The Blindboy Podcast - Fenian Sandwich Sectarian Carrot

Episode Date: March 23, 2022

How the Subway sandwich traces its roots to 19th-century physical force Irish republicanism. also, the sectarian history of domesticated carrots. Steaming Takes. Boiling hot notions Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Boola bus you fussy Duncans, welcome to the Blind Buy Podcast. If you're a brand new listener, go back and listen to some earlier podcasts. To familiarise yourself with the lore of this podcast, you need to learn what a hot take is. I think this particular episode is going to be a little bit intense on the old hot take-ness. It's for seasoned queevas. Well if you are a seasoned seasoned cuiva, welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. You know the crack. The weather is improving ever so slightly and it's absolutely wonderful. The promise of summertime is in the air. I woke up this morning

and there was a breeze and the breeze was actually sweet. I can't explain it. The breeze, it tasted sweet. I think it was the little, all the little buds on the trees getting ready to wake up and bloom into leaves. But it was a beautiful wind, and it filled me with a sense of, I don't know, hope or optimism, which was very nice. That's the feeling it gave me. And then that feeling was immediately dashed as I jogged along the canal

and saw what I believed to be a dead swan. It wasn't a dead swan, it was a bleached traffic cone. And that grounded me right back down to reality again. But I'm glad there's that little stretch in the evening and slightly improved weather because I'm going to Cork this week I'm in Cork for three days doing gigs and I haven't properly been in Cork Jesus

in nearly two and a half, three years lad since the pandemic so I'm really looking forward to returning to Cork and spending three fucking days in Cork, Cork is a lovely city I'm going to get some writing done I'm going to treat Cork like spending three fucking days in Cork. Cork is a lovely city. I'm going to get some writing done. I'm going to treat Cork like a writing holiday and I'll settle down in some cafe because I have a short story I want to finish. I kind of need the weather to be okay if I visit

Cork because there's so many hills. I'm from Limerick. I'm not used to those Cork hills. I'd slide down a street at the first sight of rain. I remember being on a bus in Cork once, beside the Lee. And there was a seal in the river. There was a fucking seal. Jumping up and down, showing off in Cork City. But I was on the bus. There was a lot of French school children

on the bus. And they all started looking at the seal and screaming, fuck, fuck, fuck. Now I couldn't understand this. because i thought that this was brilliant news it's like i'm on a bus in cork and there's a seal a wild seal giving us all a free show in the river jumping up and down we could see him clearly it was amazing so i'm there wondering what why is this terrible news to all these French school children. Is the sudden appearance of a seal a bad omen in French lore? Is a seal like one of the four horsemen in the apocalypse or something?

I couldn't understand it. The word seal in French is fuck. So all these French school children were screaming fuck at a seal in Cork. If you are coming to my Cork gigs, the first two are sold out. There's Thursday night in the Opera House that's sold out Friday night in St Luke's is sold out

and I think there's only a couple of tickets left for the Saturday night in St Luke's but I have fantastic guests lined up and I cannot wait to get back to Cork, Cork Limerick's older brother Cork, Cork is Limerick's older brother

who went to college and ended up actually getting a job and a career in the thing they went to college for that's Cork

and Limerick's still thinking of moving to Australia no Limerick can't move to Australia because it got cut set in hash

when it was 19 so Limerick has to move to Galway I'm also in Dublin although if you're listening to this podcast on Wednesday morning you're too late

for my Dublin gig I gigged Dublin I'm recording this before it happened now and it feels weird so I have to speak in the past tense and pretend I'm in the future

I gigged Dublin last night and in my Dublin gig last night in Vicar Street I spoke to Keith Duffy from Bison and it was probably amazing so that's what you missed out on if you didn't go to my Vicar Street gig in Dublin

although there's two more in April if you're interested just type it into the internet you can't so this week's podcast is like a rambling hot take. As in there's no one unified theme. Well there kind of is. I want to explore some very bizarre coincidences between Irish history and food. Very very strange little stories that I've unearthed during my research. Here's the first story I want to speak about. I'd like to speak about the

sandwich landscape of the Celtic Tiger in Ireland. What I mean is our relationship with sandwiches sandwiches, from about the mid-90s to 2008, and what those sandwiches said about us as people, and about our economy, and about our culture. I'm going to speak about the sandwich wars that occurred at the time. I won't be going into detail about deli counters and hot food counters, because we've done that in a previous podcast called chicken fillet roll okay but i do want to speak about the sandwich wars that occurred between subway and o'brien sandwiches i have an interesting journey to take you on with this and if you're thinking how is blind by gonna do a podcast about subway how's he gonna do that well i can i can make a very plausible and solid argument that shows that the franchise of Subway exists because of violent physical force Irish republicanism of the 1890s. So stick with me. Ireland doesn't really have a food culture, historically.

And during the Celtic Tiger years, which is 1995 to about 2008, certain things shifted in how we consume and think about food. So I'm going to begin this hot take by mentioning the franchise Subway. You know Subway, it's that place where you get sub sandwiches. I've nothing against Subway. I'll eat in Subway maybe three times a year. I remember when Subway first came to Ireland, I would have been in secondary school and Subway as a concept was quite new because it was both austere and excessive at the same time. First off, what made Subway appealing was

it was a fast food restaurant, but when you went there, you didn't feel like you were a fast food restaurant but when you went there you didn't feel like you were eating fast food so even when I was a teenager you kinda knew you can't eat McDonald's and Burger King every day you just can't do that

this food is really tasty but ultimately there's something poisonous in there and that was the vibe that we had but when we went to Subway we were like no man this is healthy look it's all salad you're picking it out yourself this is healthy you can eat Subway every day so people did people did you went to Subway and here was a fast food experience where you didn't have any guilt you felt that

you're literally eating healthily and you can eat this every single day which was a new concept in Ireland like eating out even going to a takeaway before the 2000s it was a treat it wasn't something you did every day it was a treat. It wasn't something you did every day. It was a treat.

Your lunch in school was something you brought with you. You brought sandwiches from home but the Celtic Tiger changed that. For people who don't know if you're outside of Ireland the Celtic Tiger was an economic boom that Ireland experienced from the mid 9090s to the late 2000s. But when the Celtic Tiger happened, it became normal to like buy sandwiches every day for your lunch. This was an okay thing to do. And I'm talking school kids, I'm talking 14, 15, 16, all of a sudden were buying sandwiches for lunch. Like at the mid-2000s made this shit normal. Like, my older brothers who grew up in the 80s, they would have brought packed lunches to school.

And the concept and idea of me being in like junior cert buying a sandwich for lunch, that made their heads explode. They would have brought packed lunches to school and maybe trade a lunch with another person. But the mid-2000s made Irish people a little bit more comfortable with consumerism. And there was two sources, and I covered this in depth in a podcast called Chicken Fillet Rolls. But you had the hot food counter that started to appear in the late 90s in Ireland,

and hot food counters that appeared in petrol stations in Ireland. This is where you went for sausage rolls, potato wedges and breakfast rolls. Now the chicken fillet roll didn't exist yet that's a post Celtic tiger invention. The chicken fillet roll represents austerity it sells you the illusion that you're eating healthily. It could actually be argued that Subway was a precursor to the chicken fillet roll. So around the same time that hot food counters started to appear in Ireland, a little bit later, about the year 2000,

Subway franchises started to appear. I remember like three of them burst out in Limerick all of a sudden. And it changed the way that we ate and the way that we thought about lunch because the thing with Subway was here's this American fast food franchise but when you go to Subway you don't feel like you're eating unhealthily like the petrol station hot food counter we knew that wasn't good to eat every single day. If you're eating wedges, sausage rolls or breakfast rolls every single day, you just know that's not good for your body.

But Subway was different. You went to Subway and you can pick out your salad and you see actual fresh salad going into your sandwich and it gives you this sense of today I am eating healthily and making the right choice and you felt good about yourself. There was also O'Brien's sandwich bars which were, I don't have a lot of respect for O'Brien's sandwich bars, I don't even think they still exist. It's not possible to speak about the Celtic Tiger sandwich landscape without mentioning O'Brien's because they were the sense of conflict within all this.

But they popped up in the middle of the Celtic Tiger. Do you know what an O'Brien's sandwich is like? It's like eating the song Rollercoaster by Ronan Keating. And nothing against that song in particular, just aurally it represents a certain feeling, an era. Like visually a sandwich from O'Brien's. Visually what comes in my mind is a red-faced property developer

in a pink shirt and bootcut blue jeans tip-feeding a pint of Bulmer's. It's sweaty Celtic tiger lies. When you ate an O'Brien's sandwich you felt like you were being lied to in some way like i remember in the early 2000s when o'brien sandwich bars popped up they were aimed at office workers and anyone under the age of like 21 just didn't go in there because it was too expensive and i think the problem was is they were just serving these incredibly basic catering grade

sandwiches the same sandwich you'd get in a deli for half the price but just offering like ham cheese and coleslaw, white bread and then what they'd do is serve it on a plate and sprinkle some cheese and onion taters on it and then charge you a tenner and it did come to represent a type of very Irish Celtic tiger excess it was lies on a plate To represent a type of. Very Irish Celtic Tiger. Excess.

It was lies on a plate. You know what O'Brien's sandwiches were. And the reason it grinds. My gears so much. And the reason O'Brien's sandwiches. Are so specifically annoying. In a very Irish way. The genesis of. The rental crisis.

Everything that's horrendous. About the rental crisis crisis you'll find in an O'Brien sandwich so like here's something that's very annoying Dublin is one of the most expensive cities to live in in the world not just rent but the price of goods fucking Dublin now no disrespect to anyone from Dublin but come on

Dublin isn't Singapore Dublin isn't San Francisco Dublin isn't Melbourne Dublin isn't Milan Dublin isn't Barcelona Dublin isn't a pleasant place to live the weather is terrible it's not even a real city

it's a bunch of towns stuck together. So if I'm living in Tokyo or Barcelona and you say to me this is one of the most expensive places to live in the world, you get a sense of yeah but I'm getting my money's worth. But fucking Dublin? 3000 euros a month to live in somebody's wardrobe and then you step outside your €3,000 a month wardrobe to be greeted by the stench of two day old dog shit that's been disturbed by fat rain

that's what Dublin smells like and you know that smell you know exactly what I'm talking about because it's not even a smell it's more of a it's like a feeling the smell of dog shit that's been disturbed

by rain and cold slimy Dublin limestone that smell is like the sensation of inhaling menthol if you lost your sense of taste. The only

response to that smell is to immediately think of emigrating. And I'm not saying Limerick's any better but there's no one saying that Limerick is one of the most expensive places to live in the world. It's the injustice of it. I'm living in one of the most expensive places in the world and

for fucking what? There's no sunshine, nothing exciting happens, young people can't afford to live there, it's just tourists after tourists after tourists, all the pubs are being replaced with hotels, what the fuck am I doing in Dublin? It's a very specific Irish thing. And O'Brien's sandwiches in the mid 2000's they felt like that it's a fucking ham and cheese sandwich on a plate with white bread and a few crisps on the side

why is this a tenner and you're giving me a knife and fork as well is it what the fuck am I supposed to do with this knife and fork it's a ham and cheese sandwich lads jeez I've gone very hard on O'Brien's sandwiches this week apologies to O'Brien's sandwiches this week. Apologies to O'Brien's sandwiches if you're still around. They are definitely

not sponsoring this podcast. It just had to be mentioned during the Celtic Tiger you represented in a small way a very specific type of Irish greed. Let's check this out actually because I am being a little bit too harsh on O'Brien's sandwiches.

They're still around so I don't want to be too harsh on O'Brien's sandwiches because it's an Irish company and they probably employ a lot of people okay in 2009 O'Brien's sandwiches went into liquidation and was purchased by Abra Cababra so I'm not being too harsh on O'Brien's sandwiches went into liquidation and was purchased by Abra Cababra.

So I'm not being too harsh on O'Brien's sandwiches. Because there's two separate O'Brien's sandwiches. So the O'Brien's sandwiches I'm speaking about, pre-2000, like what happened in 2009? Global financial collapse. So the O'Brien's sandwiches I grew up with, that's your hyperinflated lies on a plate. So that business model didn't work. The O'Brien sandwiches I grew up with, that's your hyperinflated lies on a plate.

So that business model didn't work. Those sandwiches represented everything that was horrible about the Celtic Tiger. And it fell apart. They went into liquidation in 2009. Because it was bullshit. And then Abra Cababra bought it. And I haven't visited contemporary contemporary O'Brien's Sandwiches, but I don't want to be casting aspersions on any O'Brien's Sandwiches post-2009. I'm speaking about a different business with different owners

and no disrespect to O'Brien's Sandwiches now. I'm sure you're doing great sandwiches. God bless you all. I just wanted to say that. I think that's only fair. That's only fair that I do that, isn't it? I'm speaking about a different era. But back in the early 2000s, it was very much, how can you charge me this much for something so basic? And that's where Subway stepped in.

Because Subway was the direct opposite of O'Brien's sandwich bars. Subway felt exotic. Subway felt different. Subway had a line system that we'd never seen before. When you went to a Subway, it felt like you had a dancing partner. Stand there. What bread would you like? I'd like the hearty Italian. Can we move along here? Would you like that toasted with cheese? I would. And what about the meat? Meatballs, please. Now let's move on. Let's talk about salad. It's completely free. You can have anything you like and then boom you get to the till and you have your sandwich. This was new. This was exciting. This was the Ireland that we wanted. This was the future and it always reminded

me at the time because Iraq was being invaded by America and they had this policy called shock and awe. And being in a subway in the early 2000s, just post 9-11 as a teenager, it was shock and awe. That dance, that journey, you get up to the tail and you pay and then they go, do you want a cookie and a never ending fucking drink? I'm sorry, what? Do you want a Coke that's like forever and a fucking refillable Coke, you Irish cunt? Do you want that? So that was it. We were sold immediately. Yes. Yes. I've never heard of this before. We were on our knees sucking Uncle Sam's meatball marinara Mickey. And even better, we genuinely believed that we were making healthy choices. But the refillable drinks, the refillable, we'd never seen anything like that. The trust, the element of trust there.

Take as much Coke or Fanta as you like. It's very American. It's frontierism. It's the American dream. It's the sense of come here and take all the land you want it's there the sky is the limit

and it was in sharp contrast to O'Brien's sandwich bar who were just serving you a ham and cheese sandwich and saying that's a tenner because it's on a plate but in Limerick though in Limerick anyway our Irish brains were not able to handle

the refillable sodas that Subway were offering we couldn't handle it but this then led to a very a very destructive habit in Limerick which I never partook in because I always felt it was a step too far I was never into it

so a tradition emerged during the Celtic Tiger where school boys would go to Subway get their roll get their cookie and they'd get their refillable soda they'd have two

they'd refill it twice and then as you're leaving Subway you fill it up to the very top and as you get outside the door the tradition was you throw a full soda, the tradition was, you throw a full soda at the window of Subway and there's a big splash and everyone runs away. And also the people in Subway looking out the window

would recoil in horror because they think something, they think the window's going to smash. But it's not. It's just coke after coke after coke and occasional Fanta it was like seeing gorillas hurling their own shit at the window of the zoo and then after a while people became desensitized to it so people would throw so many full sodas at the window of subway that nobody inside even recoiled anymore no one even made a sound because it would just happen so much

and I never understood it I never understood the anger of that it's like Subway are giving you refillable sodas where's that anger coming from? it's like you stupid cunts giving me something fucking free. I'll show

ye Subway. I need to be exploited. Do it like O'Brien's. Charge me a tenner for eight crisps. I'll show you 9-11. Splash. And the brazen excess of that, like that was my generation. Filling up your Subway cup just to throw it at the window of the Subway. We did not think that in four years' time we'd all have to emigrate to Australia. We genuinely believed that the Ireland of now would be big tall glass skyscrapers and endless free salad and endless refillable fantas. And Subway died too.

You know, genuinely, Subway was a fancy thing when I was a teenager. This represented a toxic American type of hope. Now, what is Subway? I mean, like I said, I'll eat it three times a year. The only time I'll ever eat Subway is if I have a hangover and I need to order something at 11am there's always a subway open and it's the only place delivering

and that's the only time I interact with subway and when I see a subway now I feel the way I'd feel if I saw a public toilet it's that same like they're so ubiquitous when I move around the world when I go to different cities around the world you see a public toilet and you see

a subway they're just there and the feeling I get is ah god subway it's like you're in Barcelona and you're overwhelmed with choice you don't know where to go or what to eat and you're not sure and then you see the subway

and you just go ah for fuck go, oh for fuck's sake oh for fuck's sake, okay I'm going to end up I'll have to, if I can't figure out what Spanish food to eat at least I know subway is there and I know what's in there for fuck's sake that's what subway feels like

it's the same feeling I get when I see a public toilet, like no one's happy to see a public toilet. You're never happy to see one. You're simply relieved that it exists. You know it's there. It's like alright okay it's one of them toilets. It's in the middle of the street.

Has one of them doors that might suddenly open out into the street. But fuck it man it's better than a bush. At least it's there. And I know it's there if I really really at least it's there and I know it's there if I really really need to go at least I know it's there personally I'd prefer to go to the toilet in a hotel or in a restaurant or even a pub but look I know that it's there that's Subway I think we all know now in 2022, Subway food isn't healthy. It visibly, you know, has more vegetables than a Big Mac or whatever.

But ultimately we understand a 12-inch meatball marinara from Subway is takeaway food. It's not a healthy option. And there's a few reasons we understand this. Subway in the 2000s went through great effort through advertising to lead people to believe that Subway was like weight loss food, that it was the healthier option. But they based their entire campaign

for over a decade on this fella called Jared. I can't remember Jared's second name, but Jared was just this dude in America who claimed to have lost 100 pounds by eating Subway every day. So Subway used him as a mascot, and then he became a convicted paedophile. So that wasn't great for Subway's brand. But regarding the myth of Subway being healthy,

one thing that I feel was a real death nail in the Subway coffin is a ruling that took place in Ireland in 2020. And it kind of went under the radar because of the pandemic and stuff, but I find this quite interesting. So I'm going to use it as the foundation of a hot take. So in Ireland, legally, you don't have to pay VAT on staple foods. VAT is 23% value added tax. So if you're selling a staple food, rice, wheat, barley, children's clothes, I believe as well as a staple product and bread. Bread is a

staple food so if you're selling bread you don't have to pay VAT on that, that's zero percent VAT and Subway which sells sub rolls you know that's bread. When you walk into a Subway and you approach the counter and you engage in that beautiful sandwich dance the first thing they ask you is what bread would you like and you're presented with four or five different rolls Italian, hearty Italian, wheat, oat, I don't know they're all different types of fucking bread so basically for years Subway in Ireland when it operated didn't actually pay any tax on it's fucking bread because bread is a staple food up until 2020

the Irish Supreme Court declared that Subway's bread isn't legally bread because they analysed it and the Irish Supreme Court ruled that Subway's bread contains so much sugar

that it must legally be defined as cake so Subway aren't allowed to call their bread bread in Ireland it's not considered bread it's considered fucking cake and therefore subject to VAT so in Ireland a Subway sub is not allowed to be called bread but even more odd than that, and this is what's been keeping me awake at night for the past week, even more strange than that, Ireland decided that it's not called bread in 2022. But the reason Subway is even called bread in the first place is also because of Ireland,

and it goes back nearly 150 years. And that's what I want to explore right after the ocarina pause because I don't want to interrupt myself I don't have the ocarina this week because I'm in the office I'm in the office nice and late ladies and gentlemen I'm in here and it's at 9 p.m I'm the only person in the office complex I'm not scared of ghosts anymore I'm used to being in here when it's nice and late I like it when it's nice and quiet in here I don't have my ocarina

what I do have is a bunch of keys so let's have a very gentle key jingling pause and then you might hear a couple of adverts while this is happening on April You might hear a couple of adverts while this is happening. On April 5th, you must be very careful, Margaret. It's a girl. Witness the birth.

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It's the mark of the devil. Hey! Movie of the year. It's not real. It's not real. What's not real? Who said that? The first Omen.

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Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com. Quite aggressive key jingling there. And the reason is, is it's not an ordinary set of keys. I recently got myself a tracking device for my keys and a tracking device for my wallet because I lose my keys in my wallet like every day every single day I lose my keys or my wallet somewhere in my gaff and it causes untold amounts of stress so I got two little trackers for it and now I can just press a button on my phone and it rings

my keys and I find them in that stupid place I put them in, in a flower pot because what happens is I'd have my keys in my hand and then I get an unexpected phone call and as soon as that happens I'll put the keys down somewhere absolutely silly when I'm on the phone and I can't find them, so I can ring my keys

now and then the same thing at my wallet, because about Or absolutely silly when I'm on the phone and I can't find them. So I can ring my keys now. And then the same thing at my wallet. Because about. 36 times a year. About 36 times a year. I will misplace my wallet. For a day. And I'll have that full day of anxiety.

Where I'm like. Did I actually lose all my credit cards and I need to have them cancelled or are they simply down a couch somewhere so that doesn't happen anymore because I got trackers for my keys and my wallet I'm not going to tell you what brand I used

because that would be a free advertisement for that brand but I would recommend that if you if you misplace things get yourself some fucking trackers support for this podcast comes from you the listener via the patreon page patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast if you like this podcast if you're enjoying it if you listen to it regularly if it provides you with a little space for calm or solace or entertainment, please consider paying me for that work. This podcast is my full-time job. This podcast is how I earn a living. I adore making this podcast. It's the highlight of my week. I adore this work. It provides me with a great sense of meaning. The only reason I'm able to put out

this podcast once a week as a monologue essay is because it's my full-time job. I have the time to research and to think about what I want to speak about each week. So if you enjoy that and you're taking something from it, just consider paying me for the work. I'm looking for the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month that's it if you can't afford that don't worry about it because someone else is paying for you to listen for free

if you can't afford it you're paying for someone else to listen for free so every single person gets a podcast I get to earn a living it's a wonderful model that's based on kindness and fairness and soundness. And also being a patron of this podcast keeps the podcast independent. It means that I get to make the podcast that I want to make. I get to speak about what I'm genuinely passionate about each

week and I don't have to think about brands. This is a podcast that's basically shitting on Subway and I don't have to worry about upsetting Subway. Don't have to worry about upsetting an advertiser that represents Subway in case that might affect my capacity to work with some other brand. They can all fuck off. No brand gets to dictate the content on this podcast. No advertiser gets to tell me you have to speak about this don't speak about this it's it's a competing brand this is the world of entertainment lads that's the world of media brands and advertisers when they pay for a podcast dictate the content and decide what the content is we don't have to worry about that here because we're not dependent on advertisers if someone wants to advertise here they do it on my terms or else they don't so the patreon model keeps that possible makes that possible and keeps the podcast fully

independent so support all independent podcasts not just mine whatever independent podcast you're listening to and you're enjoying, just support it. Monetarily, share it, tell someone about it, leave a review, leave a comment. Because the podcast space is changing rapidly. If you've been listening to podcasts for the past decade, you'll notice the past

two years, podcasts have become very, very different. There's a huge amount of money being pumped into podcasts. A lot of big corporate fucking big name podcasts are getting produced, quality is dropping, podcasts are turning into radio

the thing that made podcasts beautiful is disappearing because money is destroying it basically so if there's an independent podcast that you like and you enjoy support that podcast I won't be on Twitch this week because I'm going to be down in Cork

I'm going to be down in Cork on Thursday night doing the gigs, there'll be no live stream on Twitch this week but hopefully there will be one next week patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast so here's the very very bizarre story of how subway bread got its name in the first place now if you're a 10 foot kevin and you've

listened to all 300 episodes of this podcast you will notice a thematic overlap here because i spoke about some of the following story in a podcast back in 2018 I believe but I didn't speak about it in this context. So in order to fully understand the American sandwich chain subway we need to go to Ireland in 1881 and to an Irish engineer in the 1880s by the name of John Philip Holland. Now John Philip Holland was like an eccentric Irish inventor who lived

in Kilkee which is close enough to Limerick it's on the west coast in Clare. And John Philip Holland was an engineer who'd become obsessed with building a ship that would work underneath water. Because that hadn't been done yet.

There was no such thing as a ship that went underneath water. Because John Philip Holland in Kilkee in 1880 was inventing it. So what John Philip Holland was inventing was a submarine. The submarine was invented by an Irishman. was inventing was a submarine. The submarine was invented by an Irishman. But if you're living in Ireland in like 1880, having an idea in your head for a submarine, you know, what are you going to do? Go down to the fucking local pub and tell the lads? So what he did is he moved to America. He moved to Boston because he knew that this idea of a ship that can go underneath water,

if he just finds someone who can give him the money to build it, that this could be an invention that would change the world. So he went to the US Navy and said, lads, I've got an idea for a ship that can go underwater. You can hide the ship under the water, you won't even see it. And the US Navy just said, look at this mad Irish bastard. No, we're not wasting money on your crazy invention of a ship that goes underneath the water. Fuck off. So John Philip Holland is down on his luck. He's an Irish inventor written off as an eccentric with an idea for an underwater ship and nobody

will fund it because it's too mad. So he's going around all the Irish pubs in Boston and then he gets talking to some lads and these lads are in the Fenian Brotherhood. Now the Fenian Brotherhood was the American counterpart to the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Effectively they're the IRA before the IRA. And John Philip Holland tells these lads about his idea for a ship that can go underneath the water. So the Fenians say, fuck yeah, we'll give you money for that. We could use that to sink british ships let's go so now effectively the ira in america are funding the world's first ever submarine

so holland finally gets to building his vision this submarine is no longer a thing in his head he can now fucking build it so he does and he builds this little submarine which became known as the Fenian Ram it was small enough about the size of a van it could fit two people but it went underwater it was a submarine and it had a little gun on it but then he started to argue with the Fenians about funding so the Fenians stopped funding it and they had a falling out but the Fenians were like this comes after building a fucking submarine

this is a secret weapon this is the only one in the world the Brits haven't even heard of it and we're after funding this thing so he's not keeping it so now the Fenians stole the Fenian ram the world's first submarine

but they hadn't a clue how to use it because John Philip Holland was no longer involved so now they just had this boat that they know can go underwater but they haven't a clue how to use it so now the Fenians and the Irish Republican Brotherhood were like shit okay so we've got this

the world's first ever submarine we don't know how to use it we can't put it into water what are we gonna do so then they said why don't we display the Fenian ram in museums and charge people to see it. So that's what they did. The Fenians, the IRA, toured America with their submarine and put it into museums and raised money for the fight back in Ireland. From the 1880s, the 1890s and the 1910s, this submarine was touring America in museums but at the same time America was seeing an influx of Italian immigrants. Now all around the area of Maine, New England, Boston around the

19 around 1900 all these Italian people were coming in and a lot of them were working on the docks of these areas. Now these Italian people were used to eating Italian meats like salami and prosciutto but it's not back home. They can't sit down in the sun and take out a platter and eat prosciutto on its own with some cheese or with some olives. Now they're in America, they're in Boston, they're working on the docks and they've got a short lunch break. So what happened is other

Italian immigrants started to cater to this by inventing the Italian sandwich. So you'd have Italian lads going around in carts and they're selling people a roll that was about six inches long and filled it with prosciutto, salami and Italian cheeses and they would sell this to Italian dock workers and the Italian sandwich was born in America there and then. And the Italian sandwich became very popular with Italian Americans who were making food, who were providing food

so then what happens right sometime around 1916 I think it was the Feeney and Ram, this Irish American fucking submarine was touring in a museum in New Jersey

and there was an Italian grocer by the name of Dominic Conti and Dominic Conti was selling these Italian sandwiches in his grocery and he made this special bread that was just the right size for these sandwiches but he didn't have a name

for it so Dominic Conti walks into the museum sees the IRA's submarine and then says to himself, that IRA's submarine looks a bit like the bread that I'm making. I think I'm going to call this bread a sub. So that's why Subway is called Subway.

Because the fucking IRA built the submarine in the 1880s. the submarine in the 1880s and now in 2022 the Irish government have decided that Subway's subs are not legally called bread so by sheer bizarre coincidence Ireland is both the birth and death of the sub and its status as a bread roll and And what became of John Philip Holland? He moved on, and the US Navy took him seriously, and he went on to design the world's first submarines. One of them was called the USS Holland. And I think to this day, there are still submarines in the US Navy named after Holland. But yeah, an Irishman from fucking Kilkee invented the submarine. Now I said at the start of this podcast I wanted to speak about the relationship

between foods and Irish history, these strange little relationships that I find when I'm researching these things, these odd coincidences that I completely obsess over and I just need to get them out of my system so we've established Subway would not be called Subway if the IRA hadn't funded a submarine in the 1880s we've gotten that out of the way

another thing when I used to go into Subway in those Celtic Tiger days when I cared about Subway oneway in those Celtic Tiger days when I cared about Subway one of the reasons I never partook in the refillable sodas and smashing it off the window

one of the reasons I never partook in the refillable soda is when you went and got your sub in Subway during the Celtic Tiger you got the meal deal, I want a sandwich

I want a drink and I want a cookie so I'd always go for the Sunny Delight instead of the refillable soda because I used to fucking love Sunny Delight, I used to go mad for Sunny Delight in the late 90s, early 2000s there was something addictive in it I used to go mad for Sunny Delight in the late 90s, early 2000s. There was something addictive in it. I used to buy the three litre bottles of Sunny Delight. Three litres lads and I'd go through live in a house that was so cold that I used to have to piss into a bottle

rather than leave the bedroom at night time and risk getting more cold I'd piss into a bottle the greatest piss bottle available to humankind is a 3 litre Sunny Delight bottle 3 litres so you never have to worry

if you have a huge piss it doesn't matter you're always safe. And the Sunny Delight mouth was wide, which was very, very important if I woke up on a piss horn. Milk bottles are risky when a piss horn is involved. If you don't know what a piss horn is, it's when you need to go for a piss so much that your bladder expands and causes an involuntary erection. So three litre Sunny Delight bottle all the way. But when I was in Subway, I used to get the small bottles of Sunny Delight.

And then it suddenly stopped. And I'll tell you why it stopped. Because the news started reporting that if you drank enough Sunny Delight in a day, you could literally go orange. Your skin would turn orange. And there was reports of children drinking 1.5 litres of Sunny Delight a day and they would go bright orange. And it was real. It was a thing that was happening. And I became terrified because I'm Mr. 3 litres of Sunny Delight.

But yeah, it's true. There is a chemical in Sunny Delight called beta carotene. And this chemical, if you take enough of it, will turn your skin yellow or orange. If you buy tanning pills, tanning pills are basically pure beta carotene. If you buy tanning pills, you will go orange and yellow. And if you drink enough Sunny Delning pills you will go orange and yellow and if you drink enough sunny delight you will go orange. But beta carotene as you can tell by the name comes from carrots. In fact beta carotene is what makes carrots orange. Now the thing is carrots weren't always orange.

A carrot in its wild state looks much closer to a parsnip. Carrots are a pale white colour in their natural, undomesticated state. So why are carrots orange? About a thousand years ago, carrots were purple. Because when carrots come from Iran and Iraq, and they think that humans just started to naturally breed carrots that were like dark yellow or purple so that farmers could differentiate those carrots from wild carrots but where did orange carrots come from so there's a theory now it's not a hundred percent proven but it's a very plausible theory here's's what we do know. All modern carrots that we buy today are orange. When I say carrot to you, you think of

a fucking orange vegetable. You don't think of purple. If I say to you a blonde carrot it doesn't exist. You're going to think of a parsnip. Carrots are fucking orange. All carrots in the world today can be traced back to one Dutch town called Hoorn in the world today can be traced back to one Dutch town called Hoorn in the 16th century during the time of William of Orange.

Now William of Orange was a Dutch prince. He was from the House of Orange. But long story short, William of Orange is not great for the history of Ireland because William became the King of England and he won a battle at the Battle of the Boyne in Drogheda basically the victory of William of Orange ensured the Protestant descendancy in Ireland it's what the roots of the penal laws the roots of the potato famine bad shit started in Ireland when William of Orange became King of England. So basically the theory is, is that carrots are orange because of William of Orange. The Dutch, as a way of almost exporting nationalism, the Dutch have always been huge when it comes to growing crops and exporting food.

The Dutch were exporting all these orange carrots to England to parts of Europe as a way to export a sense of nationalism to make the color orange really popular and to associate the color orange with the Netherlands and also to promote Protestantism and that's why carrots are orange but that same orange is one of the symbols of sectarianism. In Belfast or in Derry, you've got orange men on orange marches. Even the Irish flag. We have the green represents the kind of unionist protestant community and then the white in between represents the potential for peace so that's a plausible reason as to why carrots are orange because of william of orange the one thing we do know is that all modern carrots are orange because of the dutch in the 16th century. And then the Dutch national colour is orange. You had fucking William of the House of Orange.

It's not absurd to think that the Dutch were deliberately breeding orange carrots as an act of vegetal nationalism and sectarianism. Another thing I'd like to speak about, which again falls in under the theme of this episode, is banana flavouring. Now when you eat anything that's banana flavoured. Like banana flavoured sweets. Or banana ice cream.

You can't help but notice that it doesn't actually taste like bananas. It tastes like what you've been told bananas taste like. But it doesn't taste like bananas. If you go and get a banana and eat it, it's not going to taste like banana flavouring, or even smell like banana flavouring. Why is that? So I was reading up about bananas.

So the bananas that we eat today, they're a breed known as a Cavendish banana. And when banana flavouring was invented, which I think was either the late 1900s or the early 20th century, when banana flavouring was invented, the flavouring was based on a different type of banana known as the Grosse Michelle banana. And the Grosse Michelle banana, before about 1950, was the main banana in the Grosse Michelle banana before about 1950 was the main banana in the world

so that's where banana flavoring comes from but the thing is with the Grosse Michelle banana it was susceptible to a disease called Panama disease so whole crops of this banana would regularly be completely wiped out because of this disease they'd be grown in South America around Panama, Costa Rica and in Central America so when you taste banana flavouring you're tasting a banana that's

it's not extinct but it's not really grown anymore because it's so unreliable it's so susceptible to disease so the bananas that we eat the fucking Cavendish banana that's a banana that can resist this Panama disease but anyway here's how this banana bizarrely relates to Irish history now I've done a podcast before entirely on bananas bananas are one of the most fascinating fruits you can come across.

I can't remember that podcast. It's from 2018. It's all about bananas. And here's the thing with bananas, right? American imperialism. If you look at what America does to the Middle East with oil, America practiced those tactics on Central America in the 1800s with bananas. The banana industry was essential to American imperialism. But anyway, in the 1920s, this Grosse Michelle banana, there was an outbreak of Panama disease and a worldwide banana shortage was caused as a result of this disease. And in 1923, there was such a fucking banana shortage that one of the most popular songs in the world, it was a novelty song,

there was this really, really popular song called Yes, We Have No Bananas. I'll play you an excerpt here. There's a fruit man on our street whose name is Mr. Pete and he keeps good things to eat but you should hear him speak. When you ask him anything he never answers no. He just yeses you to death

and then he takes your dough. Oh yes! We know God of the banana. We know God of the banana. We know God of the banana today. But if you listen to that song, that was the biggest song in the world. And that song existed because there was a banana shortage because of this disease. But, as I'd mentioned previously, carrots became orange most likely because of William of Orange. And this orange colour found its way into sectarian divides in Ireland

because you had orange men who were Protestants, who were Unionists. And then you had Nationalists who were most often Catholics. Well, in 1932, in Belfast, there were these widespread protests about a thing called outdoor relief outdoor relief would have been like a primitive form of social welfare in the 1930s but in Belfast there was protests about outdoor relief people wanted more social welfare And the thing is with this protest is that it wasn't sectarian. If you were poor, whether you were Catholic or Protestant, it didn't matter.

This outdoor relief issue affected you. So people ended up protesting. But the issue was, you now had unionists and nationalists, Catholics and Protestants in Belfast protesting together because they're all protesting against the same thing, which was very odd

because these communities wouldn't normally mix with each other. And one thing they found when they were protesting is they couldn't sing any songs because the unionists only sang songs that were kind of sectarian and anti-Catholic and then the Catholic Nationalists only knew songs that were considered sectarian

too, so they had nothing to sing at their protest because they're all together protesting together so what they did is they sung Yes We Have No Bananas, because it was the only song that all of them knew that had zero sectarianism in it. So that's this week's series of little hot takes.

Micro hot takes, if you will, that have loose, bizarre connections between food flavourings And Irish history. I'm going to be back next week. I might be back next week. With an interview. With a very very cool guest. Knocky Duffy.

Although I will probably put that out. I may have a very special guest. Next week. I just have my fingers crossed. To see if I can actually get an opportunity to interview him sometime this week and I'm not sure

so I may be back with that next week hopefully if not I'll have a little hot take I don't know in the meantime mind yourself

have an enjoyable week rub a dog kiss a cat enjoy the slightly longer evenings and the sweet breeze enjoyable week. Rub a dog, kiss a cat, enjoy the slightly longer evenings and the sweet breeze. And mind yourself, 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 you