The Blindboy Podcast - Boscos Throat

Episode Date: June 12, 2019

A podcast recorded on a San Francisco corner. Captured in full stereo for an aural experience. Listen with earphones or on decent speakers. Don't listen on your phone speaker if you can avoid it Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and welcome to this week's Blind Boy podcast. You might notice the sound is slightly different. There's no tinkling piano in the background. That's because I'm not in Ireland. I'm over in America. And I just, I couldn't, I couldn't record, I couldn't get back to my studio in time to record this week's podcast properly, and the place that I'm staying in, the sound is absolutely

shit, so the sound of the, of the, the hotel room, you know, bouncing everywhere, impossible to do a podcast, so when this happens, I often find the best thing to do is to fuck off outside and find a reasonably quiet area and record the podcast there so at the moment I'm kind of squirreled away in a little cafe in San Francisco on the outside

and it's a blisteringly hot sunny day which is quite nice but you're going to be hearing cars and trams and hopefully not but some loud yanks passing by as they tend to do

what you won't hear unfortunately is the sound of birds as they tend to do. What you won't hear, unfortunately, is the sound of birds. There's not a lot of wildlife in San Francisco. There's a lot of concrete. Do you know what you really notice when you're in a big, massive American city? You really notice the sheer lack of birds and insects

and what have you. But anyway, it's going to be a short-ish podcast this week. I'm committed to trying to give you a podcast every single week and I don't want to leave a week with no podcast. I have the technology to be bringing a mobile recording thing on the road, so fuck it, why don't I use it? Live podcast last week with Emma Dabbery. That was good crack, got a great response from that.

A lot of people just saying they were really interested to find out shit about Africa that they never knew. And also my black listeners were quite happy to hear shit they didn't know themselves about African hair. I got a lot of messages from my black listeners regarding that. And Emma's fantastic, she's unreal. So, I'm committed to... I was fucking smoking fags last night like an idiot.

Smoking cigarettes like a foolish boy. And the yanks, the fucking, the cigarette warnings on the packets over here, right, so in Ireland we're accustomed to, if you have a pack of cigarettes, there's a photograph of a dead person, or someone whose chin is falling off on the front of the packet, here in the US, the cigarette warnings, right, packet here in the u.s the cigarette warnings right it's a big white thing and it says philip morris who own all the tobacco it says philip morris have have been adjudicated against in in a supreme court trial where they must give a warning on the effects of tobacco smoke and then you have to peel it off and you put it over and then it tells you why cigarettes are bad.

It's the most American thing I've ever seen. Pure passive aggressive. It's like a court order has told us we must tell you these things cause cancer. So here's some extra effort to find it out. Pure legal loophole and you know. So there's going to be

no edits this week. No nothing. Just straight through. What am I doing in America? I'm in San Francisco. On business. An unavoidable trip. I've several meetings over here. I'm moving and shaking.

The largest growth of this podcast is in America. So I'm over meeting some people about potential live gigs different different things here and there you know so the one kind of as you know I just finished my book um I finished the first draft of it I'm gonna have to be editing it soon but the actual bulk of the writing, that's done. So while I was booking this fucking trip, I was up the walls. I was so incredibly busy that I didn't have time to really look at hotels, anything like that. I kind of just, I just picked a hotel that looked nice so I did I also the more I travel the less comfortable I am staying

in airbnbs because of what airbnb is doing to cities around the world any city where there's a lot of airbnbs you tend to also have a huge amount of um either homelessness or people not able to buy a house because people are choosing to do the short-term letting of Airbnb rather than to rent their house out properly so I'm no longer that mad about it's not that I won't use Airbnb but if I can use a hotel instead I will so that's what I did this time in San Francisco and I judged the hotel based on the photographs looked absolutely gorgeous and I based it on the price it wasn't necessarily like if a hotel is mad cheap you always you want to find out why you want to go right if this hotel is really cheap what's up

what's wrong but this hotel wasn't cheap it was the same price as the rest of them, so I don't look at the area, I don't look at nothing, I just go, right, nice hotel, I book it, I fucking arrive in, and I'm staying in a place in San Francisco called the Tenderline District, which is unlike anything I've ever experienced in my life. San Fran's a very, very wealthy city. There's a lot of money here. There's a lot of tech companies. But the Tenderloin District is an area in the centre of San Francisco, which is basically an open-air drugs market. That's how I've heard it described

it's the levels of poverty and homelessness and open drug use I've never seen that before in my fucking life so I get off the train I walk up Eddy Street

which is the worst street in the Tenderloin district it's the middle of the day and what it reminded me of was in the wire that amazing television series the wire season three along there's a tram going past. We'll leave it go past. In season three of The Wire, they have an experimental... Wire is about Baltimore in America, which is a city that has a high level of crime. So as an experiment in season three of The Wire, they test an area whereby drugs are effectively legal.

The police stand back and allow drugs to be dealt that's what this felt like so i walk into fucking eddy streets first off the the saddest part is there's massive massive amounts of homelessness but they tend to be people that are also mentally ill or disabled. A lot of people shouting at nothing, people in wheelchairs putting themselves up onto the wheelchairs, crack files all over the fucking ground, needles, pitbulls, not on leashes without owners, which was kind of frightening. And then very clear, open dealing of drugs. Like, literally all over the gaff, fucking drug dealers with backpacks on that they have either crack or meth or heroin in the back of it

and just openly selling it on the street while police cars just drive past and I didn't know the hotel was in this area you know so that was an unpleasant surprise we'll say now I'm from fucking Limerick so I have seen that type of stuff before but

not to that scale and it's not particularly dangerous either you know it's it's yes you've got all this open drug dealing and stuff but at the same time it's it's in the center of san francisco city so you've got people like like, put it this way, it's a block away from Twitter, Google, Uber. So you've got all these tech company people flooding through the area, walking past people passed out on the ground from heroin. And it was a real, real culture shock. It did remind me a bit, I got in with jet lag. And it was fairly severe, real culture shock. It did remind me a bit. I got in with jet lag and it was fairly severe, bad jet lag. So that's not great for my anxiety. And for the first two days I experienced, I think what it was, it was like I was overwhelmed by the sheer sadness of it all. I hadn't seen that scale of homelessness before in my life. I hadn't seen 10 cities and shit like that. So I was overwhelmed with the,

I don't know, there's a yank with his door open, roaring into his phone. 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 center 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 on april 5th you must be very careful margaret it's a girl witness the birth bad things will start to happen evil things of evil it's all

you know don't the first omen i believe the girl is to be the mother. Mother of what? Is 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 O-Men. Only in theaters April 5th. Okay, he's gone quiet now. He's after leaving his dog in the back of the car. Windows open, so that's good. It's a hot day.

So yeah, I'm up in the Tenderloin District. It's, like I said, it's not dangerous. You'd walk around there in the daytime. You have to keep a, you kind of walk. You keep walking. Like, look, every two seconds you're being stopped by someone asking for a you have to keep a, you kind of walk you keep walking, like look every two seconds you're being stopped by someone asking for a fucking for a dollar you know and there's only so much of that you can do

so I kind of what I'm doing is staying the fuck away from the area in the daytime pissing off to other parts of the city to get my work done and then returning back at night time night times in the Tenderloin

are a bit mad incredibly fucking loud it doesn't stop it's like this huge big fucking party the homeless people are harmless the dealers are a bit different they're a bit dodgy

they have their wits about them they have that if you don't look like you belong there they'll stare at you now probably they're worried that you're an undercover guard or whatever but still it's not nice you know and there's one fucking hotel which it's it's a halfway house for felons it's a halfway house for people that. It's a halfway house for people that are in, just on parole from federal prison. So I've heard that can be particularly dodgy because you've got gang members and murderers and shit in there who are freshly out on the streets,

so that's not great either. But, having said that one thing that the history in the tender line is fucking fantastic as soon as I get anywhere the first thing I want to do

is read up about the area read up about the history of it you know what is it why is it there what I can't get my head around regarding the Tenderloin is everything in San Francisco is heavily gentrified except for this one little area and I don't understand why. It's almost stuck in the 1970s.

It still has rows and rows of old hotels. It would remind you a little bit of Taxi Driver, that Martin Scorsese film from 1977 with Robert De Niro. It has that Taxi Driver vibe. It's like New York in the 70s. The motels and the old hotels with the keys that are only used really for sex work as such, you know. There's a lot of that. So it's an interesting place to walk around. Once you get over the shock of it,

and as well half my shock was the jet lag and feeling powerless while being surrounded by so much misery. Especially knowing that if so many, like there's a huge amount of homeless people in San Francisco, but the majority of the homeless people in the Tenderloin district are there because of homelessness and addiction. And because so many of them, too, are clearly severely mentally ill, it's a health issue. You have the coexistence of mental illness and then self-medicating with heroin or with crack or whatever. And it's scary because...

I know a huge reason that this exists is because of the American healthcare system. None of these people have access to healthcare. If you don't have insurance in America, you're fucked. If you can't afford insurance, you don't have healthcare. It's as simple as that. Even with the Obamacare they brought in, which slightly improved things,

I know Trump is rolling a lot of it back, but that scared the living fuck out of me. And what I was awfully conscious of as well while I'm over here in San Francisco Trump is in Ireland and he's in England and Trump's visit to England I know is it's a Brexit meeting

so the story this is the way I look at Brexit right the Brits are leaving the EU they're going to need a trade deal the eu aren't going to give the brits a good trade deal because it doesn't make sense in in the political game of brexit if the british get a good deal from the europeans then that makes exiting the eu looking look like a good thing. If the Brits walk away from Brexit with this really, really good trade deal from Europe

then Italy, France, Germany, whoever will just say well what's the point in being in the fucking EU then? If the Brits are getting such a good deal, what's the point? So Britain is not going to get a good deal from the EU. So instead Britain now has to, on its knees, look towards the US. And Trump is over, and you see it echoed in Nigel Farage's words last week about the NHS. America and he started hobnobbing with all the right-wing conservatives in America he started hobnobbing with what's that cunt's name Steve fucking Steve Bannon and all of them so perfectly timed last week Farage gives this speech saying that the NHS needs to move towards an insurance model a US-based insurance model I was smoking fags last night, you can hear it. So Farage is saying that and

Trump is visiting. So what Trump wants to do, I think, they're going to carve up the NHS in a post-Brexit society, remove public healthcare from the UK and instead, like vultures, the US insurance companies are going to step into the place and you're going to have in Britain and Britain's healthcare system is much better than Ireland we have a terrible healthcare system in Ireland whereby what they're doing in Ireland is public healthcare does exist but it's so bad that it may as well not exist so most people in Ireland

it's pure neoliberalism it's get a public system run it straight into the ground to the point that it's no longer functional and then anyone who can afford private health insurance does that's the irish system in britain it's better the nhs is a lot like it's not as good as it was but it kicks the shit out of what we have in Ireland. Brexit, I think, is going to mean the end of the NHS. Because the American vultures, via Trump, were over last week. And that's why being in San Francisco is so kind of scary. Because you go, all of these people who are disabled and who have mental health issues are on the streets as hardcore

drug users because they're medicating themselves. Ultimately what they are doing is an act of medicating. Aw man, there's a dog barking at me. It's the same cunt who's in the fucking car. I hope he's alright now. He just needs to blow off a bit of steam. Hold on,

we'll wait till his owner comes out. Barking at a fucking postman. Fair play to him, man. That is very on-brand activity for a dog, isn't it? He's been quiet in that car for the whole time, but then I look, a postman was walking past, so he has a lash at him. Fair play to him.

What was I talking about? Yeah, so... America is a frightening fucking place, lads. It's a frightening place and when you come here it does remind me of, you know, to be kind of thankful that Ireland is better but also to have this intense awareness of that's where we're heading and there's huge parallels with San Francisco and Dublin one of the massive causes of inequality there's also a housing crisis here as well

you know like Jesus Christ if you're not a millionaire you are not buying a house in San Francisco it's some of the highest property prices in the world it's the headquarters you know the US headquarters of all the big tech companies Google fucking Facebook all that shit they're all here

so the same problems that that creates in terms of what it does the property prices and all of that in San Francisco that's the same shit happening in Dublin like I often wonder you

know you walk up O'Connell Street in Dublin which is our main street and it has a lot of parallels to the Tenderloin District in that you know you get into O'Connell Street in Dublin and you'd say to yourself here I am Dublin historic city heard great things about it I'm here in the main street and then you go why is that person doing heroin why is that person in a sleeping bag the difference between San Francisco and Dublin is when you walk into O'Connell Street and the areas around it yes you see open drug use yes you see drug dealing yes you see homeless homelessness when you walk into the tenderloin district in san francisco you're outnumbered massively you're talking hundreds and hundreds of homeless people and mentally ill people kind of fluttering around drug dealers in the middle of the street

and i wasn't prepared for that i thought that just happened in films holand the young wants to have a little chat there with And I wasn't prepared for that. I thought that just happened in films. And Andy Yank wants to have a little chat there with... Look after your dog, sir. The dog's going to close his door now. Give him two seconds. I can't do any edits, lads. We're just going to have to bear with me.

He's fucking off now but yes Dublin O'Connell Street you know the fact that we have all those tech companies as well in Dublin the fact that Airbnb is making shit of Dublin I view San Francisco as almost a warning of what can and

will happen Dublin and is already happening in terms of massive inequality. Dublin is only really a place for. People who. If you were born in Dublin. Chances are you live with your parents. I don't know. No one's buying anything in fucking Dublin.

No one's buying property. And it's getting to the point now. Where if you're to rent in Dublin. It's. You better be very, very wealthy. Student-wise, it's mainly quite wealthy international students who come from wealthy families. I don't know what the fucking kids from down the country are doing when it comes to renting in Dublin. I'm guessing 16 of them them living in a bunk bed. But,

I digressed. The Tenderloin district where I'm staying in, it has some fucking fantastic history. And that's what has been helping me with the misery of it, you know. Yeah, one thing as well during the week that freaked me out so i went for breakfast in a cafe and it was about nine in the morning as i went

there there was a homeless lad outside and he he'd obviously been asking everyone who went into the shop but he just came up to me and he says, will you buy me breakfast? So I said, of course I will. And everything here is very expensive. So even in this cafe, I asked him, what do you want? He goes, an omelette. $16 for the omelette, you know? So I buy this homeless man the omelette. Might be the only thing he eats all fucking day.

And when I did that, these two, like, they were like Mexican construction workers were in the cafe and they saw it. And they both come up and shake my hand and they said, that's a lovely thing that you did right there, fair play to you, and walked on. And I was left shocked by that for two reasons. I got thinking. Number one, it was obviously for me to buy a homeless man an omelette in San Francisco was obviously exceptional behavior because it merited another person to congratulate me. So that means they don't see it a lot. It's exceptional behavior. So I was thinking, wow, okay.

Because I'm watching every day people walking over, homeless people walking over drug addicts. The tech workers in Google and Facebook, they don't see it. They just walk past it, walking over, because there's so much of it. But when this Mexican construction worker kind of shook my hand for buying the amulet, so I'm thinking, wow, okay, it must not happen a lot. But then I started thinking, because there was a sadness in his eyes. When he said it to me, there was a sadness, and I was kind of probing within me,

what's the sadness in this man's eyes because he saw me buy a homeless man an omelette? And then I thought to myself, that fucking omelette was 16 quid. That man's a construction worker. So now he's probably living fucking check to check. So he's walking around the tenderloin too. His heart is breaking probably living fucking check to check. So he's walking around the tenderloin too. His heart is breaking for all these fucking homeless people and he doesn't have the economic mobility to even buy an omelette to help a homeless person

if he wanted to. So that was particularly dark also. Half an hour later I see a nice fucking dog it was a French bulldog and I started rubbing him and then his owner says do you want to follow him on Instagram so that's the dichotomy that's there the bulldog in fairness now he's a dickie bow he looked class but it's a very very liberal city

San Francisco is famously liberal, progressive, but the level of fucking performatism, and I don't mean this as a critique of the people. I'm sure every single person that lives here, truly, they are liberal, and they want to improve things. Like, all the buses here, in fairness, they're all clean-air vehicles and all of this,

so there's many positive things about it that you can aspire to but the performatism of how much they care is quite evident when you're an outsider I mean you've got cafes

up on the walls in the cafe and on the windows you've got all these signs that say fucking black lives matter you look into the cafe it's just windows, you've got all these signs that say fucking Black Lives Matter. You look into the cafe, it's just a lot of fucking white people on their phones. And outside the cafe are mainly black and brown people. Homeless. While the people inside are performatively there with their Black Lives Matter signs.

Now, it's just something I observed. It's just something I noticed. I found it jarring and shocking to see that level of signalling while also walking over the black lives that are supposed to matter. So it's odd. I've been going for jogs, you know, getting up early in the've been going for jogs you know getting up early in the morning going for jogs that's the mad thing

you can easily jog through the tent no one wants to fuck with a jogger hold on there's a Labrador coming over to me here what's the crack? he's walking off what was I talking about so I go for jogs in the morning through the tender line

no one's focused on you when you're jogging no one even sees you and so I got to one point it was up by Market Street and I saw something fucking crazy right so I see a homeless man and he's he has a sleeping

bag that his sleeping bag that's his one thing that he has but this homeless man appeared to be like a frozen statue so I'm jogging up and I just see him standing there and he's got his, he's wearing his sleeping bag like a cape and he's frozen solid, standing up. And I'm thinking, that's really strange. Why is that man, homeless man, standing like a statue? And then as I get closer, there's this hipster couple with their fucking non-digital camera, what do you call them, film camera,

and they've asked the homeless man, because it was quite close to the financial district, they asked the homeless man, would you mind standing there, freeze frame, so we can get an incredibly authentic photograph of how homeless you are. That was nuts. Just that someone would do that and that they thought that that was totally okay

maybe they gave him a fiver I would hope they gave him a fucking fiver I don't know the Tenderloin District it's called the Tenderloin District I should have done all this research beforehand before I went there but interestingly it's called the Tenderloin District

is that it's had a long, long association with vice and crime. It's long been where the sex industry has been, the sex work industry has been in the Tenderloin for years and years and years and a lot of drugs and kind of like Soho in london you know and it's resisted gentrification i don't know why i honestly don't know why it has because it's so close to google and facebook and surrounded by the financial district i don't know why there's this collection of eight or nine blocks that is like stuck in the 1970s with this dystopian level of poverty that I've never seen in my life it's called the tender line because

there was a Irish police sergeant there in like the 1860s and the legend kind of goes that he was alright yeah it was at a time when there was massive police corruption

in the US because obviously the same old shit the police weren't getting paid so they were all fucking corrupt so the Tenderloin had so much organised crime and all this shit that this police officer who was assigned to the Tenderloin district said before it was called the Tenderloin I would know what it was called then but this police

sergeant said before I was in this district i was so poor that i had to eat chuck steak which is an inferior steak you know but as soon as i started working in this area as a policeman i was getting so much cash from bribes that i could start eating tenderloin steak and that's why the tenderloin is called the tenderloin district because a corrupt policeman was able to earn so much money from the gangs but as I kind of went

reading about the area and it's particularly relevant because pride is coming up and pride you know gay pride, LGBTQ pride relevant because pride is coming up and pride gay pride, LGBTQ pride is very important in San Francisco obviously because there's a huge history of

gay rights and stuff in San Francisco but you might remember about 50 podcasts back on the history of disco I mentioned the roots of disco music and how you can trace it to the Stonewall riots in New York of 1969 when gay and transgender people

just had enough and had a big fucking riot against the police but what I found in the Tenderloin there was a place called Compton's Cafeteria in 1966 and it's in Taylor and Turk, two intersectional streets there that are

pretty fucking dodgy. I think that's where the meth is sold, the crack is sold down in Eddy and Taylor I believe. But Compton's Cafeteria was it was a chain of cafeterias all around San Francisco

and this place on Taylor and Turk Street in the Tenderloin it was one of the few places where transgender people and drag queens could being a drag queen back then you know dressing like

dressing in a way that's not your gender from birth or whatever you call it that was illegal, that was illegal. It was illegal to be a drag queen. It was illegal to be transgender in 1966. So this cafe was the one place where it was a safe space for transgender people in the Tenderloin in 1966

and they would frequent there. They'd all go there. And then the owner of the chain was like, fuck this. So the staff would ring the police anytime a transgender person came in the police would come down and actually arrest them because it was illegal so in 1966 they got together and they rioted and then the riots spilled out onto the streets so in the tender line in 1966 in compton's cafeteria that's actually that predates the stonewall riots in terms of gay pride and gay rights.

There's someone behind me going through a bin, which is quite a common thing you see here, you see. I think it's for getting money back for recycling and things like that. But that's what that crinkling is anyway in the background, if you find it disturbing. Might give you some ASMR tingles, I don't know.

So... Out of that riot that happened in Compton's Cafeteria in 1966 in the Tenderloin, this... It this a lot of it gave trans people kind of an identity and a voice and a community to go hold on a second

we've had enough similarly with the Stonewall in 1969 so it predated that I found that quite interesting as well there was a just around the corner from a hotel there's this weird building called the o'farrell theater and i was like what the fuck is this because it had kind of nudie women on the front and what it is is a it's a strip club so i go googling it what's the crack what's the deal

with this why does it look so strange? There was a... It wasn't... That's the thing. It wasn't just because it was a strip club. I just found it... First off, it's called the O'Farrell Theatre, which is a weird name for a strip club.

The building itself looked really old. It didn't look or feel from the outside like a traditional strip club. So this kind of... It got my senses tingling and i went something about this is interesting i better look it up and it fucking is so the o'farrell theater it's it's kind of because that area in the tenderland it was all you know sex work and vice and things like that it was a legendary strip club frequented by Hunter S. Thompson

or Huey P. Newton from the Black Panthers as well. And they invented the lap dance at that club before, and this was in the late 60s. Also, it was the... I suppose, you think of San Francisco, very important in the hippie movement, the Summer of Love. San Francisco is very important in the hippie movement,

the summer of love. The O'Farrell Theatre was the kind of seedy expression of that summer of love. It was the first kind of proper strip club that had sex acts going on and things like that. Lap dancing was invented before that when people were stripping. There was a man listening to me now. He wants to know why I'm talking into my fucking microphone about strip clubs, looks like Neil Young, I'd even

walk off, right so once that nosy cunt is gone, strip clubs, it would usually be the girl up on a podium and then people all around watching but the O'Farrell Theatre in the 60s was the first time to bring on lap dancing. The strip were actually coming to the patron's lap and dancing on them and stuff like that. But also, the upstairs in the O'Farrell Theatre was a film studio

and it's hugely, hugely important in the history of pornography. Pornography before the 60s, there was things called stag films. They were mainly made by the mafia and shit like that. They were completely fucking illegal films that were passed around the place. All pornography was illegal in America at the time.

But the O'Farrell, they filmed a movie called Behind the Green Door in 1967, I think it was. And this film was hugely important in the development of pornography as a legitimate industry. This film... I had to briefly pause the podcast there because two men were arguing over the... The two men were having an argument about the politics of drinking Fiji water. Apparently, whoever owns Fiji water is a Trump supporter and therefore you should not eat it.

This is what makes this place really fucking strange. Two seconds ago, I've got this woman going through a fucking bin because she's living from bins basically and now I've got two quite wealthy white men having an argument

over whether Fiji water is ethical because the owner of it supports Trump. What was I talking about? Lap dances. So anyway, yeah, the O'Farrell Theatre invented lap dancing. What it also invented, not invented, but they legitimized pornography as an industry. So the film Behind the Green Door, which was made in 1966 or 67, was the first ever pornographic film to get a wide... No, no, no, sorry, the second to get a wide release in mainstream theaters. The first one, I believe,

it was called Blue Movie. I think Andy Warhol is the first person to ever have actual explicit sex on camera which was shown in theatres, but they would have been shown as arthouse it wasn't pornography, there was pornography in it but it wasn't called that

with Behind the Green Door it's actual 100% porn I'm being congregated by dogs now, there's a little chihuahua there so there's three three kind of posh wealthy yanks with their beautiful dogs and then across the street

it's decrepit so yeah that's the dichotomy of San Francisco quite strange two two very very different realities co-existing

and dogs getting treated far far better than humans I should have yeah the dogs drinking fucking Fiji water out of a bowl fucking hell

I'm whispering now because I don't want the boys hearing me you know I wish they'd fuck off Fucking hell. I'm whispering now because I don't want the boys hearing me, you know. I wish they'd fuck off. So yeah. That was another interesting thing that I found out about the Tenderloin District was the history of pornography coming from this one theatre, the O'Farrell Theatre.

I was tempted to stick a head in and go in there, but I looked up the photographs. It's just... I don't really want to. It was just a lot of business. From what I could see on the website, it seems like a lot of businessmen kind of wanking with curtains and shit like that,

so it doesn't sound like a particularly good time. But I'd rather an art museum myself, you know. I did go to the sunset san francisco museum of modern art that was good crack um saw some lovely was it a man a i saw wasn't a man a was it there was definitely a money they had the warhol exhibition but it didn't go into that um i saw some of his earlier works but But it's, again, with modern art museums, a lot of the, from 1960s onwards, you know, it's very culturally or time-specific art,

so it loses a lot of its fucking impact as the years go by. So I prefer early modern art around 1910, 1920. The shit from the 1960s, the the conceptual stuff it's hard to enjoy that alright we've got a gaggle of yanks here boys I'm going to press pause for a second until it quietens down okay so it's quietened down a bit right but yeah the lads are after having another argument

about the water like so he was going But yeah, the lads are after having another argument about the water. So he was going, my dog likes regular water. He doesn't like Republican water. As the fucking Labrador drinks Fiji. For fuck's sake. I'm going to give it another bit now for them to fuck off. The dogs are gorgeous now, in fairness.

But what just happened there was... So there was two men with dogs, they were arguing about the politics of the water, the dog is drinking fucking Fiji water, then this other couple came up with a dog, there was a Chihuahua involved, and I found myself in a situation where it was just several fucking yanks talking about each other's dogs, that's not a good environment for the podcast so I'm going to wait until these two men fuck off and I recommence I figured out there's a pause button on this so I can't actually, I can't edit

but I can pause and stop stuff like that alright I've got a gorgeous little dog here now he's grey, he's old and grey his name is Charlie I believe his owners have to say that he's supposed to have died a year ago yeah Charlie the dog just came up to me there and he had a very

he had a quare eye one of his eyes was very bulged and just he's you know when when a dog just has that that wisdom in them you can tell they're old and they have a bit of a wisdom about them which is interesting because he's only he's only 13. So the boys have gone quiet now they're done talking to each other so yeah what I was saying you know these are the interesting things i found out about the tenderland district first off you've got the canton cafe riot you know a very important uh moment in in the the fight towards gay rights and pride 1966 then the

theatre and you know it depends where you like you know pornography you gotta you know, it depends just look I like coming across anything whereby I'm touching a piece of history and that film that came out

of the O'Farrell Theatre and the upstairs behind the green door it started what was called the golden age of porn which was it was a brief period

of about 10 years where pornographic films were shown in mainstream audiences, in cinemas, all around the US. It kind of tied in with this whole, you know, the sexual revolution that would have happened after the 60s. Of course, it was destroyed by... A man just said, I need to get the flock out of here.

They don't curse here in San Francisco, you know. I need to get the flock out of here they don't curse here in San Francisco you know I need to get the flock out of here he said so em hold on a second we leave them go I'm sorry about this lads do you know

I don't have a fucking studio so what am I going to do I've got to do a podcast on the side of the road and you've got to you've got to move with what happens

so what happens here is there was a yanked dog congregation, and that's it, what I'm trying to explain in whispered tones, the history of pornographic film. God almighty. So, yeah, the golden age of porn can trace its roots to the O'Farrell Theatre in the Tenderloin District, which is just around the fucking corner from where I am now. And it started...

Videotapes ended all of that bullshit, right? I'm going to have to move on to a different fucking subject, lads. So yeah, we've got history of pornography coming from the tender line lgbt rights also what's interesting is because the area was traditionally always kind of associated with crime and vice it kind of resisted immigration as well to a point the only wave of migration that happened in the Tenderloin were, they were from Cambodia and they were escaping Paul Potts fucking killing fields. So very, very, very desperate Cambodian people in the 70s, I believed, moved into the Tenderloin. So you still see elements of Cambodian and some Vietnamese restaurants around the gaff. Cambodian and some Vietnamese restaurants around the gaff so in the past year

it was announced that the tender line is going to be it's earmarked basically to be the world's first kind of transgender district now obviously like I said the area is historically significant and important in terms of trans history when you take it back to the the compton cafeteria uprising but if you look at the we said that the areas in the tenderloin that have been earmarked as this transgender district, they're the most drug-ridden corners of the Tenderloin.

Now, on paper, it sounds like a fantastic thing, do you know? Like, the mission statement of this new transgender district in the Tenderloin is, like, creating a safe, welcoming, empowering neighbourhood that's like led by trans people for trans people, creating a place of healing, opportunity, reparations in a neighbourhood that's historically significant to trans people. It's trying to encourage, you know, affordable rent and home ownership for trans people,

community services for trans people, community services for trans people, and to create a kind of a protected area to rename some of the streets, rename the streets after people who were important in the trans community to protect certain sites, to recognize them. So that's all really good, positive, forward-thinking, very San Francisco-type stuff

that's going to be earmarked in an area that is right now an open air drugs market with huge levels of homelessness and mental illness but however that the cynic there's a cynical thing in me

and it's the cynic in me that's it exists because of the sheer rootlessness of american capitalism and the type of capitalism that you see here in san francisco and this is let me just put some context to where my thoughts are like san francisco is traditionally very very lgbt there's a district called the castro district which was i believe the world's first kind of gay district and it's up by Castro street it was started in the kind of 60s and 70s it came out of the hippie movement where you just had a huge concentration of gay people living in this neighborhood and

they said no this is our space where we can be gay and we live here and we work here and that's the crack right um and that's the Castro district now the reason that San Francisco has such a kind of a gay tradition it that goes back to World War II um America was fighting in the Pacific theater of World War II you know they were essentially fighting Japan and what happened after World War II is the U.S. military actually discharged a load of servicemen that were gay. They said, oh, you're gay, you don't have a job anymore, you're not a sailor, you're not a soldier. So because it was the Pacific Theater, a lot of them were stationed near the Bay Area, San Francisco. So they just were like, all right, I don't have a job anymore. I'm just going to stay here.

So you ended up with this huge community of gay service people. And the Castro kind of comes from that in the 60s, combined with the hippie movement. And it was a hugely creative space. There was a lot of artists, a lot of eccentrics. There was drag movements. It was years and years ahead of its time. space there was a lot of artists a lot of eccentrics there was drag movements it was years and years ahead of its time you know the roots of pride parades today you can trace that

back to the castro but the castro today is a hugely gentrified area it's still gay but if you speak to locals around or if you read up about it they refer to it now as like airbnb gay or twitter gay the tech bros are kind of moving in and it still is clearly like a gay space but it's not a gay space for people for gay people that are poor there's no more of these eccentric artists wandering around on cheap rent getting to live creatively instead it's the more of these eccentric artists wandering around on cheap rent, getting to live creatively. Instead, it's the kind of office workers and this is just a complaint that certain people in the Castro have now. It's been fully gentrified. That's my cynicism that I have about this proposal for earmarking the tender line of the transgender district.

The mission statement sounds amazing the mission statement is about affordable housing empowering creating spaces for heavily marginalized people but i think what it is is the thing is with the tender line every so often police will come in and they'll remove homeless people's tents and they'll wash down the streets and they'll essentially sweep out the homeless people. And when this

happens in San Francisco, because it's such a liberal city, the police don't really get away with it. There's a lot of dissent around this behaviour. People say, hold on a second, you can't just remove people's tents these are homeless people but this is their community, you can't just go in and

deny them their existence so I think cynically by earmarking it as this transgender district what you then do is it's a catch 22 for the liberal people of san francisco because now

it's it's making people choose between marginalized homeless and mentally ill people and the trans community and i just do think that even if they earmark this area as a trans area it might start out okay and it might start out in accordance with its mission statement of it creating affordable housing and all of this but i do think it'll eventually just become gentrified because it's too close it's it's two blocks away from facebook it's two blocks away from twitter from airbnb it's appears to be for to me, just another way to completely gentrify the area. And then what happens to the hundreds and hundreds of mentally ill and homeless people and the addiction that is on the streets of the Tenderloin?

What happens to those people? Where do they go? Do you know? So moving on from the tender line I did get out of the area I went on I went to a trip to a place called Mirror Woods because I wanted to see some Californian redwood trees and that was

that was phenomenal it was fantastic the thing with San Francisco is San Francisco used to be like it's very hilly and it's the climate of san francisco is quite strange for california because california is is hot like down by la used to be like a fucking desert but san fran actually isn't that hot because it's a peninsula so it's

surrounded by water all around but you have these san fran would have been one giant redwood forest. And redwood, they're very unique trees, they're sequoias. They can live to be 2,000 years old. They're fucking massive now. The older ones are huge. Size of a house, you know, in circumference. And in terms of height, you're talking a couple of hundred feet. So the largest trees that exist, really. So this was, francisco was massively

deforested because these redwood trees they made incredible construction equipment because you've got these really long straight fucking planks so they cut the fucking shit out of the entire entirety of san francisco san francisco was obviously it was first inhabited by native tribes they were then murdered by the spanish i believe then it was sp inhabited by native tribes. They were then murdered by the Spanish, I believe. Then it was Spanish-controlled up until the 1820s. Then Spain had a war with Mexico. Mexico won its independence a huge part. San Fran used to be Mexico, along with a lot of California,

and I think Texas too. And then the Yanks, I think, had a war with Mexico, and that's how San Fran ended up being in America, in the United States. But it wasn't a very populated area. It was just, like I said, a bunch of forests. But then, in the 1840s, they struck gold. So the California gold rush was hugely centered around San Francisco. So the population exploded by 200 or 300 percent in a couple of years.

In the 1840s. They cleared all these fucking redwood forests. Really, really important trees in terms of the cleanliness they give the fucking air. And this is one thing I noticed as soon as I went to Mare Woods. You don't notice how bad the air is in a city until you leave it so when i got to mirror woods like the cleanliness of the fucking air you're talking 400 acres of just these redwood trees perfectly preserved the reason it stayed preserved is mirror woods is in it's in a huge big valley you know so when they in the 1840s

when they were clearing all these fucking redwood trees in San Francisco for building this valley where Muir Woods is now they figured even if we can go in there and cut down those giant redwoods

there's no way we're getting them out of this canyon so we just have to let it be so a guy called John Muir who would have been a a conservationist back in the 1900s he was the one that got it made into a national monument so you can't fuck with this park this is where the last surviving redwood trees are and they're incredible they're fucking amazing and it was a beautiful place and to experience the cleanliness of that air

compared to San Francisco, which is just a half an hour away on the ferry, was ridiculous. And what makes the trees so unique too is there's not a lot of rainfall in San Francisco. Like the rest of California, there's really not a lot of rain. So where these redwood forests get their moisture from

is there's this queer fog that comes in off the ocean it's similar to scotland in edinburgh they have a fog called the har it's it's a type of fog that comes in off the sea but they also have this in san francisco because it's a peninsula it's surrounded by water so at about four o'clock in the evenings you get this really thick hot fog and the redwood trees get all their moisture from this fog that comes in off the ocean. Global warming, of course, is causing the fog to happen less and less, which means that you could end up with the extinction of the redwood trees.

But again, you know, that fucking climate podcast a few weeks back, Jesus Christ, when you go from a concrete city like San Fran. And then directly into a redwood forest. You notice first hand. The importance and impact of trees and biodiversity. In the quality of the fucking air. It's insane. It was so beautiful.

So while I'm wandering around the mirror woods. I come across. Fucking Bohemian Grove. Now, I didn't know, I know about Bohemian Grove, but I didn't know Bohemian Grove was in these fucking woods, so I was thrilled, I was going, fucking hell, Bohemian Grove. If you don't know what Bohemian Grove is, it's, conspiracy theorists will know what I'm talking about. Bohemian Grove is this really weird

club that happens in woods called Bohemian Grove that are in mere woods and like congressmen and really really powerful American politicians go to these woods once a year for retreats and it's highly secretive and a lot of security it's a little bit like the Bilderberg group but what makes it so weird is just you have all these

US presidents and former presidents and captains of industry and very very powerful wealthy men going to this secret location in the woods called Bohemian Grove and someone snuck a camera, I think it was Alex Jones, snuck a camera in there in the mid 90s to actually see what the fuck is going on once a year in this forest where people are, very very powerful wealthy men are attending this club once a year and he filmed them worshipping a giant owl so it's one of these really fucking freaky conspiracy theories because you're wondering what are they up to

so you get like ex-presidents and billionaires going into the fucking woods in California once a year and worshipping a huge wooden owl that's carved out of a sequoia and they burn effigies at the foot of the owl and it's really really strange and

a statement was released saying that it's just a bunch of men they do a play and this play involves a giant owl but other people then point to it's a devil god called malak malak is i think he's an egyptian fucking evil owl or something so some people claim that it's

it's direct evidence of the illuminati you know the most powerful men in the world secretly uh worshiping a devil type god in order to get power. So, yeah, I was in Bohemian Grove. Like, I don't know how much of that is true, but I tell you, you know, it is a fact. Right? This is the part that's a fact. Ex-American presidents and really rich people go to this woods once a year and they do some strange shit with a giant fucking wooden owl and burning effigies that's a fact

okay I find it odd whether it's them worshipping some type of fucking dark force and this is what gives them political power I don't know but it's one of those things it's like David Cameron fucking a pig into the mouth it's like what are you doing

now what I think a lot of that shit is it's like, what are you doing? Now, what I think a lot of that shit is, it's like with motorcycle gangs. Outlaw motorcycle gangs, they always do mad, fucked up shit. Like, if you want to earn a backpatch in, if you get high up in a motorcycle gang, they have to do really bad things, like they have to murder a random person

or they have to fucking dig up corpses. I think the political elite formed these strange fucking clubs and societies where they worship giant owls or where they fuck pigs mouths I think what it is it's a way to establish dirt on people

do you know what I mean if like I do believe that David Cameron was in a thing called the Bullington Club so that's like the equivalent of Bohemian Grove but in England and again you have this these young entitled college kids

who all go on to become prime ministers and powerful wealthy bankers and all of this all in this same club where they trash restaurants and shit and David Cameron put his dick into a pig's mouth a dead pig's mouth, a dead pig's mouth, I think they do that,

to have dirt on people, so they're kind of going, if you, if you fuck that, there's a fellow walking past, no that's why I can't say that out loud, if you have sex with a pig's mouth, in front of Boris Johnson,

or whoever the fuck, or Michael Gove, when you're kids, it means that, when you become become politicians and you're older you can't have any whistleblowers because everyone has really nasty dirt on each other so if something corrupt happens in the halls of government you can't call it out because then you can go what about that time you fucked a pig into the mouth

or what about that photo I have of you worshipping a giant wooden owl? That would ruin your career if it got out. So like the motorcycle gangs who, like motorcycle gangs perform horrible crimes in front of each other as a way to make sure no police can infiltrate them. Because if you're an undercover cop, there's no way you're digging up a corpse and having sex with it it's not happening they might do a line of coke in front of someone but they're not going fucking digging up corpses so that's how they protect their ranks

and i think this mad shit that the elites do where whether worshiping a giant wooden owl or fucking a pig's mouth it's a way of protecting themselves against other things jesus christ lads this you know i will never go a week without giving you any podcast so this is the best you're gonna get there's a lovely little pit bull there now see a lot of rescued pit bulls you won't find pitbulls in Ireland we've got American Staffordshire or Staffordshire bull terriers but I think the actual pitbull

is illegal in Ireland isn't it what time are we ah Jesus I'm after talking for a fucking it's a long time alright I'm gonna look at a couple

I didn't even do the the ocarina pause fucking hell It's a long time. Alright, I'm gonna look at a couple... I didn't even do the... The ocarina pause. Fucking hell. Alright. I'll just have to throw the ocarina pause some point in the middle of the podcast back there. Because I forgot to do it because

I had those fucking two lunatics feeding their dogs Fiji water and arguing over the politics of it while there's homeless people rooting through fucking bins. My dad always used to say about America, what was it? My dad was like socialist bordering on communist, he was a union leader and he was on a bus out to Shannon Airport and there was a fucking yank roaring about how great America was he was saying

land of the free, home of the brave and my dad says to him land of the free if you have money but you better be brave if you don't and it's so fucking true it's a there's a real real culture shock when you come to this place

it is dystopian it's fair to say. It is an absolute... The dystopian... If you want to see a fucking dystopia for the rest of the world, just come to fucking America. There's your dystopia. That's Ireland in ten years' time.

It's Britain in ten years' time. The level of inequality and sheer utter blindness like the way that the the tech workers and the wealthier people coexist with the destitute and sure look i'm doing it i'm there recording a fucking podcast on the side of the road you know i'm i'm part of that same fucking thing. At least, like, I seem to have in my awareness a degree of compassion for the shit that's happening. I'm fucking doing what I can, giving people money, buying people breakfasts,

checking in with my fucking empathy. But the performativeness that I see walking up and down people, anti-Trump fucking Black Lives Matter, and completely ignoring the suffering that's happening at their feet. Like I'm not joking you, you see people walking over, homeless people, full on just going about their day with their fucking, those Apple earpods that don't have the strings on them just stuck into their ears and they're walking over fucking heroin addicts lots and lots of that i'd be up early in the morning jogging you get people hosing down outside the fucking some some shops have really really loud speakers

so yeah it's quite surreal actually so i'd get up at my sleeping patterns are fucked up so sometimes i'd be up at half six for my jog, and I'd jog from, all through the Tenderloin into the financial district, so the streets are pretty much empty for, except for homeless people, and as I go into the financial district, it's quiet, because there's not a huge amount of activity at about half six but what you have is every time you pass a shop loud music like like a lot of it seems to be like frank sinatra and stuff like that and i was going what the fuck is this what why are these speakers on the streets or on the side of these shops playing frank sinatra for no one like it's not the radio it's like

I don't know why Frank Sinatra type music crooning type music seems to be the one they've settled on and then I slowly realized all of these department stores and banks have got speakers outside their shops so that if a homeless person is sleeping there the speaker goes on as an alarm clock to get the fuck away I found that particularly fucked up I mean look we've got homeless spikes in Ireland too but

yeah you see a lot of that shit here have I got time to answer a couple of questions forgot to promote the Patreon look lads you know the crack Have I got time to answer a couple of questions? Forgot to promote the Patreon. Look, lads, you know the crack. This podcast is supported by you, the listener, via the Patreon page. The reason there's a podcast happening this week is because, like, people, I have patrons at this podcast,

people who give me the price of a cup of coffee once a fucking week. That's what keeps this podcast going. If it wasn't for the Patreon, would I be recording a podcast this week, no I would not, I'd be over in America getting my work done, going grand, we don't need a podcast this week, but because I have people subscribing and giving me a few quid once a month, I make sure I do not miss a fucking podcast, even when I can't record one, I'm going to do something, so if you'd like to be a patron, patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast, please consider it, I was going to, this was supposed to be a question answering podcast, and it ended up being a very, a long pained ramble about the culture

shock of being in San Francisco with a little bit of history thrown in question Stephen asks have you watched Chernobyl yet yes I have it's fucking amazing get a look at Chernobyl if you can it's HBO's new thing uh Jared Harris is in it he's the lead in it he used to be in Mad Men he's Richard Harris' son from Limerick. Excellent actor. What's also enjoyable is if you're going to watch Chernobyl, also listen to the podcast

from the writer of Chernobyl 2. Because it's like a masterclass in... It's like if you're a writer, the podcast about Chernobyl and watching Chernobyl is like a masterclass in how to turn real historical events into drama it's

really gritty, it's on the ball I like the fact that like it's set in Ukraine in the 80s around the fucking huge disaster that happened in the Chernobyl power plant, but the actors they're mostly English and they speak in their

native fucking accents there's no one putting on any fake Russian accents or any fake Ukrainian accents, people are speaking in their, how they actually speak some people find that jarring I find it fucking excellent,

because what, oh shit, hold on, I left the fucking phone on, and I'm getting a text, I should, my heart broken with my phone this week as well lads, because, yeah, so, like I said, I was too busy to really plan this fucking trip, like I said I was too busy to really plan this fucking trip I forgot about the whole data roaming thing because I'm used to traveling around Europe so you don't have to worry about data roaming in Europe anymore but I forgot when you got to fucking go to the US it's something like five dollars a megabyte so what happens is the second I land in America, my iPhone decides to update itself. So there's all my data gone. Boom. So I have no fucking phone at all. My mobile phone company, 3,

in order to stop me running up a bill of about fucking 12 grand, which is quite easy to run up a bill that big if you're in America using data, they just shut it all off. So I had no way to text anyone, no to internet unless I'm all around wi-fi so the anxiety of that because I'm here on a business trip so I need my fucking phone if I was here on a holiday I'd be like grand I've no phone let's see how that goes for me but I'm here on a business trip I'd people I needed to contact so I'm in America with no fucking phone and only internet access when I'm near somewhere with internet access. In the Tenderloin, there's not a lot of cafes with internet access.

So that was quite anxiety inducing for two days. So what I did was I got a tourist fucking SIM card. Tourist SIM card for like 40 quid with 10 gigabytes of data. for like 40 quid with 10 gigabytes of data so i had to fuck a new sim card into my phone which is kind of shit because i i can't use any of the apps on my phone that are associated with my phone number uh social media stuff so a slight inconvenience it's but it's it's i won't say it's a bad trip to america it's just been very very fucking interesting and the the culture shock i wasn't i wasn't i didn't prepare myself for this culture shock. I've been in America before, mainly the East Coast.

In New York, they seem to have gotten all their problems and swept them away, way, way up into the Bronx. So when you go to New York, you have the illusion of it being a good place. With San Fran, they're not really sweeping it away. It's there to see and it's frightening but yeah

Chernobyl the question about fucking Chernobyl Chernobyl's fantastic give it a look I really really fucking enjoyed it what I find

the best part about the fact that they don't put on these fake Russian accents is that like the hardest part to deal with about Chernobyl is it's the Soviet mindset. The mindset of an absolute totalitarian communist state where lies can become the truth. It's hard to relate to. lies can become the truth.

It's hard to relate to. You've got all these scientists trying to say that they're superiors. There's going to be a nuclear meltdown. There's going to be a disaster. This is going to destroy half the world. And then you have the people on top going, no, that's the wrong answer. No, that's the wrong answer. So completely ignoring facts

because they're scared of being held personally responsible they're scared of getting shot so to see that soviet hardcore mindset played out in relatable accents such as english accents i found that very interesting um the writer himself i can't remember his fucking name right now, but he said that initially he wanted the actors to do fake Ukrainian voices or fake Russian voices. But he found that when you ask an actor to do a Russian accent, they then tend to act Russian. So you lose a lot of authenticity. You've got these people not only speaking Russian, but acting Russian. Second question. Hi Blind Boy, what are your thoughts on the future of AI?

Artificial intelligence. second question hi blind boy what are your thoughts on the future of AI artificial intelligence I you know it's kind of freaky it's kind of scary I mean there's obviously there's going to be I mean with any technological advance one thing that frightens me is how are they going to use this to for people

to lose jobs okay here in San Francisco I walked into one of those amazon shops the other day um there's they have a few amazon shops here that there's no cash registers you basically walk in and you have your app in your pocket you walk up to the shelves and it's it's a grocery store it's it's a it's like a tesco or a centra whatever there's no cash register there's one worker there you walk in past the barrier you're there's lasers everywhere pointing at you and you have a phone in your pocket and you walk in you take what you want off the shelf and you walk out of the shop and it's

charged immediately to your phone you have to do nothing you walk into a shop you take the stuff you leave. There's no queues, there's no cash register, but there's also not a lot of jobs. The only people employed are whoever needs to pack the shelf and the person who is the welcoming person. So, yeah, one thing that's interesting about AI for me is I'm fascinated by how they train AI and how you and I are used every day to train AI so like what here's an interesting fact do you know when you have a signing up for

an email or signing up for something on the internet and in order to prove whether you're a human or not they have these things called captchas so you it'll say you have to tick a box that says i am not a robot and then you have to solve some little problem like you have to spell out a word so the word will be there and it'll be all jumbled and you have to spell it out well captcha as a company actually sell that data so for years and years and years when we were signing these catch-up things where it's like translate this word to prove that you're not a human and then you can move on to the next step what a lot of those words were is it was part of i think it

was project gutenberg but basically no no no we'll say large newspapers like The Guardian or The New York Times, right? They were trying to digitize all their old archives of print editions. So what they would do is they would get their physical newspaper from 1843, we'll say, scan it into a computer, and then a computer would read the text and it would digitize it. But there were certain words that computers couldn't read so what what they did is this they outsourced these problems to captcha so chances are over the years when you signed when you figured out a word to sign into a captcha and prove you're not a robot you were actually using your human brain to solve uh to translate a word that a computer couldn't read and this would end up in we all helped basically our collective labor digitized the archives of newspapers and

captcha that's how captcha made its money what it's doing today which is really fucking interesting is a huge part of ai in the future now is going to be these self-driving cars like I think in 30 years time there'll be no petrol cars hopefully all petrol cars will be gone and all cars will be electric and self-driving and we won't really have autonomous cars I'd say you'll need a special license to have an autonomous car but they're using CAPTCHA now to train the artificial intelligence of self-driving cars. So if you sign a CAPTCHA now when you're on the internet, it's no longer words that they're asking you to translate. What they're doing is you might see an image that says, count how many cars are in this picture. And you use your human brain to identify the cars that are in the image. use your human brain to identify the cars that are in the image and that data is actually being sold to google and to companies that are making these self-driving cars so our human intelligence

the data of that is being farmed to train artificial intelligence so i find that really fucking interesting neof asks hi blind boy-in cert happening now, have you any opinions on it and the way the point system works? Would you change the leave-in cert in any way? Yes, I would. I would have the leave-in cert as a, I think, continuous assessment.

I just think it's really, really stupid that we have this rote learning system where you do one big exam and everything hangs on it. I think it's unnecessarily stressful I don't think it reflects anything that happens in real life as a professional like most people's jobs is continual assessment it's consistently reaching small goals

in order to get to a bigger one like okay I've been writing a book the past year like that that is a form of continuous assessment i continually write each day and i improve it and the thing with the leave insert it's like i always say with any any piece of work and i i think the leave yeah i the leavings are actually it set me up really bad and how I approach projects so when I get given the opportunity we'll say to write a book you're talking 70 80 000 words initially when I get that project I'll get a pang of anxiety and I'll go fucking hell how am I supposed to get this book done 70,000 words that's loads that's

really scary and the problem the flaw in my thinking there is that I'm approaching a book as if it's a mountain that I have to jump over I'm looking at this mountain and saying oh I'll never be able to jump that in one go that's what the leaving cert is you have to jump this mountain in one go whereas the reality is with my book I'm not jumping a mountain in one go what i'm doing is i'm gradually climbing it each day with small little goals and when you say that about a mountain if you show someone a mountain and say you have to climb that and it's going to take you six weeks you can say to yourself that's manageable i can see myself doing that but if you say to someone you have to jump over that mountain then you go that's impossible i can't jump over the mountain fuck this the leaving cert asks us to jump over the mountain study study study for three years and then you use all that

pent-up knowledge to jump over the mountain at the very end what should be happening is there should be continual fucking assessment based on a climbing the mountain model so what that does is it keeps you on your toes it gives you room failure, it gives you room to develop and grow, it gives you room to spot your weak points along the way and where you need to improve. And a continual assessment system accurately reflects the realities of professional fucking life as an adult. Professional adult life is continual fucking assessment. Everything is continual fucking assessment everything is continual assessment there's no such thing as

one big giant thing that you have to give your all at so I'd like to see a rehaul of the leave insert in that respect any other questions? do you know what? I'm conscious about fucking time

this has gone way longer I sat down at this cafe I made a promise to myself, I'm going to keep this to under 40 minutes and I haven't we've gone way over so look, best of luck I hope you enjoyed it this week

if you didn't enjoy it just cut me a bit of fucking slack I'm not in my studio I had to go to America for business. I don't have any way to record it over here. To be honest, I don't really have the fucking time. I had to really just do this one on the fly. Like, that's what Bill Burr does every week.

He just records it in a fucking hotel. I'm going to be back next week with a proper podcast. I didn't want to give you a live one two weeks in a row. That would have been lazy so I just said to myself I have a recorder fuck it I'm going to sit down

I'll see what happens there's going to be distractions but I will creatively try and use them to my advantage so I hope you enjoyed it I hope it was a nice change I hope from almost an ASMR perspective I'm consciously using a stereo microphone at the moment

you'll notice now here I am on the right or the left what is this? here I am on the left here I am on the right I've got a stereo microphone normally I use a mono microphone which means it goes right down the centre

and the reason I'm using the stereo microphone is I don't have the piano track this week i'm in san francisco when i have a stereo mic i can give you a 3d aural image of what i'm hearing you know here's a car you know you hear that passing across your ears and that's a conscious thing i'm doing this week because I just think that can be quite peaceful to hear a 3D environment properly represented in your ears rather than just

straight down the middle mono to give a bit of ambience alright I'm going to talk to you next week I don't know what I'm going to be talking about hopefully I won't be too jet lagged have any gigs coming up yes i have a live podcast in dunlairy soon enough a couple of podcasts in dublin in july i think in

the ivy gardens give them a squint all right it'll be good crack god bless have a bit of crack uh be nice to yourself be nice to your neighbor enjoy the nice weather and plant some irish wildflower plant some seeds feed you. Plant some seeds. Help the bees live. If you have available space in your house, on your fucking roof, plant some wildflower. Make it a bee-friendly space. We all need to be doing that to save the fucking planet. Yart.

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 center 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.