The Blindboy Podcast - Disraelis Bannister

Episode Date: June 10, 2020

How the evolution of a moths wings and the painters of the Romantic period were simultaneous indicators of Climate change in the 1800s Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Grease the cheeks of the wheezing priest, you seafaring Jonathans. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. How are you getting on? What's the crack? I hope you're having a pleasant time. Despite the goblin of strange and uncertain times, there is, this week, there's little glimmers of hope. Lockdown is ending slightly. Today I went for my first, my first run which was hampered by gridlock traffic in Limerick. I'm not a fan of gridlock traffic when I'm going for a run.

But I just noticed today, for the first time in three months there was a certain part of my run whereby I had to press the traffic light and I didn't have to do that in three months I was just able to run across the road today I had to press the traffic lights and I realized and the reason I realized is because I don't like touching surfaces for obvious reasons but I pressed a traffic light. And I'm like fuck. Because there's traffic. Because lockdown was eased today.

A lot of people got out of their houses. To go to shops and other businesses that are open. They're not wearing fucking masks. Nobody's wearing masks unfortunately. Everyone needs to start wearing cotton face masks all right if everyone's not doing it it doesn't work it's that simple we can reduce the possibility of transmission by 75 if everybody wears a mask those are the facts wear a fucking cotton mask risk being seen as a weirdo be the person in the queue with the mask fuck what anyone thinks it'll actually build your self-esteem as well i said this a few

podcasts back when you wear a cotton mask you are doing the right thing okay so you can you can say to yourself i am doing the right thing i'm keeping other people safe so if people stare at you strange or you feel embarrassment you know it's like i don't have to feel embarrassment i'm doing the right thing and these people who stare at me strange because i'm wearing a cotton face mask that's their insecurity they feel insecure because they kind of want to be the person who has the confidence to wear the face mask too. But instead of acknowledging that, they project it onto you as who's that weirdo with the face mask on. Build your self-esteem. Sit with the anxiety. Sit with potential disapproval from people looking at you and going, what a strange person

with a face mask, sit with that you'll keep other people safe, you'll keep yourself safe and you'll build your self esteem and confidence, that's a guarantee that practice of sitting with disapproving eyes and standing out

and maybe someone thinking you're strange because you're doing the right thing you will build your confidence and self-esteem by sitting with that disapproval so wear a face mask please protect us all from the goblin of strange and uncertain times but yeah look there's little glimmers of hope

I'm feeling optimistic. Do you know what I'm really looking forward to? Like restaurants are going to be open from June 29th. So I can't fucking, I can't wait to sit down in a restaurant and have a lovely meal and enjoy every bit of it. Because of the sheer novelty of sitting down in a restaurant. And have a lovely meal. And enjoy every bit of it. Because of the sheer novelty of sitting down in a restaurant. And I can't wait to order. A freezing cold pint. And to drink it slowly.

And savour it. Because I haven't had. A freezing cold pint. From a tap. In a long time. And to have it brought to me i haven't had that and i miss it and i can't wait to savor that once again and but i i'm i'm feeling optimistic and hopeful so pubs are going to be allowed open if they quote unquote serve a substantial meal.

Now I did a podcast a little over a month ago and the podcast name was Soda Jerk. I think it's my favorite podcast of the past four months anyway. I really enjoyed that. I like that podcast but soda jerk is about the strange relationship that pubs have had when they've been forced to serve food and i made two comparisons 1990s ireland during the rave scene in order for nightclubs to stay open they had to serve a substantial meal so what happened is that you'd go to the nightclub on ecstasy and you'd be given mandatory chicken curry at 11 o'clock

nobody ate it there was food fights, it would spill on the ground and it was clearly just a gesture, no one was eating it, the nightclub knew they weren't serving food, they were merely trying to get past the law and I also made a

comparison with 1890s New York where they tried to shut down saloons and Irish bars and they said if you want to stay open as a saloon you must serve a meal with alcohol so the saloons in New York in 1890

started serving people sandwiches that were made out of rubber so you'd order a rubber sandwich not eat it and then get your pint we're now presented with this exact same situation again if a pub wants to open on the 29th of june they must now effectively operate as a restaurant which presents a big challenge they have to serve quote-unquote a substantial meal if you're to be allowed by a pint there's a huge opportunity there's a huge

opportunity there there's a massive massive post goblin of strange and uncertain times, we have now a huge opportunity in Ireland to make drastic changes to our culture for the fucking better. Okay? Number one, you know I love going to fucking Spain. I love going to Spain when I can, especially to write.

Okay? One of the things I adore about spain is the culture that spanish people have around eating and drinking you go to a bar in spain and people aren't getting shit-faced they're ordering a small drink drinking it slowly savoring it and then eating tapas really affordable decent small bits of food that mean and it focuses things more on gathering and it focuses things on conversation and it's just a much healthier enjoyable wholesome way to spend time with people rather than all of you getting shit-faced just drinking pints. I love cans, I love drinking, you know this from this podcast. However, I was also raised in a very toxic system of a binge drinking culture and so are you if you're from Ireland or from what's referred to

as the beer belt which is Ireland, Poland, Germany, the UK. We're in the beer belt and countries that are in the beer belt as opposed to the wine belt tend to have a culture that focuses on drinking lots of beer and getting really really drunk and food doesn't really come into it unless it's a kebab afterwards and this is unhelpful and it's toxic and it's it's unhealthy because binge drinking isn't healthy and like i love i do enjoy occasionally getting a lot of pints and binge drinking but i don't like the fact that it's my only option. I don't like that it's my only option. When I'm in Spain.

And I meet my friends there. If I'm there for a week. Four nights of the week. We go to a little small bar. Sit outside. At a table. Order food. And drink moderately. And maybe then on a friday you go to

the pub because there's still pubs in spain and then you just drink if that's what you want to do but you have choice you have option and it adds variety so pubs in ireland on the 29th of fucking june 2020 are being given an opportunity for creative responses and creative responses that can actually change our culture for the better and most importantly

finally tackle our toxic culture of binge drinking which causes a lot of deaths and a lot of misery and a lot of sore heads. So I hope that Irish pubs, instead of looking at this new rule of having to serve a large and substantial meal,

instead of looking at it as, where's the loophole? How can I serve someone a mug full of curry that they throw down the toilet and then they get 10 pints instead of looking for the loopholes why not actually go let's give this a shot let's offer people tasty affordable food that they will actually want to eat and share with their friend as they drink and we're not looking for the loophole we're trying to enhance and improve the experience another positivity from it is i i can't see binge drinking working in a in the post coronavirus environment even when you go to the pub you still have to

abide by hand washing social distancing you need to be sober for that to happen you can't be fucking 10 10 pints deep the last thing you're thinking about is washing your fucking hands or how close you are to another person when you've had several pints so a culture of nibbling sharing affordable, affordable, tasty food and drinking. We can absolutely do that. We've seen it with the fucking smoking ban, lads. I'm old enough to remember. Well, I was too young to be going into pubs when the smoking ban came in.

But I would have been in school. I was old enough to remember it. Everyone said, no fucking way. Smoking cigarettes inside in a pub pub that's what pubs are they're smoky places and you smoke your cigarette and you put it out on the table and pubs are smoky places and you go home smelling like smoke and that's just how things are how are you supposed to be in a pub without cigarettes are you mad and everybody was saying this everyone and then as soon as the smoking ban came in and all of a sudden you had to leave the pub and go outside to this new place called the smoking area it was strange

and then people started going this is actually nice Because the beauty of the smoking area, lads, it adds narrative. If you're in the pub and you're a bit bored and you're just sitting down or you want to get away from someone or you want to see what else is happening, what do you do? You go to the smoking area. Let's go out to the smoking area. Everyone standing up everyone's wearing their jackets it's a different vibe a different atmosphere and the smoking area actually made pubs and clubs way better and way more enjoyable by far i couldn't imagine going back to a situation where people are smoking indoors now is that opportunity with food so you go to the pub you order your pint you have a nice decent menu of stuff you'd actually like to nibble treat it like tapas maybe a few people pitch in or whatever and you have affordable nibbles that simply force you to consume and drink slower you're not utterly shit-faced you're

getting a little buzz and it's about conversation enjoyment and space we don't really have that in Ireland we have go to a restaurant spend a shit ton of fucking money and have a few drinks spend a shit ton of fucking money and have a few drinks or go to a pub and get shit-faced on pints but there's no in between really in places like spain and italy their entire culture is farmed around that in between where it's like are you drinking or are you eating we're doing both and we're doing them slowly another thing that's interesting about it that we could learn from is is and again i noticed this because i'm the paddy in spain but when in spain if a group of people are drinking and eating they tend not to have a huge amount of carbohydrates in the food because what I do is I order patatas bravas

which are just they're like round chips with self esteem issues you know they don't know what they are it's like am I a chip am I a roast potato not sure will I have some ketchup on me oh a bit of mayonnaise as well fuck it mix them together it's pink they're

chips with identity issues but that's what I order because they're the with identity issues but that's what I order because they're the closest thing to chips that's me being an uncouth bog trotting paddy who has to order potatoes

if they're on the menu in case a fucking English person comes and steals them but the people there they tend to eat food that's not like

not a lot of bread and potatoes but instead it's fats and oils and cheeses. And that just doesn't utterly create a big lump in your belly when you're also drinking a pint.

It makes the pint easier. If you're having bits of meat and bits of oil or cheese, then you can still drink as well. But if you lash into a lot of chips and bread, then that makes drinking not fun. So we could learn from that as well. And it's just better. It's nicer. It's fucking nicer. And you can still go and get shit-faced in the pub if you want.

But this is an opportunity for options. Here's the other thing I'm really excited about. A lot of cities around the country are now looking at wide-scale pedestrianization in order to allow for space so if a little restaurant is opening and they don't have the space indoors you cut off the cars from the street and now all of a sudden the restaurant is allowed to put tables and chairs out onto the street where appropriate. And people say, look, fuck it, man, over in Spain they've got the weather. That's true. But if you look at countries like the Netherlands, you know, they have outdoor dining there and they have like little pods's they're heated and it protects from the weather

and the and the wind and we can socially distance but now you've got pedestrianized streets and cars ruin fun in cities they're loud they're intrusive when you have open squares where people can move around and and live a livable city people then want to spend more time in the city that then helps the economy it's all positive they have this shit sorted on the fucking continent for years again the city i go to in spain cardoba you could walk for fucking 20 minutes and never see a car there, do you know, there's all these beautiful opportunities that I'm quite excited about, and I hope Ireland does the right thing, and makes a kind of a mature, confident decision about making adjustments to our culture, rather Rather than the gone bean shit. If a pub.

If a pub owner. Looks at this new. Substantial meal rule. And searches for the loophole. They're failing. They're failing us all. And one thing too with this. Like there's two types of pubs.

And this is a problematic. Thing now that. It's worth pointing out. There's pubs. That have financial backing all right it's owned by a conglomerate and they have lots of money unfortunately most likely these are the pubs that will be able to open on june 29th because they have the money to either put a kitchen in or they already are serving food and then the tiny pubs that are family run they're the ones who might not be able to open and and what what i'd say if you if you run one of these pubs if you're someone who runs a small pub and it's your business and you're worried that like it's like fuck it how

am i supposed to get a kitchen in how am i supposed to get a kitchen in? How am I supposed to get a chef in? Just take a look at what they're doing in Spain. Like, there's a place that I go to in Cordoba called Bar Santos, which is a tiny pub. It doesn't have a kitchen, it doesn't have a restaurant. Now, this place is consistently thronged. And what they have, and loads of small pubs in spain have this it's just like a tabletop refrigerated unit on the bar so it's like a catering counter but smaller just this refrigerated

glass thing on top of the counter and in it are five or six trays of different types of food and this place in particular specializes in a type of a potato omelet that they're famous for but they don't cook it in there they it's cooked off-site brought there in the morning with other food and when you order food in this gaff it's it's microwaved and handed to you on a paper plate and it's delicious so there's that opportunity too i doubt you even have to get a fucking kitchen just look at what they're doing over in spain i'm excited about it anyway i'm excited to see who will be the people that go at this creatively and who will be the ones who just go at it as a loophole that's exciting for me although you know the negative part of me then goes why

when any when any good shit doesn't happen in Ireland, when good shit doesn't happen in Ireland, it's always because of utter mind-numbing incompetency on behalf of the local council, where there's some really bizarre law that stops fun happening. That's just an irish thing that's a real self-sabotage shame combination of catholicism and colonialism thing that we have to deal with where it's just oh i notice you have ambition and goals what are you a fucking yank? Say 20 Hail Marys. So this week's podcast is not about.

Overhauling Ireland's drinking system. So that it's more like the continent. But opening the podcast in that way. Is relevant to what I want to try and speak about. I'm doing a hot. I want to do a hot take podcast. A hot take podcast for me is where I make connections between two seemingly unrelated things and I get very excited about these connections between two things that seem so far apart. And I want to speak about an art movement known as Romanticism.

Now the podcast isn't just about Romanticism, but I want to speak about Romanticism. Romanticism was an art movement in the 1700s and that opened in 20 minutes there where I spoke about how wonderful Spanish eating and drinking culture is what I've done there is I have romanticized an aspect of someone else's culture and to romanticize romanticism you kind of you wallow in in how how unhappy and bad your current situation is and you kind of look at the world that you live in and you go this is dull this is boring and then you look at something outside of your current world a different culture and you say that's authentic

that's brilliant, that's amazing if only we had that we would be happy and it's also hipsterism that's hipsterism hipsters like I'm a hipster all the fucking time hipsters hipsterism

fetishizes the authentic. We live in a society of mass consumption where everything is churned out and made on a production line. So hipsters strive for what is the small batch beer? What is truly authentic? What is the craft beer beer what is the craft fucking this was it made by a human hand if something is made with the attention of one person and it's rare then is you can fetishize that as authentic and that's good and it's an escape from mass production and mass consumption romanticism is the start and the beginning

of hipsterism. And it's a movement from the 1700s. And me fetishising Spain like that is romantic. I'm taking a romantic, rose-tinted, glossy-eyed view of Spanish cuisine and culture. glossy eyed view of Spanish cuisine and culture and when you do that it's not an authentic view I mean if I'm being brutally honest yeah it's lovely over in Spain when they eat and drink slowly and have these options

but I guarantee you there's a Spanish podcaster and he or she right now in their podcast is fetishising how authentic Irish drink culture is, they're complaining about nothing happens here in Spain, we just sit around eating tapas

and we have two wines and then we go home I was in the west of Ireland last year and we went absolutely mad, we stayed up all night in a pub and I ended up in a field fucking on the back of a goat. And it was insane. That could never happen in Madrid.

And I guarantee you that podcast is happening. And that person is romanticising Irish culture. And to be romantic within the theme of romanticism. You take a dull boring view of your current environment. And you fetishise something different as being better, that if only you could have this, the world would open up into an oyster of joy. And I'm not saying Spanish culture isn't the crack. What I'm saying is, no one in Spain the next day ever said,

Oh fuck it man, last night we had a load of tapas and then ended up nude in a fountain that doesn't happen in Ireland it does the crack is an integral part of our culture and the crack is unique to us and the crack the crack isn't just fun the crack is a very controlled

type of chaos that we learn from birth as a part of Irishness it's controlled chaos it's when you and all your friends is a very controlled type of chaos that we learn from birth. As a part of Irishness, it's controlled chaos. It's when you and all your friends have this very loud, excessive explosion, orgasmic explosion of collective fun that is, to anyone on the outside, could possibly even look like a brawl but no one's getting hurt

the crack doesn't turn into violence the crack doesn't turn into injuries it's this amazing ability that we as Irish people have to control a ball of fucking burning chaos like a nuclear fusion reactor and not let it spill out. I've seen Spanish people

try to keep up with the crack, try to keep up with Irish people. They need two days off work afterwards. It's experienced as a type of trauma. The crack, they have their own type of crack, but it's not as a type of trauma the crack they have their own type of crack but it's not our crack and they fetishise that that's why they have Irish pubs

they have Irish pubs you walk into them and it doesn't feel fucking Irish at all they're just nailing shit to the ceiling nailing bicycles to the ceiling like we do that at home but they fetishise Irishness but all of it comes down to Romanticism. And Romanticism is an artistic movement that started in the 1700s.

As a response to a few things. As a response to the Industrial Revolution. As a response to urbanisation. As a response to secularisation. As a response to secularism. Consumerism. These were all new things in the 1700s. Big giant fucking factories. People living in cities.

All of a sudden. The church not being completely as powerful as it was. Instead power shifting more towards factory owners and landlords and things like that the birth of the modern world that we live today the roots of it you see in the 1700s around the same time as the enlightenment as well and romanticism as an artistic movement came out of this it was wasn't so much a rejection of these things but it was a response to him romanticism said we are miserable in our industrial society we are miserable you know if you're living in a city well then i'm gonna go paint the countryside you look at the the

philosophers or the writers of the romantic period uh someone like jean-jacques rousseau who he fetishized children now i don't mean that that sounds dodge i don't mean that i don't mean that way not in a sexual way or a physical way the industrial revolution was like almost before that you nearly had fucking feudalism so the industrial revolution was when people first started to it's like you had a day job you could you could you lived in a house that if you were lucky you owned in a city and then you went to a factory and you worked a day in a factory, earned your wages and came home. And the rat race, the rat race is born in the 1700s.

The monotonous day-to-day, go to your job, earn your money, do your wage and the meaninglessness that that can bring about and jean-jacques rousseau kind of critiqued that critiqued it's it's when humans were like you're now a responsible adult and you turn up for work and you do your job and you're a you're a wage laborer jean-jacques rousseau's response to that was to fetishize childhood the concept of the free the free child that the modern world of the 1700s forces people into being robots essentially that work in factories and it takes us away from the spontaneity and freedom of childhood so it took an incredibly romantic view of the child another thing you see emerging in the romantic period is that it's also it's the age of it's when colonialism is in full swing you know European nations through industrialisation expanding their wealth cotton is a big deal

natural resources expanding France, Portugal, Spain Britain, expanding around the world and pillaging and taking countries that aren't theirs so that they can steal their natural resources as a way to fuel

the industrial revolution back home and then artists then almost I would view it as almost a type of guilt but they then romanticised the cultures that were being colonised so

French I don't know a romantic artist like Paul Gauguin fucked off over to Tahiti and painted the indigenous people in their indigenous clothes one thing that starts to happen in the romantic period is the fetishisation

of quote unquote primitive cultures this harmful concept that's called the noble savage emerges at that time which is pure toxic hipsterism things like orientalism fetishising things that are happening in what's referred to as the Orient

which was a colonial name that referred to all of Asia and kind of this idea that we still have some of it today we still have some of it today. We still have some of it today, some of the problems of it. This idea that people over in Asia have these magical wisdom and powers and abilities that we in the West can't understand. And again, that fellow I mentioned there, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, he's responsible for a lot of this. he's responsible for a lot of this um jean-jacques rousseau posited this concept that 17 1700s modern society of an industrialized society

living in cities turning up for work working in factories had created a spiritually divide form of man where where because we were spiritually divide, living in cities, we were then prone to vices, such as violence, drink, and excessive sex, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau,

would then fetishize, indigenous cultures, and say, these people who, we'd say African tribes he would view them as these people are close to nature original man is born completely

without sin or appetite or the concept of right or wrong and these noble savages that we see amongst the bush we need to be like them which is again it's just a deeply fucked up colonial concept that denies the humanity of indigenous cultures just because they're different and equates them with animals but jean-jacques rousseau in his privilege

was of the opinion that no these people are pure and authentic. So he romanticised indigenous cultures. And again, you can view that as, that's also a reaction to secularism. Secularism being the separation of church and state. Religion was still very important in the 1700s, far more important than it is now, but it was not as important as it was in, we'll say, the 1300s or 1400s when it was all and everything.

So when religion, and it's after the Protestant Reformation as well, when religion becomes less important, people like Jean-Jacques rousseau search for a new morality if the church is no longer the supreme beacon of truth then you search for a new morality in the noble savage as he would have said indigenous cultures who don't operate in an industrial way and you you still see this shit today in films i did one of my earliest podcasts was about a concept that's known as the magical negro which is a trope that's used in films where usually a white character who has a day job and is really successful this character somehow meets a really poor black person who didn't receive an education and even though this white person

in a big fancy job has all their life sorted they end up learning these deep spiritual lessons from we'll say a janitor who happens to be black and didn't receive an education and the audience who's watching in the cinema then goes oh my god that white man with all his education he he he looks like he has everything but how come that black janitor was able to reveal to him secrets of his soul wow that's noble savage shit that's a racist construct

that you can trace right back to the colonial period back to the likes of Jean-Jacques Rousseau which we still have today it's a fetishisation of what the dominant power views to be authentic and pure and free of sin. But of course none of it, all of it is dehumanizing. So I want to look at two separate kind of events or artifacts from the Romantic period that seem completely unrelated

but I actually view a correlation between the two and what I want to look at is one of the things I want to look at is a moth, right and now this sounds bizarre, I want to

contrast a moth right, which is like a shit butterfly a moth right and now this sounds bizarre i want to contrast a moth right which is like a shit butterfly a moth and the paintings of joseph william mallard turner who was a romanticist painter of the late 1700s and the early 1800s and the connection i see between the two is the 1700s was the first time humanity had to deal with pollution wide scale pollution

we're now living in global warming the mistakes of the 1700s and the Industrial Revolution have caught up with us. But the 1700s are the birth of what we would refer to as the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene is the current geologic era we live in. We've had many geologic eras. Going back billions of years, the Earth has had geologic eras. This is the first time that a geologic era, the event, the weather, the climate,

this is the first time that the events of nature are being impacted directly by one species, namely man, humankind, human beings. That's the Anthropocene, anthro meaning man. And the birth of the Anthropocene is the 1700s because of the Industrial Revolution, burning fuckloads of coal, factories, and now you have new things such as smog and pollution and air pollution and dirty rivers.

And why I'm connecting the paintings of joseph william turner the romanticist and a particular type of math is because both i view both of these things as an indicator of the first signs of pollution and its impact on the world bear with me i know this sounds bizarre. So the moth in question is known as the peppered moth, and this moth, and what happened to it, is often seen as, it's one of the examples of change in an animal,

which really convinced the world that darwin's theory of evolution was correct okay so darwin's theory of evolution is a theory that would have been posited near the end of the romantic period of art right but it's a theory in science everyone knows what it is but i'm just going to remind you just in case you don't know charles darwin posited that animals change and evolve by inheriting characteristics from their parents if those characteristics are beneficial to the survival of the animal okay so i don't know if i live in a town where you live and die based on a long nose competition, chances are in a thousand years everyone's going to have long noses. That's a shit example.

But that's Darwin's theory of evolution. If only people with long noses survive and having a very long nose is what aids your survival, then eventually everyone's going to have long noses. And the people who don't have long noses don't get to live long enough to pass their genes on that's the theory of evolution so there's a type of moth called the peppered moth and the reason the moth is called the peppered moth it looks like pepper has been sprinkled on it and this moth is a white and black white and black speckled moth right and the reason the moth is speckled black and white is because this moth camouflages itself on certain trees that have a

type of lichen on them so do you know the way you'd see some trees that have a lichen growing on the trunk and it makes the tree look like gray and it's not the trunk of the tree it's this lichen that's growing on the tree well the moth would stay on this tree and because its wings are the same color as the lichen on the tree birds can't see the moth therefore they can't eat it and the moth has a better chance of surviving but something changed around the uh the height of the industrial revolution 1800s they found in forests that were close to cities like bir, which were heavily industrial, that the amount of moths that were kind of peppered black and white, the amount of peppered moths started to disappear.

And instead, these moths that were still peppered moths, all of a sudden they stopped being speckled and they became black instead. And no one could figure out what was going on what why are these moths black and what was happening was because there was so much pollution and smog coming from birmingham the smog and pollution and smoke and the acid rain that was being created would drift towards the forests and this smog smoke pollution and acid rain it stopped the lichen growing on the trunks of trees in the forests so this white peppered lichen was no longer on the trees and now you just had dark exposed trunk which meant that if a moth was the same color as the lichen then the birds are going to see it against a brown black tree and they're going to

eat it and that moth is going to die and pollution got rid of the lichen which meant the moths were fucked it's like i'm standing out on the tree now and this bird is going to eat me. So certain moths who had whatever genetic trait that meant they were born completely dark, they were now camouflaged on the trees that didn't have lichen. And they're the ones that survived and they're the ones that got the pass on their genes. So moths, peppered moths that lived near barmingham became completely black and there was no more white moths moths that were white and black together and they became dark colored to camouflage against trees where lichen couldn't grow because of nearby pollution but then they'd look at trees in areas where there weren't factories nearby

and the lichen could grow on trees the white and black lichen could grow and the peppered moth remained the same color and this was seen as proof of darwin's theory of evolution it's it's irrefutable now it's like pollution has gotten rid of the lichen therefore the moths that are least likely to get eaten are the ones that pass on their genes and their children then will be dark in order for those moths to camouflage against the trunks of trees and it's it's what's known as an indicator species. You look at certain species, frogs are an indicator species, as a way to find out what's going on with the environment.

So when you see the reduction in peppered moths and all of them turning dark, it means that pollution is killing the liking, and this is a problem with pollution. Where did the paintings of Joseph William Mallard Turner come into this I view Turner's paintings as the peppered moth of the art world and I don't think he knew

he was doing it before we get into Turner and explain him what the fuck I'm talking about we're going to have a little brief Ocarina pause where you may hear an advert Rock City you're the best fans in the league bar none tickets are on sale now for fan

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the devil hey movie of the year it's not real it's not real it's not real who said that the first only peter's equal fifth so that was the ocarina pause that means that a an advert went in there for some stuff i don't know what the fuck it was it's an ad that everyone everyone will get a different ad depending on what what you're searching for on your phone i think that's how it works um so right that's the ocarina pause out of the way support for this podcast comes from you the listener even though I mentioned earlier

things are returning slightly back to normal and people are able to get back to their work with the Goblin of Strange in uncertain times I work in the arts so I don't know when I'm going to be able to do a gig again and not only it looks like when I start doing gigs again it's going to be a very very long time before I can do a gig for by its full capacity a gig that's socially distanced

is not a gig where it's a very very expensive gig where it's hard to earn money basically so I don't know when my income is going to return to actual normal where I can do gigs and earn money from gigs the other thing is I also work in television television isn't getting made at the moment because it's not a very socially distance friendly environment so they're not commissioning new tv so i'm fucked from several angles basically however this fucking podcast is what's it's my sole source of income this is the only way right now that i can earn money and pay my bills and it happens via the Patreon page patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast so if you're listening to this podcast and you're enjoying it

you're taking something from it I'd ask you please to go to the Patreon give me the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month that's all it is this makes a huge difference to my life it means that i can do this as my job and i don't have to worry it's not nice to know not know when i can gig again it's not nice to know that i'm probably not going to get a television any television work this year those are unpleasant things but it doesn't matter that much when this podcast is actually able to pay like what more do i want other than to fucking pay my way i can do that now because of the patreon and because of the patrons and because of ye being so sound and generous so if you can't afford it and you're listening to this podcast please do and if you can't afford it you don't have to don't beat

yourself up don't be guilty i'm so thankful of ye for becoming patrons that i'm i'm doing a new thing now where each month i'm just going to pick one patron at random and i'm going to send you a hand-drawn image in the post right a one of a kind image that i drew myself and sign and get it in the post to all patrons, pick one person out a month also what I'd like you to do you know rate the podcast, leave a comment on whatever podcast app, recommend it to a

friend, those are ways that you can help me and I've started live streaming, oh this is what I meant to mention so I'm on twitch.tv forward slash the blind boy podcast. And. I've streamed twice last week. I did a live music stream.

Which was unbelievable fun. This week. I am going to. Every night at half nine. On twitch.tv forward slash the blind boy podcast at half nine pm irish time i'm going to stream every night this week and i'm going to do it to raise money for massy which is a charity for asylum seekers here in ireland i'm going to stream every single night and anyone who's watching the stream I'm going to ask them

to donate to this charity and provide an address where people can can donate and I'm going to do that every night this week half nine so tune in having great crack I'm exploring a game called Red Dead Redemption but I'm not playing it if you're thinking oh geez I don't I don't want to watch someone playing a video game what I'm doing is quite different I'm not playing it. If you're thinking, oh jeez, I don't want to watch someone playing a video game. What I'm doing is quite different. I'm not really playing the video game. I'm slowly exploring the space in a meditative fashion and talking. Which is very different to playing the game. I'm engaging with the people that are watching and listening.

And creating stories as I go along. So it's not like watching someone playing a game at all. It's much closer to it's this podcast I'm just using the game as a way to tell stories and to inspire ideas and I'm loving doing it it's so much fucking crack so

join me doing that shit the idea for this week's podcast literally came about because I was live streaming the video game Red Dead Redemption 2 the other night because the sun hit the screen at a certain

angle and when it happened it reminded me of the paintings of Joseph William Mallard Turner the scene I just I said it to everyone listening I said this looks like a fucking Turner painting and that's when this idea came into my head it just arrived into my head I said it to everyone listening. I said this looks like a fucking Turner painting. And that's when this idea came into my head.

It just arrived into my head. Turner's paintings. So the thing with Turner. Is Turner was a romantic painter. Turner is someone who. Was critical of. the industrial urban environment. Turner was born in about 1770 and he was born in London at one of the most vibrant times of the Industrial Revolution.

He wasn't born into, we'd say, tenements or slums, but he wouldn't have been far off it. He would have been born into a poor family in industrial london so he would have known nothing other than the horrors of urbanization now i've done other podcasts before about we said the impact the impact that the industrial revolution had on society it caused humans hadn't lived in that density before so it did cause massive waves of crime it caused you know the industrial production of gin in particular allowed free access to cheap free access to spirits which caused huge social problems the industrial revolution in london if if you weren't incredibly wealthy it wasn't a very pleasant way to live there would have been poor

sanitation pollution would have been disgusting there'd have been huge chimneys churning out things all over the gaffer would have been smog it would have been disgusting and miserable and not pleasant um there was also the issue of when humans humans like i said humans hadn't lived with so many people so close so living in mass groups led to a type of a depersonalization where people didn't feel a sense of social responsibility they didn't feel accountable because there's so many people that you almost become anonymous so shame shame is a good and a bad thing and shame has often worked in human society as a way to stop crime as such when you live in a smaller community and everyone knows your business you have more of an

obligation to uphold your reputation but when the industrial revolution came around and you had big cities like Bristol, Birmingham, London people People didn't know who you were. There were too many people living there. So you didn't have to be as accountable and shame wasn't as important and crime and vice and everything came out of that. So it was a real shithole and Turner was born into this.

Turner was born into the shithole of Industrial Revolution London of the 1700s. And Turner is a very important person in the movement of art known as Romanticism. And what did Turner romanticise? So as I mentioned earlier, Romanticism is the birth of hipsterism. You look at the current environment you live in and you say, this is shit, this is making me sad it's the grass is greener on the other sides romanticism the romantic art movement is all about

looking at the fantasy grass on the other side like if yeah if i had to fucking say what is romanticism it's trying to use your imagination imagination to paint or write poetry about what you think is on the other side that's what romanticism is creating a fantasy that isn't real based on a fetishized version of what could be better but it's not real and it's not attainable so what turner did with his paintings he would paint the ocean he would paint huge like one thing you notice with a turner painting it's the complete opposite of cramped industrial london cramped industrial London cramped industrial London is jagged and linear

and stuffed together tenements, sharp lines ugly but Turner's paintings are these huge huge massive horizons of just weather.

He used to paint clouds. And used to paint rainstorms. And used to paint the sea. And you might have one tiny boat or something. One isolated little boat. But ultimately he was painting. The majesty of nature. And Turner. As a kid who grew up in horrible, shitty fucking London,

romanticised and fetishised the great freedom and power of nature in his paintings. Now, where do I see the connection between the paintings of William Turner and the math, the peppered moth that I mentioned earlier and I haven't seen I've never seen this connection made this is one just that just arrived into my head but I reckon I'm on the ball so the peppered moth is seen as like an indicator species. This moth, it changed its colour as a response to pollution, to industrial pollution. But the great sad irony of Turner's paintings, which I doubt he himself was aware of, because I don't think the science would have been there at the time, he was trying to escape the industrial city

and the ugliness of it to romanticise and add emotion to the great beauty of nature but actually when you look at Turner's skies what he's actually doing is documenting the earliest forms

of air pollution and this isn't me pulling this out of my fucking arse about 20 years ago scientists in the journal of atmospheric chemistry which is a science journal studying the atmosphere the chemistry of the atmosphere they commissioned a huge study to analyze the paintings of great masters and to analyze how they painted skies and the colors that they chose because there's no fucking cameras remember there was no cameras and people didn't really know what pollution was so this journal studied the colors of light in old paintings to determine what pollution was doing to the atmosphere

because they knew that artists would be catching this by accident and Turner keeps coming up in this study quite frequently and Turner is the moth he didn't know it but there's a great sadness to it there's a great irony and a sadness

to Turner's paintings that he would try and escape to the countryside, paint these massive, vast landscapes to romanticise. And now, more than 200 years later, scientists are looking at his paintings and they're going, the specific type of red that Turner used for this part of the world in this painting indicates a high degree of sulfur in the atmosphere. And they're looking at Turner's paintings and the different shades that he used to show that what he's actually documenting is pollution. And Turner didn't know that. He was trying to capture the purity and freedom and cleanliness

the authentic fetishized version of nature and he wasn't even doing it he was documenting climate change as it happens if you're a long time listener to this podcast you'll know that about a year ago two years ago nearly I did a podcast on the eruption of a volcano in 1815 it was a volcano called Tambora which it was a massive massive eruption that happened in 1815 I don't think we've seen an eruption like it since and this volcano erupted in Indonesia and it left the world without a summer. In 1815, 1816 there was no summer around the world because this volcano erupted and filled the entire skies with ashes. And if you look at the later paintings of Turner the skies are blood red

because the volcanic ash as it was projected up into the stratosphere it would only allow the red particles of light from the sun to get through. So a lot of Turner's later paintings are blood red. Not just Turner, lots of painters from that period, atmospheric scientists, study their paintings to see the colour of the sky. And there's loads of paintings from that period where the sky is blood red that very very famous painting The Scream by Caspar David Friedrich one of the most famous paintings in the world

I believe it's the most expensive painting in the world and one of them is missing but if you look at the painting The Scream you definitely know it The Scream is one of the most famous paintings ever that sky is blood red and it's famous paintings ever that sky is blood red and it's theorised that the sky is blood red because it was painted when

after this fucking volcano exploded around the world but it's a thing that atmospheric scientists look at Krakatoa blew up in 1883 a load of painters painted blood red skies after that as well but yeah what I wanted to get at was the connection between turner and this moth turner in his attempt to romanticize nature became quite a sad it i just think it's very sad isn't that very sad that the man tried to. He spent his life romanticizing nature.

And ironically ended up recording. Pollution. Like so many of. And he had this thing for. He used to love skies that were yellow. Or red. And he probably thought that that was just a sky at night time. But really what he was recording was. This is just the sky at night time. But really what he was recording was.

This is what the pollution at the time. From London and Bristol and Birmingham. Were doing to the skies. Just like they were changing that math. So that's this weeks hot take. Very hot take. I hope. I hope you learned about romanticism.

You took something from it. Most importantly. I hope you learned about romanticism. You took something from it. Most importantly. I hope I gave you a nice hour. Of distraction. Where you just got to listen. And get that lovely feeling of listening. And thinking. And the podcast hug.

Whatever the fuck is bothering you. Or annoying you. You got a little release from it. And you got to. Think. And think creative thoughts so i'm gonna be back next week i think i'm long overdue a mental health podcast lads i think i'm long overdue a podcast where i speak about psychology or self-help stuff um go back and listen to some of the earlier ones that's the thing there's a lot of people that are new to this podcast i keep forgetting that if you're new to this podcast

always go back and listen to earlier podcasts i try and make a point when i record the podcast to not have them too sequential so if you want to go back and listen to a podcast from 2017 or 2018 it shouldn't really matter they're all separate fucking things and you can revisit all of them so please do that rather than just joining this week and waiting for me next week go back and listen to as many as you like i used to tell people to begin from the start that's what i and some people still do um but i don't say that anymore because there's like 200 and something podcasts but you're more than welcome to if you want go back and listen to pick one at random or go on to spotify and i actually have a playlist of

about 60 of my favorite podcasts that were the most enjoyable for me to make so I'm going to leave you go catch me this week twitch.tv forward slash the blind buy podcast I'm going to be live streaming every night at half nine every night to raise some funds for Massey Asylum Seeker

charity give it a shot it's good crack start a twitch account and give it a shot it's not too far off this podcast but there's a visual element and i might do some live music too if the mood takes me yart look after yourself be compassionate to yourself be compassionate to your neighbor wear a fucking face mask do it for other people not just for you 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. I'm going to make a Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.