'm interested in how it's something that was formed by the Irish diaspora in Glasgow I find that very interesting and the history of sectarianism around it stuff like that so that's something I might look into and do a podcast about in future. But off the top of my head when I saw that question.

Can I speak about Glasgow Celtic? Normally I'd kind of look past a question like that. Because I don't know nothing about sports. But when I saw it. I tell you what came into my head. so I'm gonna tell you a story now, which has fucking nothing to do with soccer, but it is related to Glasgow Celtic, even though none of this conversation is gonna be about sport, a few years ago, I think I'd have been 20, A few years ago, I think I'd have been 20.

And this would have been when I would have had particularly bad... I would have been in the middle of particularly bad mental health issues. Very, very bad depression, anxiety and agoraphobia. Which meant my anxiety had gotten to the point where I couldn't really leave my house. It was incredibly difficult to leave my house and not get a panic attack. And I would have been about 20, and I was going to weekly counselling in college. And through counselling, I was working on my anxiety and my agoraphobia. So I wasn't going to, if I went to a pub or a nightclub there would have been a serious risk of a panic attack okay so I simply wasn't going to these

places but now that's a that's a short term that's a short term uh reaction to anxiety but it's certainly not another way to have a happy life um if you're experiencing anxiety and agoraphobia and you find a little comfort zone in your room or whatever it can work in the short term but you're effectively living the life of a mentally unhealthy person so i was living the life of a mentally unhealthy person but i was in counseling trying to get better and i was was in counseling trying to get better. And I was using cognitive behavioral therapy to get better, which meant I was addressing the fact that if I go to a nightclub or a pub or a supermarket and get a panic attack, the panic attack isn't being caused by being in these places it's simply being triggered by them so the root cause of the panic attack is something I have to find within myself it's uh for me it was like self

esteem issues and I was afraid of being an adult I was 19 20 I was fucking terrified of being an adult and being responsible I didn't think myself I didn't think I was capable of it my self esteem was too low so when I found myself in a situation like a pub or a nightclub because I'm 19, 20 I'm only allowed in there like since I was 18 that was very triggering for me because these are adult spaces and I don't feel

like an adult and it manifested as panic attacks same with supermarkets because supermarkets meant autonomy what are you doing in the supermarket on your own you're purchasing food to provide for yourself this was terrifying to me so i'd get panic attacks so i was discovering all this through psychotherapy and counseling and then at a certain point in my therapy my counselor said to me now you have all this stuff you're

learning about yourself and you're learning about your anxiety you now have to put this into practice you have to actively change your behavior which meant you have to have a think about going to the nightclub on friday if you're avoiding the nightclub because you might get a panic attack then the only way to truly move on and to overcome anxiety is to gradually expose yourself to the nightclub so I did this it was a Friday night and it would have been the the late 2000s and my buddies were going into the nightclub and I said fuck it I'm going to go in and it was terrifying it was fucking terrifying but I'd gotten to a point in therapy

where I'm like I need to do this tonight I'm going to go to the fucking nightclub and if I experience anxiety so what I'm going to deal with it there and then what's the worst that can happen that's what I used to say to myself over and over again when I was testing my boundaries if I do go to the nightclub and I

do have a panic attack what's the worst that can happen and the worst that can happen is that I have a panic attack in the nightclub and then I leave so that's what I'd say to myself so I went to the nightclub now back in those days people went to the nightclub. Now, back in those days, people went to the nightclub in Limerick at about 7pm. Now, I know that sounds mad. This business of pre-drinking, this business of drinking cans in an apartment or someone's house

and then going to the nightclub at 11 o'clock, that only started after the recession that started around 2013 I remember it starting but before the recession during the Celtic Tiger people had money and things were cheaper so the average student

and also rent was a hell of a lot cheaper so students could work maybe one night a week and they had enough money to go to the club at seven o'clock on a fucking friday or a saturday and capitalism was so rampant during the celtic tiger if you went to the nightclub at seven or eight chances are you were getting free drinks some company was doing a promo and they were handing out free shots of Jagermeister so why is the timing of this relevant so I've got crippling

anxiety and I decide I'm going to the nightclub, it's early, it's bright the nightclub was called Trinity Rooms we had three massive nightclubs in Limerick before the fucking before the economic crash we had three absolutely huge

like I'm talking on a Saturday night they might fly in dead mouse to do a gig that's how much money was around Ireland during the Celtic Tiger in the nightclub scene it was a different world so

I was in the courtyard of this place at 7pm, absolutely terrified. I won't say it was enjoyable, it wasn't enjoyable. I was miles outside of my comfort zone. I had agoraphobia. I really didn't want to be in the fucking nightclub. There was people all around me. I was frozen with fear, terrified that I was going to get a panic attack I couldn't relax I

wasn't talking to anyone I was just simply being in the nightclub and that's all I expected of myself I'm here it's 7 p.m I'm in a crowded area my worst fear of if I get a panic attack it's going to be really difficult to escape because there's lots of people here and I was just sitting with it I was sitting with it I wasn't drinking because alcohol doesn't help that situation I would have been probably drinking free my waddy from the bar because I'd literally no money um I wouldn't have had my I wouldn't have had a support group I'd have been there with my friends but I wouldn't have said to them I get panic attacks when I go to nightclubs because back then

the stigma around mental health it was too extreme if I'd have said to someone I'm going to a counsellor and I'm getting panic attacks people there was no conversation around mental health

people would have just assumed oh this person is mental you're mentally ill and you need oh this person is mental this you're mentally ill and you need to be in a mental home you're mental you need to be in a straight jacket that was the attitude then there was no conversation people were still using terms like mental breakdown or his nerves are at him so i wasn't saying to my friends what's the crack lads i've got severe anxiety and i can't be in this nightclub would you mind me not a chance i had to keep it secret unfortunately back then things have

changed now thank fuck now now a positive of that was i had ready access to counseling services in college for free and there was no fucking queues to get to the counselor's office they were begging people to come nobody was going to the councillor's office because there was no conversation around mental health people were suffering in silence and to go to the to the councillor's office i had to hide like i had to pretend i was going somewhere else that the stigma and shame around it would have been too big you'd been seen as as uh like i said mentally ill and to be avoided now because people are a bit more comfortable with going to a counsellor or speaking about mental health issues now there's huge queues to access counselling in colleges and I don't think they've increased the services back in when I was in

college there was two counsellors and that was for the art college and for LIT which is another huge institution so that's two counsellors for maybe 8,000 students and I don't think it's changed much now I'm not sure but I don't think it's changed much now but the demand has gone up the demand has gone right up and there's queues but anyway I was gradually exposing myself to intense social situations while having extreme anxiety and agoraphobia and it was not pleasant but it was something I really really needed to do but because it was early on in the night the music that was being played it wasn't necessarily dance music it was laid-back hip-hop and rap music because

nobody's drunk people are talking so it's like background groovy music. Now you know me. I fucking adore music. Music is intrinsic to who I am as a human being. So what I was doing. Like internally. What my inner voice was saying. I need to leave.

I need to leave. This is terrifying. I'm surrounded by people. I need to leave. I'm going to have a panic attack. That was my internal feeling. But what I was saying to myself was, no, stick with it. Stick with the fear. So what if you have a panic attack? What's the worst that's going to happen? And I wasn't speaking to people, but what I was doing was listening to the music because the music was kind of keeping me safe like once I listened to the music it would calm me a little bit and I wouldn't go over the edge into panic

attack country so I'm listening away to the hip-hop I love rapping hip-hop so I know the vast majority of the tunes that are being played and I'm just listening with one ear and managing my anxiety and then one song comes on and it's a rap song but I've never fucking heard it before and then when I listen to this song I basically I forget that I have anxiety I forget that I'm in a nightclub I'm now just a functional human being in a space with a few hundred people listening to music. And I'm taken out of my body and all I care about is

what the fuck is that song and how do I find out what that song is? Because I know that, I'm like, this is a rap song but it sounds like it's from the 60s or 70s this is blowing my fucking mind I have to find out what it is I'll play the actual song now

I'll play you a snippet of the song that the DJ was playing at that moment you will not be able to stay home brother you will not be able to stay home, brother. You will not be able to plug in, turn on, and cop out. You will not be able to lose yourself on stag and skip out for beer during commercials because the revolution will not be televised. The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox in four parts Without commercial interruptions The revolution will not show you pictures Of Nixon blowing a bugle So I'm there in the nightclub like Fuck me, what is this tune? And I've completely forgotten about my anxiety I'm not feeling any of this I'm just transfixed by this music

And now I'm making a beeline for the DJ booth to find out the name of this track and I remember the only little, I had healthy anxiety, the only little anxiety I had which was healthy anxiety was I was worried fuck it, what if the DJ

is one of these DJs who don't tell people what their tunes are because they're so rare because I'd never heard this track and I was worried about that but that's healthy anxiety that's normal there's a reason for that so I went up to the DJ and I'm like what the fuck is this tune what is this song and then luckily the DJ was also a total music nerd and he was thrilled that someone had come up and asked him what the song was because he was there seven o'clock doing a hip-hop a kind of a laid-back hip-hop set that people aren't dancing to it's just there in the background and he himself wanted to insert this tune from the

70s in and see if anyone noticed because this is from the 70s and he's playing 90s hip-hop so your man is dead fucking thrilled and he's like that he's called gil scott heron he he's one of the inventors of rap music that song is from 1971 he was doing rap music 20 years before rap and then i'm like holy fuck what's the deal with him what's the what what you say his name is Gil Scott Heron now I'm I'm like talking to the fucking DJ I've just walked through the crowd because of the the beautiful healing power of music to make me forget about the mental health issues I was having at the time and now I'm being a functional fucking human and all I care about at that point then is the anxiety's gone and I want to I want to go home now but I don't want to go home for the wrong reason I don't want to go home because I'm scared

of being in the nightclub I want to go home and find that song and listen to it as much as I possibly can because now the song's over so I got a pen from the bar because there's no fucking smartphones I would have had a Nokia 3210 but our brains didn't work like that back then like I wouldn't have thought with a Nokia 32 then before smartphones I wouldn't have thought of like texting the name of the song to myself or putting it in my phone as a contact we didn't think like that with technology yet so I got a

pen from the bar and I wrote on my hand Gil Scott Heron the revolution will not be televised and all I gave a fuck about was this thing not rubbing off my hand and i stayed in the pub or the nightclub and i went home early because i wasn't drinking i went home at about 10 and i like i wasn't gonna stay out for a night because this for me was an exercise

around exposing myself to a public situation trying to get over my anxiety and that song helped me through it because all i give a fuck about was you're gonna go home now at 10 you're gonna say goodbye to people and you're gonna get onto the computer you're gonna go onto limeware and you're gonna find the song the revolution will not be televised by gil scott heron and you're gonna try and read about Gil Scott Heron. And find out. Why was this fucker making rap music. Long before rap music was a thing.

Who is this fella? So when I do get home. I found the song on LimeWare. I probably had to wait three days to download it. And then I went on to Wikipedia. And I looked up Gil Scott Heron. And it's like yeah. Gil Scott Heron, an early funk musician who was messing with poetry, who laid the foundations for what rap music would become way before rap music.

And it turns out Gil Scott Heron's father, who was from Jamaica, was the first ever black player to play for Glasgow Celtic in 1951. And I remember just going, wow, fuck me, what a legend. He invented rap before rap and his dad was the first black player to play for fucking Glasgow Celtic over in Scotland. What the fuck is that about? So Scott, to answer your question, can I speak about Glasgow Celtic? That's immediately what came into my head.

When you said Glasgow Celtic, I thought about how that Gil Scott Heron song and the wonderful, beautiful, healing power of music and the importance of that song in helping me get over my anxiety and that night that I went to the nightclub and heard that song for the first time and protected my hand so that the biro didn't rub off or that I didn't forget his name because there's no Shazam back then

you couldn't go onto Spotify on your fucking phone if you heard a song once if you fucking forgot that song you'll never hear it again for the rest of your life this was like someone handing me a very precious jewel that i had to mind you know it was a different time the scarcity of culture and music was different so i had to hold on to this this fucking song on my hand and and my only goal for that night was no longer about sitting with my anxiety it was about i'm staying here till 10, because I made that promise to myself, and I'm going home, and I'm listening to that song, and it felt fucking

amazing, and I felt that sense of, a sense of achievement, I've done what I thought I couldn't do two weeks ago, I went to the nightclub, it was anxiety inducing, but I didn't have a panic attack, It was anxiety-inducing, but it didn't have a panic attack. And I'll tell you what else it did to me. If I'd have stayed in my room that night, if I'd have given in to the anxiety and the fear and stayed in my fucking room, I wouldn't have gone out and heard a life-changing piece of music. And that, for me, that's a life-changing piece of music.

For someone who's in their bedroom. Learning how to produce hip hop. Is what I was doing at the time. Listening to rap music. And then the privilege. Of someone showing you. Rap music 10 years before rap. That's one of the most important musical discoveries. I ever made in my entire life.

But like. Just to show the importance of therapy and music and how life-changing it was for me and in even that moment that incident of going to a nightclub and hearing that song and it helping me to overcome anxiety I would have been in my bedroom learning how to produce music and making we'll say the earliest Rubber Bandits tracks and there's a song I'd have made not long after I went to that nightclub called The Greyhound Shuffle

you can hear it on Spotify and The Greyhound Shuffle Greyhound Shuffle is a rap song I made it's about existential anxiety via the metaphor of a greyhound who can dance but I'm directly taking influence from that Gil Scott Heron song in the Greyhound Shuffle they sound similar and then like a year later

from that or maybe two years later when I'd fully overcome my anxiety and become a healthy mentally healthy person. With confidence. That same place. That same venue. Trinity Rooms. Where I was so terrified. I was now doing gigs there. Because.

I'd been putting tunes online. So now I'm doing gigs there. And instead of being. Terrified of being in a fucking. In that space. I'm back a year and a half or two years later performing the Greyhound Shuffle in that very space where I was

to a full audience full of people with zero anxiety doing my thing that mightn't have happened that wouldn't have happened if I hadn't have gone out that night if I hadn't have gone out that night I wouldn't have heard that song I wouldn't have made a I hadn't have gone out that night. If I hadn't have gone out that night, I wouldn't have heard that song. I wouldn't have made a song as a result of it.

It was a really transformative moment for me. It was a really transformative moment. That was the one where I tested my anxiety. And then the next time I went to the pub or the nightclub, my anxiety was reduced by 50%. And that song really helped with that and his dad was the first black player to play for glasgow celtic so that's how it ties in with glasgow celtic and then i obviously become a huge fan of all of the music at gil scott heron and you should check him out because he's an incredible fucking musician and a pioneer and way ahead of his time gil scott heron

ended up having a little renaissance in the early 2010s just before his death and i got to meet him i was gigging at electric picnic and i was backstage and i'm like holy fuck there's gil scott heron so i went up and politely said hello and i stepped in dog shit in front of him and then he died shortly afterwards completely unrelated his death is obviously not related to me meeting him and stepping in dog shit but just a nice little circle of narrative and I don't think I'd really thought of all those things until

I got asked that question about Glasgow Celtic I hadn't connected all those things together but there you go that's the synchronicity of human existence Scott Malley asks what's your favourite cocktail history story oh um well i i absolutely love cocktails i haven't drank a cocktail in quite some time now because i don't know look we're more than a year into quarantine and i love cocktails but I want to be in a bar I want to be in a bar

and have someone make and serve a cocktail and I drink it slowly in a bar making cocktails at home is nice but it's not the same it's not the same as as being in a bar and slowly drinking a cocktail my favorite origin story for a cocktail though would be there's a cocktail called Nelson's Blood which I've never drank this cocktail because the origin story

just puts me off it every time but the cocktail itself actually sounds absolutely gorgeous it's rum peach puree, cranberry juice pineapple juice and angostura bitters so that to me sounds like a a nice cocktail but nelson's blood and it's red it's it's a deep red cocktail from the cranberry juice so that's why it's it's called nelson's blood but the history of how it got the name Nelson's blood is

so there was a fella called Admiral Horatio Nelson right and he was a British naval officer around the 1800's Nelson's pillar used to be a monument in Dublin on O'Connell Street it's where the spire is right now that used to be Nelson's Pillar used to be a monument in Dublin on O'Connell Street, it's where the Spire is right now

that used to be Nelson's Pillar which was a huge column with a statue of Admiral Nelson at the top of it and in the 1960s Irish Republicans blew it up as part of the 50th anniversary of the 1916 Rising they blew it up because they were like

it's the 60s, why the fuck have we got a statue with this prick nelson in dublin that's unacceptable because he wasn't a particularly nice man what's the famous quote for him at the battle of trafalgar which was a a naval battle between britain and france i think off the coast of spain n Nelson famously said every England expects every Irish man to do his duty referring to all the Irish they brought on

board to be soldiers on the ships but anyway Admiral Nelson died at the Battle of Trafalgar died at sea and in order to preserve Admiral Nelson's body so the British Navy used to run on rum essentially. The British Navy who were doing a loaded trade with the Caribbean

via the slave trade. The British Navy used to take a lot of rum back from the Caribbean and they used to give rum rations to the soldiers or to the sailors on the ships. So when Nelson died on the ship, they put his entire body, they crumpled it up and put it into a barrel of rum so that the alcohol would preserve his body for when it got back to England so that he didn't decompose on the ship, essentially. But the cask, the barrel of rum that his body was in got mixed up with other rum casks so sailors were fucking drilling holes in the cask that his body was in and drinking the rum out of it and they didn't know that his dead body was inside this and they

were drinking dead body rum that would have most definitely had his blood in it because he would have been bleeding and the sailors drank his blood rum and that's where the cocktail Nelson's blood comes from because Horatio Nelson's actual body was in a barrel full of rum and sailors drank it.

So that's why that put me off. I can't drink the cocktail because of that, even though there's no blood in it. It's time now, I think, for an ocarina pause. Let's have the little ocarina pause so that some digitally inserted adverts can occur. On April 3rd, 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 of what? Is the most terrifying. Six, six, six. It's the mark of the devil.

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post about it on your social media suggest it to some friends that's always a great help getting new listeners to the podcast, especially outside of Ireland and the UK, is fucking fantastic. Also, I get a lot of people coming to this podcast

because they've read my books, my two books of short stories, The Gospel According to Blind Boy and Boulevard Wren, which is my most recent book that I released last year. And if you enjoyed my books leave an old review for them as well on Amazon that also helps if you enjoy the books so back to the questions

Sarah asks what was the last thing that kept you awake at night? so often at night time i love reading before bed because what i've tried to do i really try and stay off my phone before bed and i've been doing a good job at that because the phone screen lads the phone screen will keep you awake at night it's not good to be glaring into a phone screen just before sleep so I'll usually look at my my kindle which doesn't have a glary screen and I can access the internet on that I look at my kindle or I read books and sometimes I fall down information holes at night time I'll

decide that I need to look up something ridiculous and the last thing i can remember reading about that kept me awake because it was such a mad story so i was reading about this house in america right there's this house in america that was built in 1886 in san jose california and the thing is with the house it's a giant mansion now I mean fucking huge but it's the weirdest looking mansion it looks a bit like the Adams family house it's this huge old school mansion

and it's got 160 rooms 40 bedrooms it's got 10,000 windows 2 basements 2 000 doors but then it has like corridors in there that lead to absolutely nowhere and there's one corridor that and underneath it is like an eight foot drop and you fall if you fall down it you end up in the kitchen an 8 foot drop and if you fall down it you end up in the kitchen and

you're kind of like going why is there this huge fucking mansion with corridors that lead nowhere and doors that are utterly pointless and 10,000 windows like what is this fucking house why

who would build such a giant mansion that doesn't function as a house and I went looking into it and the woman so it was built by a woman called Sarah Winchester in 1886 and the name Winchester her husband was the inventor of a very famous rifle called the Winchester rifle so this was a rifle in the 1800s in America it would have been the most popular American rifle in the wild west so it would have been the ak-47 of its time. Like the AK-47 is the most ubiquitous gun in the world. Millions of people have died because of AK-47s.

Well in America in the 1800s, most people were like in the West or whatever, the Wild West, were being killed by Winchester rifles. Wild West were being killed by Winchester rifles. So Mr. Winchester died and then Mrs. Winchester, Sarah Winchester, inherited his fortune from the Winchester rifles. And then she started to get mad paranoid, right? So she started to get incredibly guilty that because her husband had invented this rifle that had killed so many people, she started to believe that she was being haunted by the ghosts of everybody who had been killed by a Winchester rifle. So she got out of Connecticut where she was living to try and escape the ghosts. And made her way to California. San Jose. And then started building this mansion.

But then she got it into her head. That all the ghosts of the people. Who had been killed by this rifle. Had followed her to California. And were living in her house. And Sarah Winchester. Became convinced that the only way. That she could prevent. The torment and haunting. By the ghosts of the she could prevent the torment and haunting

by the ghosts of the dead of the Winchester rifle would be if she lived in a house that was never not being built. So if she could live in a house that was in a consistent and continual stage of construction then she would never be haunted by a ghost

that had been killed by her husband's rifle. So that's how this house came about. It's called the Winchester Mansion. And from 1886 up until her death in 1922, there was continually workmen building on the house. And it got to a point. Where they didn't even know what they were doing. So they just put windows there for the sake of it.

Or they'd build a new wing on the house. With a corridor leading to nowhere. And big 8 foot drops underneath. Because she was just saying. I don't care. Just build, build, build. To keep the ghosts away. So that story of the Winchester house.

And it's relationship with the Winchester rifle when i read that i couldn't sleep and not it i couldn't it didn't freak me out it didn't scare me i wasn't frightened it was just such a beautiful isn't the word because i imagine life for that woman was a living hell that's she's got mental health issues and some pretty severe anxiety and possibly psychosis so that's a very sad story but it's also fucking fascinating what a fascinating story what a fascinating reason for this weird house to exist so Roy asks blind boy today is 4.20 can you speak about cannabis

and cannabis legalization I can a little bit Roy but in keeping with the theme of this week's podcast but I'm going to answer questions and also try and find an interesting fact around the question because I do have an interesting

cannabis fact that i learned recently regarding i'm a big advocate for the legalization of cannabis all right i here's the deal with cannabis in ireland cannabis is illegal it shouldn't be illegal because cannabis is illegal it means that there's only one variety of cannabis that you can buy in ireland and it's called do you want it or not and cannabis isn't regulated so the cannabis that people have to purchase illegally on the black market in ireland and in the uk as well and in other countries where it's illegal often that cannabis has incredibly high levels of THC very little CBD this has been shown to have

can have harmful effects to certain people who are predisposed to psychosis and most importantly it's like, think of it this way if alcohol was illegal we wouldn't be able to buy wine we wouldn't be able to buy wine. We wouldn't be able to buy beer. We would have one type of alcohol that was made in someone's garage and it wouldn't be safe.

And a lot of people would be dying. But because alcohol is legal, we can choose to buy a regulated product and to decide today I want wine. Tomorrow I want beer. Maybe I want whiskey we have all this choice and and can make health-based decisions around how we consume and purchase alcohol that's how things should be with cannabis we should have a fully legal market like they have in canada or some states in america where a person adult, can choose to buy cannabis based on specific effects and also to buy cannabis that is safe. And safe cannabis generally has a balance between THC and a

chemical called CBD. Because cannabis is illegal in Ireland, it means it's controlled by the black market. A lot of the gangs that control cannabis are also involved in human trafficking. They have grow houses where people are trafficked from countries like the Philippines or Vietnam. They're trafficked in illegally and have to work off their passage here in cannabis grow houses. Essentially working as slaves growing cannabis in ireland then when the guards raid the grow house it's the poor person who's trafficked here who gets given a massive sentence because they're seen as a farmer of hundreds of thousands of euros worth of weed so it doesn't work because cannabis is illegal in Ireland it's now dangerous and unethical and this is because of the law and if it was legal you would have ethical cannabis

that could be taxed that creates jobs that's regulated and that's safe like they have in Canada and if you don't want to smoke cannabis that's fine. Like they have in Canada. And if you don't want to smoke cannabis, that's fine. I'm not telling adults to smoke it. Same with drink. I wouldn't tell people to drink. It's your business. But here's the thing with cannabis.

If you're against cannabis being made legal in Ireland, you're not anti-cannabis you're anti-safe cannabis cannabis isn't going away so if you're against legalisation you're anti-safe cannabis, we need an approach to substances in this country that isn't based

on criminality, it's health based health based so legalise it tax it, use the revenue to fund addiction services and to educate people and today as i record this podcast it's 4 20 which is the american it's the the the 20th of april and 4 20 is the 20th of April in the way that Americans do dates but 420 at the time 420

at 20 minutes past 4 on the 20th of April everyone around the world traditionally sparks up a joint as part of cannabis activism and this started it started in 1971 in California

it was a bunch of high school students in California someone had given them a fucking a treasure map where there was supposed to be a crop of cannabis growing and the coordinates on the treasure map were 420 and as a result of this these 5 students decided at 420

on the fucking 20th of April they were going to smoke a joint and somehow this exploded and now all the world over at that time everyone smokes a joint for cannabis legalisation in all the countries where it's illegal so yes I'm for the legalisation of cannabis

we don't even need a referendum for it in Ireland the government could legalize cannabis tomorrow it just requires the political will to do it I do think cannabis is going to become legal in Ireland at some point maybe in the next 10 years how do I think that's going to happen well the government certainly aren't going to just legalize it tomorrow because I know the Irish government and they don't like to do things that show initiative or creativity or courage and doing something like that would be too in line with those values which they don't seem to lean towards it'll probably work like this so i think there's like 16 states in america have now fully legalized cannabis for recreational use

canada has fully legalized cannabis for recreational use pretty soon cannabis will become legal in america at the federal level. We're seeing this happening already, where they're trying to push a bill forward that would federally legalize cannabis, right? Once cannabis becomes federally legal in America, then you will start to see the emergence of giant cannabis corporations, kind of like tobacco.

There's big cannabis companies in America at the moment, but they're at a state or interstate level. When it gets federally legalized, you'll get your giant cannabis company, the McDonald's of cannabis. That's going to happen. When the McDonald's of cannabis becomes a thing, sometime over the next five or ten years,

they will want to not pay any tax, like the tech companies so mcdonald's of cannabis is gonna want to come to ireland so they can launder their money and not pay tax because that's what american corporations do in ireland they come here to avail of our 12 corporation tax but end up paying less than one percent that's what facebook do that's what google do that's what they all do so some giant mcdonald's of cannabis is gonna come to the irish government and say we want to set up a corporate headquarters in dublin and we'll provide a couple of hundred jobs and we don't want to pay any tax at all and the irish government will say brilliant we love that that's our favorite thing to do but then the cannabis company will say you're gonna have to legalize cannabis though

if we are to have our corporate headquarters in Dublin and then the Irish government will say okay and that's how cannabis is going to get legalized in Ireland that's my prediction that's my very cynical prediction of how it's going to happen. So what's my cannabis fact that I'd like to talk about? Well, I will at some point do an entire cannabis podcast. I think I'd like to have an expert on. There's someone I've been speaking to who is an expert on prohibition. Because the history of cannabis prohibition is really, really fucking interesting. So I'd like to chat with an expert about it.

I'll do that down the line. But right now, I found out something recently that's really, really interesting. So I'm going to start by talking about Henry Ford and Henry Ford's very progressive use of cannabis and hemp in the early 20th century. First of all, Henry Ford was a bollocks. Henry Ford is the inventor of Ford motorcars. He invented the Ford Model T and Ford cars today. It's the Ford company. So Henry Ford was a pioneer of the automobile.

The Ford Model T was the first car that was mass produced on a production line. Because that was Ford's thing. He was all about getting as many cars out there as possible using these modern techniques of um conveyor belt production but henry ford was an incredible racist like a real fucking racist and a massive anti-semite like i could even do a podcast that traces the roots of conspiracy theories today like q anon right back to fucking henry ford like there's this there was this fake manuscript called the protocols of the elders of zion it was made in russia and it was like a fake pamphlet that was supposed to be...

So it was fake news in the late 18th century. It was like a fake news propaganda document that was made in Russia. And it supposedly revealed that the secret plan of the Jewish people, that the Jewish people were this secret... They were plotting this secret plan to enslave all of humanity and that they're in league with the devil and that they eat babies and all this horrible shit and today's conspiracy theorists that conspiracy theories that are very anti-semitic like q anon they have their roots in this protocols of the elders of of Zion fake news thing that came from Russia.

Henry Ford was the person who really popularised this. He took the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, presented it as truth, and funded it being printed and shit like that. He used to always speak about it. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was also used by Adolf Hitler. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was also used by Adolf Hitler. Hitler used it as evidence that the Jews needed to be exterminated because he said, here's the evidence, lads. They want to take over the world.

They're the reason for all the bad things in the world. Let's exterminate them. Like, Hitler quoted Henry Ford in Mein Kampf, in his book. Hitler really, really admired Henry Ford. He had a giant... This is how much of a prick Henry Ford was. Henry Ford was such a prick that in 1938, Hitler, before World War II, Hitler had a life-size portrait of Henry Ford in his office in Munich that he would keep up there for inspiration.

So Hitler actively looked towards Henry Ford as an inspiration of what he should become. Like the Nazis awarded him the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, which is the highest award that the Nazis could give to a non-German and even in the Nuremberg trials after everything came out about the concentration camps some of the like SS officers some of the people who were the brains behind the Holocaust said that a book that Henry Ford wrote

he wrote a book called the International Jew that's what made them anti-semitic so people don't speak enough about that about Ford like I did I've done podcasts before on companies that exist today that have their roots in the Nazis and there's quite a lot like Fanta like I did a podcast on Fanta Fanta was made by Coca-Cola for the Nazis. That's a fact. Hugo Boss made all the Nazis uniforms.

NASA. NASA the American space agency that landed on the moon. NASA was founded because the Americans took like a hundred and twenty Nazi scientists gave them new names and put them in America

the Americans got to the moon on Nazi technology, these are all facts, so I had to mention these things about Henry Ford so Henry Ford was a massive anti-Semite and a racist, but he had an invention in the early 20th century and had it

have gone ahead, we would probably be living in in a society whereby the climate isn't collapsing the way it is and it's kind of depressing it this is a fact I learned that's kind of depressing um so the thing with Henry Ford is that he was obsessed with efficiency he's the inventor of the production line about how to efficiently make loads and loads of the modern production line comes from Henry Ford Henry Ford's ultimate goal with the automobile because he was able to see look the automobile that the car is going to change the world what he wanted to do from the start was he was aware that okay these cars that i'm making

are made out of steel and steel is a resource that you get from the ground and there's only so much of it there's only so much metal right so it might run out and it's expensive same with this petrol shit we're using it's coming out of the ground there's only so much so henry ford's ultimate goal was to create a car that could be grown in the ground a car that's made entirely of something that could be grown out of the ground a plant and that plant was cannabis it was hemp and it was also interestingly this is a contributing factor to why cannabis became illegal in america it's not the only factor but it's one of them so around the around 1915 henry ford became obsessed with replacing petrol petrol was a kind of a new thing

he became obsessed with replacing petrol with something you could grow out of the ground and the obvious choice was hemp seed the seeds of cannabis because it's easy to grow it grows quickly and there's loads of oil in cannabis seed so he starts collaborating with a fella called rudolph diesel rudolph diesel of course invented the diesel motor they named fucking diesel after this cunt so rudolph diesel is working with henry ford going how can we make a type of fuel that comes from hemp seed oil that you grow on the ground and they successfully did it rudolph diesel designed an engine and a fuel along with Henry Ford where basically you can run a car off oil that comes from hemp. Now remember this is like 1915 1916 the other alternative fuel that's

heavily being researched in America at that time too is alcohol how can we run cars off alcohol so then coincidentally right a nice a nice funny little coincidence what happens in the 1920s in America what becomes illegal well first off they ban alcohol with prohibition which didn't work alcohol prohibition alcohol becomes illegal in america and then cannabis becomes illegal and a huge pushers for the illegal making cannabis illegal and making alcohol illegal was the emerging petrol industry they were lobbying really hard to push up taxes on alcohol so that petrol would be the cheapest fuel and they also pushed for because hemp hemp like america was was the united states of america was founded upon hemp for fiber for oil for all these things it's a really valuable plant so the petrol industry

pushed for the illegalization of hemp cannabis and also alcohol because these things were direct threats to the petrol engine and petrol as a commodity and fuel. But then skip forward 20 years and Henry Ford is still obsessed with this idea of I want to build a fucking car that I can grow in the ground and everything about this car is grown out of the ground so he returns again to cannabis so he successfully made in 1941 Henry Ford the Ford company made a car made out of hash they made a hemp car they developed a type of plastic that was made from hemp fiber and the engine was running on hemp oil so Henry Ford actually developed a car that's 100% made out of cannabis that can be grown sustainably in the ground and is also fueled by cannabis. Now why have you never heard of this?

Because the petrol industry really really lobbied the government really hard for this to not happen. How can you grow a car out of an illegal drug? And prohibition really tied in with this. But imagine how much damage to the earth wouldn't have happened if in 1940 they stopped making cars out of steel and stopped using petrol and instead our cars were made out of hemp that could be grown on the ground this plant that grows really quickly imagine what the planet would be like today so there's my little interesting cannabis fact henry ford successfully made and ran a car out of hash. And

you know, it's depressing because you look at, holy fuck, the damage that fossil fuels have done. But there's also a bit of hope there because you go, well if they did it in the 1940s, why can't you do it now? Like, here's the thing. This illusion

that we've been sold that fossil fuels are the only solution like I have a phone now I could literally fart into my phone and a person in China can hear my fart live are you telling me that we can only get energy from oil in the ground that's the best we can do

no, fuck that there's loads of different solutions there's tons of different technologies to provide us with energy that are sustainable, that are organic that don't exploit the earth it's just that the companies that exploit the earth

and exploit resources were the ones that had the most power and they shaped narrative and they shaped science and they shaped science and they did everything in their power to keep back any competing industries regardless of what was going to happen to the planet because they were pricks

so that's a lot of facts that's a lot of facts for one episode we're at the one hour point now so i'll leave you be i don't know what next week's podcast will be maybe a hot take maybe i might have someone on to talk i'm not sure we're it's getting close to may may lads the more i think possibly the most beautiful month of the year it is because it's young summer and you have the beautiful that can't wait for the first week of may first second week of may because of how the air smells

i was looking at a swan last week there's this little swan down by the river when i go for a run when she's not little she's huge but she so this swan is in the river in a marshy bit, and she's after building this giant nest, it's amazing looking, it's so, it's just this perfect mound, and it's huge, it's like, it's the size of an armchair, and behind it, it's protected by this wall of reeds, so as far as she's concerned, it's protected by this wall of reeds so as far as she's concerned it's protected from the river she's hidden behind these reeds but where i run past on the footpath i have a clear view of her nest that she thinks is private because she's not trying to protect it from me because i can't get to it anyway because i'd have to go through water she's protecting it from the

river plus she doesn't have to i'm i to I don't want to go near her nest what a fucking depressing way to spend an afternoon wading through mud to interfere with a swan's nest no thanks so I've got this perfect view of this swan

with her giant nest and she's sitting on like five or six of these huge eggs. And she's just nudging on them and adjusting herself. And I just have this perfect clear view every time I run past. And I'm really looking forward to just checking in on her every second day and looking at her in her nest and waiting for those fucking eggs to hatch

and tiny little fluffy signets coming out I can't fucking wait and then watching them turn into teenage swans over the summer that's what I'm looking forward to and of course the lifting of quarantine restrictions I'm looking forward to and of course the lifting of quarantine restrictions

I'm looking forward to that as well alright dog bless have an enjoyable week glorious cunts rock city you're the best fans in the league bar none tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation night on saturday, April 13th when the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7 30 p.m. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City

at torontorock.com. Thank you. Thank you. you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you