The Blindboy Podcast - I finally saw a UFO

Episode Date: August 14, 2024

An episode about choosing the path of least resistance  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Avert your gaze from Patrick Swayze's gaping spaceship, you eight-foot aiden's. Welcome to the Blind Boy podcast. If this is your first time, maybe consider going back to an earlier episode to familiarize yourself with the lore of this podcast. I enjoyed the most beautiful storm last night. A thunderstorm. I'd been looking forward to it all day. I was calling it a tempest. A tempest.

Tempest is a perfectly acceptable word for a storm. It's an old maritime word. But it's a word that I'd keep to myself. Like earlier in the day I'd rang up my ma and I said I'm really looking forward to the tempest later on. And she's in her 80s and she said don't be calling it a Tempest People would think you're pretentious don't call it a Tempest and I said I'm not I'm just saying Tempest in front of you ma I thought this phone call was a safe space where I can use words like Tempest without judgment. I possess Sufficient social etiquette not to go calling at a fucking tempest in the petrol station or to one of my neighbours, I'm not going to wave at my neighbours as they're walking their dog and ask them if they're looking forward to the tempest later on. But in my head, privately, I was looking forward to the tempest.

I just don't like the word storm. It doesn't tell me anything. Storm is like an old, it's an old Germanic or Norse word, and we've lost the root of it. It probably meant something to someone at some point. In a last Proto-Indo-European language, a storm is a storm because we call it a storm, but nothing about the shape of the words or the meaning of the words allows me to emotionally connect with the fucking storm. Whereas tempest, there's drama in that, there's poetry there. The word tempest, it evokes emotions, it humanizes

the sky. To be tempestuous is to internally battle with two conflicting emotions and that's what witnessing a storm feels like. A storm is its nature's theatre, its nature's entertainment, its epic entertainment across the sky. I'd call it a show of power. It's like nature's military parade, a wonderful spectacle of all of nature's weaponry. But it also serves as a warning to let us know who's boss. So I think tempest is a much more apt word. So I'd made my mind up that I was going to mindfully, mindfully enjoy this thunderstorm, this tempest. I'd made a giant cup of tea and I was going to sit inside my back porch with the lights off, focus on my breathing so that I could really notice every single aspect of this, this tundra and lightning.

It had been a really warm summer's day with high humidity. This was about half nine at night, so the nighttime chill was returning to the air. It was twilight and it was chilly and breezy and then it darkened when the tempest came in. These big tall purpley-navy, bruised clouds that looked like a brain made everything really dark. The freshness and the chill that disappeared. The air changed completely. There was this stillness and a daytime heat.

I watched birds blast out from trees like feathery bullets. Scared, insects were flying so low they were practically crawling across the grass. This fucking cat, a cat I'd never even seen before, just ran through my garden terrified and it's the animals with the little extra senses that those animals have. Just knowing. Shit's about to kick off. And as I'm noticing this, I'm thinking about, fucking hell, what did people think of this in pagan times when they had no explanation

for what's happening? Now I'd spent the day reading about storms, so I knew what was happening as it was happening. So the sudden change in the quality of the air, the stillness and the heat that's called a downburst. There's air that's really really really high up in the sky like above the clouds. The type of air you'd smell if you could stick your head out of an airplane and just before thunder and lightning, this air that's miles, miles, miles up in the atmosphere, it gets pushed down to the ground in a downburst. It's very warm.

And that strange, almost creepy feeling of stillness that you get tinged with a tangy metallic smell. It's us experiencing this really clean, pure air from the atmosphere that just falls down all of a sudden. The little metallic smell, that's ozone, that's from the ozone layer. That's fucking shit that belongs way up there. All of a sudden it's in your back garden. And this is very, very subtle. I was meditating with it. So I was taking it all into my lungs and noticing how pure and clean and beautiful it was. But if I wasn't meditating, I'd just experience it as this sudden sense of unease, that calm before the storm. And when that downburst happens, there's also a change in the pressure. Usually a storm happens when the day has been heavy and humid and the air is just full of

moisture. When the downburst comes, all that moisture is gone. You've got this still clean, dry air. Unbelievably peaceful. But also, it's the moment the birds stop singing, and the insects fly low, and every animal is looking for shelter because they know what's about to happen. The birds and the insects, they're way more sensitive to changes in atmospheric pressure than we are. I was wondering how they experience it. See, birds have these things called baroceptors in their ears, in their inner ear. It's a barometer. It measures at atmospheric pressure. And birds have these because they fly, they fly into the sky. So accurately gauging atmospheric pressure, that's very important to a bird. But when that downburst came, I'm out the

back garden, and I noticed this peaceful stillness in the clean air. What's it like for the fucking birds? Like, this was starling time. This was starlings marmorating in all the fucking trees. Late August starlings in all the trees around me, chattering and chattering and then nothing. Complete silence. How overwhelming must the atmospheric change have been to make them all shut the fuck up at once? Was it painful? Do they feel dizzy? Do they experience it as a tremendous anxiety? What would make me suddenly shut the fuck up? And when the birds went completely quiet and the sky was purple and everything was

dark, I started to think, why don't we have baroceptors in our ears? We don't need them. The birds went completely quiet. The sky was purple and everything was dark. I started to think, why don't we have baroceptors in our ears? We don't need them, because we've got such complex brains. I'm able to notice that the birds have suddenly stopped singing. Think about it, and then arrive at the conclusion that a storm is going to come, and then make decisions about how I'm gonna act. My brain, my brain is in a symbiotic relationship with the fucking bird's baroceptor.

I'm part of the ecosystem now, fucking hell. And then soon after that, blinding explosions of fork lightning, crawling along the clouds like a spiky baby, making the shapes of root networks. It wasn't the type of lightning that tried to reach the ground, it was the type of lightning that travels across the clouds through the sky in forks. And it looked like if you upturned a tree and saw the structure of the roots. And I couldn't help but feel like the sky

was telling me how plants grow. And of course I went and looked it up, and in a way it was, because it's all about efficiency, efficiency of pathways. When that lightning forks across those clouds, it's searching for the path of least resistance to minimize the loss of energy. So that's what a lightning bolt is across the clouds.

What's the most efficient way to travel through the atmosphere? Put down on the ground when a tree is growing or a fucking nettle or anything that has a root network. Roots are about energy too. The roots of a plant, they want to get the most nutrition out of the soil while expending the least amount of energy. So I don't know is it physics or biology or a mix of the two but the branching structure of roots that it uses to efficiently gather food from the soil.

It follows the same process as lightning when it's trying to efficiently distribute its electrical charge across the clouds. So that's why the lightning looks like the roots of a fucking tree. Now my human brain can connect those two things together. So to a human, the sky is telling me a story about the fucking ground. Dog bless. And the story it's telling me is that something about the world that I live in,

something about nature tends to favor processes that minimize energy expenditure. Whether it's lightning crawling across a cloud or the roots of a tree reaching for food, they both prefer the path of least resistance. So I was getting great meaning from this tempest. I was really enjoying just sitting down and being present in it, sipping my tea, being mindful of my breathing and feeling safe as well. There was no fear of being struck by lightning. I was inside my porch in a city with a lot of tall electrical pylons all around to get hit first. And of course there was magnificent thunder too. Big rumbly thunder. And thunder can tell us wonderful stories about the nature of reality. You see the flash of lightning in the distance

and then you wait to hear the sound. And of course that lets us know that light travels faster than sound. And I was watching all the lightning strikes above me. Now, I was seeing one way off in the distance and then waiting for that sound to reach me. And then a big bright one would crack just above me and I'd hear the sound of the thunder almost instantly. And I was wondering, what the fuck is thunder? But when that lightning

blasts and creeps across the clouds, the electricity is so powerful that it heats the air hotter than the surface of the sun. And it heats the air so much that the air explodes. And that's what we hear, explosions in the sky. And there was so much lightning above me in Limerick

that even though the rain was falling, the nighttime became as hot as the daytime. The air suddenly got really hot as if the sun was shining on me. Hot fucking tropical rain. It was absolutely wonderful. And the joy that I was getting from this whole experience was, I'd spent the day researching and reading about thunderstorms. I wanted to mindfully experience every single step of the Tempest.

I wanted to marvel at the Tempest using scientific knowledge. That's what I was doing. Marveling at the storm, with the paganism of storytelling and the clarity of modern science. But as the lightning began to calm, and the rain got heavier, and the Tempest wore off a bit, I looked into the distance above the houses, and I saw something that science couldn't fucking explain. Up above in the clouds

was a very large, static ball of light. It emerged from nowhere. It was incredibly high in the sky. About as high as an aeroplane would be. It definitely wasn't a drone because it was way too high in the sky and it was massive. It was about twice the size of a plane and it was a perfect round ball of light that flashed green, red, white and then it would disappear. But most importantly, it wasn't moving.

It remained static in the air, way above me, holding itself still in a very unnatural way, in a way that I've never seen a helicopter or a drone or an airplane. Dude, this was very, very strange.

This was a ball of light. I'm staring at it. Really, really staring at it. I'm rubbing my eyes. I'm looking at it. I'm saying to myself, I'm fucking looking at a ball of light not moving up in the sky,

flickering different colors. It's huge. I reach for the nearest thing to me, which is a fucking kitchen knife, and I hold the kitchen knife up into the air to put it underneath the light. To prove to myself how static it is, I immediately retract the kitchen knife because I'm aware now that I'm holding a piece of metal up in the air during a fucking thunderstorm. But I'm certainly not grounded anymore. I'm not meditative anymore. I'm excited. I'm a little bit frightened. I'm standing up. I'm not aware of my breathing.

I'm pacing back and forth. I'm looking at a fucking UFO. I am looking at a UFO. I start thinking, aliens. I'm looking at an alien spaceship. There it is. I'm looking at a fucking alien spaceship. I've waited all my life

to see a fucking UFO. And there it is. I'm looking at a fucking alien spaceship. I've waited all my life to see a fucking UFO, and there it is. A gigantic glowing static ball of light is there in front of me in the sky, as high as an airplane. I'd forgotten, I'd forgotten that I have a fucking phone. I said, I've got a fucking phone. I can take a video of this thing.

I can take a video. I'm looking at aliens and I can take a video. So I took a video of it. Here's the audio of the video that I recorded of the UFO that I was looking at last night. A completely static flashing light in the middle of the sky. And it's not moving. It's just flashing green and red. And there's a bit of light in it and it's staying fucking still. There's my finger. I'll show you that it's not fucking moving.

I don't know what the fuck this is. I was awestruck in the tempest. You can hear the emotion in my voice, you can hear the wonder in my voice, the fear. I was soaking wet, there was water in my shoes, rain was dripping off the tip of my nose and it tasted salty on my lips. I was manic. It's finally happened. It's finally happened.

I've seen a fucking UFO. After all my life of listening to other people tell me about UFOs they saw, I'm looking at it and I have it on video. A slightly rational part of my brain kicks in and I think to myself maybe this is ball lightning. Ball lightning is an incredibly rare phenomenon that happens during a tempest of thunder and lightning where lightning can take the shape of a charged electric ball and float across the sky. It's never been recorded on video, but if I'm being

honest when I was recording that video, as far as I'm concerned I'm looking at fucking aliens. Here we go. So I immediately post it to the internet. I post it onto Twitter. Foolish decision. It gets a number of private quote tweets, which means people are taking the piss out of me. He's finally gone mad. He's finally gone mental. You listen to this cunts podcast for mental health advice. Here he is posting aliens.

He's gone mad. And then I shared it to my Instagram stories. Instagram is a much more kinder place, a much nicer and kinder place. People were like, wow I wonder what it is that looks amazing. Now the problem is when you're recording a video, like, do you ever see a, do you ever see when the moon is gigantic and you've got a brilliant huge moon outside and then you take out your phone to get a photograph of the gigantic moon and the photograph is shit. The moon is not majestic in the photograph. Well my video of this ball of light in the sky, it didn't look very impressive. The light looked tiny in the video, but in real life when I

was seeing it, it was pretty big. It was a gigantic glowing ball in the sky, flashing green and red over Limerick City and I even tweeted I said lads is anyone seeing the giant glowing ball in the sky over Limerick City nobody else could see it I fucking ran out of my house I ran out of my house in the middle of the storm I got soaking wet I risked getting killed by lightning to chase this gigantic ball of light in the sky, but no one else seems to see it. I'm getting a bit anxious at this point now.

I'm not thinking clearly because I'm in a fucking, you know, a tempest getting my back wet chasing a giant ball of light in the sky. There was one thing that grounded me a bit. As I walked down the road from my house, there's a bit of a green area. And instead of walking through the road, I walked across this little muddy path that people had made in the green area to get to the other side.

It's known as a desire path. You probably live near a desire path. A desire path. You probably live near a desire path. A desire path. It's any path that humans or animals make with their feet, instead of traveling over the man-made road or the man-made path that's there. Especially in like a housing estate, you know, where you've got a green. There's always a little path in the grass that's bare and muddy because people just walk through that all the time and that's known as a desire path. It's where humans create the path of least resistance.

It's the most efficient way to get what you need to get. It's more efficient than the man-made path. It conserves energy and time. That's what a desire path is, when you see it in like a public green or something. It's the path of least resistance that humans collectively create. And people who build cities, they study desire paths. And when I walked through that desire path, it grounded me. It grounded me. See, because I'd been thinking about the fork lightning, and I'd been thinking about the fork lightning and I'd been thinking about the road structures and thinking about paths of least resistance.

When I did that, it made me just go, hang on a fucking second, man, you're soaking wet in the rain, chasing a UFO and they're laughing at you on Twitter. Chill the fuck out. Are you sure it's aliens? And I chilled out and I checked my breathing. I noticed how wet I was. And how foolish it was for me to be out in the rain in the middle of a storm and I looked up at the sky and I can still see the fucking UFO. A static gigantic glowing ball of light that's changing from green to red and disappearing at the height that an airplane should be.

And as I walk back to my house, I open Instagram and I go into my messages. And there was a fadda there and he goes, I think I know what this is. So there was a mathematician from Baghdad. He lived in the 10th century at the height of the Islamic Golden Age. This is when, from Falkin from Iraq, as far as Spain, there was Islamic role and science and learning and mathematics were valued highly during this time. And there was a mathematician called Ibn Sal and Ibn Sal was a mathematician and a physicist who was obsessed with lenses and how light passed through lenses. Ibn Sal discovered how to burn ants with a magnifying glass but Ibn Sal most famously discovered what's called the law of refraction.

Refraction is how a wave can change direction when it passes from one medium to another. Ibn Sal's law of refraction, it's also known as Snell's law. Snell was a Dutch, a Dutch astronomer from the 1600s, law. Snell was a Dutch, a Dutch astronomer from the 1600s, but the law shouldn't be named after him. That's racist European colonialism. Refusing to accept that the Islamic caliphate had scientific discoveries. So it's Ibn Sal's law. So I went like a mad bastard into research into this. So I was out my back garden and I genuinely saw a big gigantic orb of light that was changing color in the sky and remained static.

I've got video evidence. The video doesn't do it justice, but I watched and witnessed and tried to chase a UFO. Here's most likely what happened. What I was looking at, because it was in the direction of Shannon Airport, what I was looking at was an aeroplane. And this aeroplane was flying away from me in a straight line. That explains why it wasn't moving.

The aeroplane was flying away from me, really, really high in the air, in a straight line. That explains why it wasn't moving. The airplane was flying away from me really really high in the air in a straight line. I've seen that before. I've seen that lots of times. An airplane flying away from me so it just looks like a static dot. The reason it was most likely an airplane was because of the red and green lights flashing. Those are airplane lights. But why did I see a gigantic glowing ball? Why was it huge? Why did I see a UFO? Well that goes back to the start of the podcast. When I spoke about what a tempest or a thunderstorm can do to the sky. All that lightning, all those down bursts. It creates all these different layers in the sky. All that lightning, all those down bursts, it creates all these different layers in the sky. Different layers of pressure, different layers of water density, different

temperatures, you know, super heated fucking air, and then freezing cold air. From rain, but as I said earlier, the beauty of thunder and lightning is it tells us that we don't experience things instantaneously. When lightning flashes, I see it almost immediately, but it can take 10 seconds for the fucking sound to get to me. The sound and the light happen at the same time, but that sound just travels a little bit slower. Well, light travels too, and light travels through things.

And when light travels through something, it can change the properties of that light. Like I said, Ibn Sal, he discovered how to fucking burn ants with a magnifying glass. The sunlight is changing and bending and concentrating when it goes through that fucking magnifying glass. Well, the light from the airplane that I was looking at in the sky that was traveling to my eye, whatever different layers of pressure and moisture and temperature

were in the sky because of the storm, it bent and magnified the light so that what I saw was a big UFO. It wasn't a hallucination. I fucking saw this. It's not the same, but do you know when an ambulance drives past you and the sound of the siren seems to change just because the ambulance is going past? But you know it's the same sound, but you're hearing it differently. You know that something about that ambulance moving is making the siren appear as if it sounds differently.

You're hearing a distortion of that sound. Well that's a little bit like what happened when I looked at that plane. I was looking at the distortion of that plane. But it also explains why no one else in Limerick was seeing it. It just happened to be where I was at that time. Like when you're a kid and you see a fucking rainbow. You're looking at it, you're there with your friends, you're all looking at the rainbow going,

there, it ends in that tree over there, let's run to the tree and find the end of the rainbow. And you all run there to the fucking tree where you see the rainbow end. And it hasn't ended there, the rainbow has moved you see the rainbow end and it hasn't ended there, the rainbow has moved. Because the rainbow doesn't exist, it's how you're perceiving light from where you are at that point.

So what I saw was Ibn Sal's law of refraction. Light from an airplane had to travel through multiple layers of pressure and heat and temperature in a storm to get to my eye. And those layers bent the light out of shape, and I saw a fucking UFO. It might also be the reason why, when I took a video of it, it didn't look as big as it did to my eye. But if I didn't have a phone, or if I didn't post the video to social media, I'd be here with you now, pleading with you, telling you, I saw a fucking UFO last night.

I saw it with my own eyes, you have to believe me. I swear I saw it. I did see it. It was an aeroplane that was lying to me through the clouds. And I know that sounds bizarre. I suppose the easiest way to describe Ibn Sal's law of refraction Just get yourself a glass of water get a glass of water and Stick your finger into it look down at the surface of the water in the glass

You probably did this loads when you were a kid You're sticking your finger into the glass of water looking down and it looks like your fingers broken The surface of the water appears to bend your finger. That's Ibn Sal's law of refraction. The light is changing speed and direction because it's passing through two different mediums. It's passing from air into water. So your finger looks bent or your finger looks larger when it goes into the glass of water. Well a thunderstorm did that to me. Different layers of heat or moisture or pressure changed the direction and speed of airplane lights as they reached my fucking eye and I saw a big giant UFO and my mind chose the path of least resistance. I was anxious and

shocked and surprised. This flooding of emotion prevented me from thinking critically so I went for the path of least resistance. I'm looking at aliens. I'm seeing an alien spacecraft full of aliens. So that's the story of how I finally saw a UFO this week, while mindfully enjoying an August tempest. Let's have a little ocarina pause. We haven't played the Puerto Rican Guairo in quite some time. I've been playing the Baratona ocarina for the past, the past month, so I'm gonna whip

out the Puerto Rican Guairo and play that instead, and you're gonna fastest and most reliable internet. Perfect for streaming lectures all day or binging TV shows all night. Save up to $20 per month on Rogers' internet. Visit Rogers.com for details. We got you, Rogers. That was the Puerto Rican Guayral Paz. Support for this podcast comes from you, listener via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast. If this podcast brings you mirth, merriment, distraction, enjoyment, whatever the fuck has

you listening to this podcast, please consider paying me for the work that I put into this podcast because this is my full-time job. It's how I pay all my bills, it's how I rent out this office, it's how I have the time to write this podcast each week. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month. That's it. If you met me in real life, would you be like, oh I loved your podcast last week, Blind By, let me buy you a pint. If the answer is yes, you can via the Patreon page.

But if you can't afford that, don't worry about it. You can listen for free. Because the person who is paying is paying for you to listen for free. Everybody gets a podcast and I get to earn a living. Patreon.com forward slash the Blind By podcast. Also it means I'm not beholden to advertisers. I have to keep a certain amount of advertising on this podcast because this is hosted by Acast and that's how Acast earn money from this podcast. But I can tell advertisers

to fuck off. They can't request or dictate my content in any way. Upcoming gigs. I'm at Electric Picnic this Saturday. At 3.40pm in the daytime. At the Rankin Woods stage. I'm gonna do a live podcast, I have a fantastic guest. Please come along to that. Cause I'm playing a gigantic fucking tent. I'm playing a stage that holds 7000 people.

It's the biggest stage I've ever played at Electric Picnic. Like in 2011 when I was in the rubber bandits, just after fucking horse outside, I played a tent with 4,000 people. I thought that was my biggest ever fucking Electric Picnic gig. It's not. It's this one that I'm doing this Saturday. And I really want you to show up and come to the front. The bizarre thing is that after putting me on that giant stage, not because of my popularity in Ireland, but because of my popularity in the UK, mainly because I sold out Hammersmith Apollo over in London.

So that's actually very odd. There's gonna be people at Electric Picnic wondering, why is Blind By playing that stage? That seems a bit strange. And the answer is, because the promoters consider me to be a big British act. And not a big Irish act. Which is fucking gas. I never thought I'd say that. But fuck it, I'll take it. Been gigging Electric Picnic since 2007, and I'm unbelievably happy to still be working. If you'd have said to me in 2007 when I was gigging to audiences of about 100 people at Electric Picnic, if you'd have said to me you'll still have a career in 2024, I wouldn't have believed it. So I'm incredibly grateful

to be gigging at Electric Picnic this weekend. Even though I really dislike festivals and I'm dreading the sheer amount of people who I'm going to be speaking to backstage. And that's a shitty feeling because I'm going to meet people that I know who are good crack, lovely people who I'm excited to speak to. But I know I'm going to speak to minimum 20, 25 people. And because of autism, that means that next week I'm going to leave the house and forget to wear my shoes or something. Because excessive socializing can cause a collapse of my executive functioning skills.

I've spoken about this in a previous podcast. But a good dose of having fun, having enjoyable conversations with multiple people will impact my memory, my timekeeping and my capacity to set and achieve very simple tasks. What other gigs? Oh, my fucking Australian tour in 2025. I announced my Australian and New Zealand tour last week. This tour is now 90% sold out.

So if you want to come and see me do a live podcast in Australia or New Zealand, I strongly advise you get your tickets now. I'm in Sky City Theatre in Auckland, in the Brisbane Powerhouse in Brisbane, in the Enmore Theatre in Sydney, the Palais Theatre in Melbourne, and the State Theatre Centre in Perth. That's all April 2025. Get the tickets from those venues. But that tour sold really, really quickly. And because it's literally the other side of the world, it's highly, highly unlikely that I'm going to be adding extra dates.

I don't think I actually can, because if I could at this point I would. I should have booked two dates in each city. And then September 15th I'm at the Cork Podcast Festival, the Cork Opera House. You know Cork. And then what have I got? I'm in Mayo. In November, is it? In the Clare Morris Town Hall Center.

And then after that there's a Vicar Street gig in fucking November. But those tickets aren't on sale yet and I've been fucking advertising it for three weeks. I want to stick with the theme of the path of least resistance this week. Because with nature, whether it be the lightning moving across the sky, or the roots of a tree looking for nutrients, or even light trying to get to my eye in the fastest way possible, there's something about the laws of nature that favor the path of least resistance. And I find that one of the beauties of being a human is that I don't have to choose the

path of least resistance each time. If I find myself frequently using the path of least resistance, to me that tells me that I'm in autopilot. Simple example, when I saw that glowing ball in the air, the shock and surprise of this and the fright of it took me out of my body and into my emotions and my emotions wanted to protect me from the frustration of ambiguity. There's a big giant orb in the sky, it's threatening. Uncertainty is frightening. So my emotions told my brain to find the path of least resistance to certainty. And that certainty was, it's a UFO, it's aliens,

and now I'm walking around in a storm with lightning all around me, risking my life. My brain wants me to find the path of least resistance each time and as a human, I don't find the path of least resistance to be useful. Let's take anger for example. Imagine you text your friend to tell him there's a cold film on TV tonight and then they don't text you back. Now you start to wonder if your friend doesn't like you anymore. Have you done something to offend them? You start to feel rejected. You start to feel vulnerable and hurt and unworthy. Very threatening, painful feelings. Now you go into autopilot and your emotions kick in and they say What is the path of least resistance to get you away from these deeply hurtful, vulnerable feelings?

Anger. Anger is the path of least resistance. Anger steps in and says, how dare they not text me back? I was being nice, I was recommending a film. Now anger is running the show to protect you from feeling vulnerable and rejected, because that's the quickest, easiest way to protect you from feeling vulnerable and rejected because that's the quickest easiest way to protect you from those feelings. Anger's running the show and now you're texting your friend and you're calling him a cunt and then they text back and say sorry man I was in meetings all day I didn't see your text and now you actually have a reason to be upset because you've just you've been mean to your friend and

You look like a silly billy all because of the path of least resistance This law of nature that seems to govern everything but as a human you have a choice a choice to sit with uncomfortable emotions to mindfully sit and sit with uncomfortable emotions. To mindfully sit and notice uncomfortable emotions. Ah, I recommended a good film to my buddy, and it didn't take back. I'm noticing. I'm noticing now.

In my belly. What's this feeling? I feel vulnerable and rejected and abandoned. I wonder where these feelings are from, are they from childhood? Was I rejected or abandoned? As a young kid, in school maybe, or by friends. And this situation here as an adult is reminding me of this. I really don't like these vulnerable feelings.

These don't feel comfortable at all. I'm noticing that I want to get the fuck away from these feelings. Let's sit with them instead. Let's just notice them. Let's just notice them and observe them. And breathe. They're just feelings. Feelings aren't facts.

Oh, I'm feeling anger now. How dare you not text me back when I just recommended a film to you. You definitely didn't text me back because you don't respect me and you hate me and you're trying to hurt me. Really? Oh, I can feel my face get hot and I can feel my fists clench. And I'm noticing that my jaw is tense now. These feelings of anger,

they're making those vulnerable, weak, rejected feelings go away. This anger feels useful, but again feelings aren't facts. Maybe it's more helpful to consider that there's a really, really good reason that my friend hasn't texted back about the good film that I recommended to them. It'd be much more emotionally mature to stick with that option. Let's do that and if they don't text back in a couple of days maybe check in with them. It's grand. So that there, that's not the path of least resistance. You're stopping the path of least resistance in its fucking tracks and saying, hold on buddy, I understand that you're just trying to protect me

from very painful, vulnerable feelings, but I'm an adult, I'm not a little child. I can sit with those feelings, it's fine. You've promised yourself you're going to paint a picture this weekend. Something you really want to do, you want to do something creative. You're going to paint a picture, you're gonna paint a picture this weekend. Something you really wanna do. You wanna do something creative. You're gonna paint a picture. You're gonna write a song. You're gonna write a piece of poetry.

You're gonna do something that you know you love. But then you sit down to do it. And these feelings pop up. And the feelings are, what if it's shit? What if it's terrible? What if I don't have any talent? What if anything good I've done before was a mistake? And when I try this and it's shit, then I'll finally find out how terrible I am.

So then you go and load the dishwasher, or you watch a documentary about painting, or a documentary about poetry. Because procrastination is sometimes the path of least resistance. Procrastination steps in to protect you from the fear of failure, those very, very uncomfortable, distressing, frustrating feelings and fears and predictions that come up when you try to sit down and do something that you love. Procrastination is the path of least resistance there. So you can choose to stop it in its tracks. You can choose to mindfully notice, observe, and name

the thoughts that, you know, the anxious, paranoid thoughts and predictions that pop into your head. And the uncomfortable feelings and emotions and the feeling of frustration and fear of failing that pops into your head when you sit down to do a thing that you love. Oh wow, I'm noticing a big fear of failing here. I wonder what that is. What would it mean to fail? Oh, it'd feel like a worthless, terrible person.

That's not very realistic. I wouldn't say that about someone else if they failed. Is it possible? Is it possible that at some point in my childhood, I've decided that my self-worth and self-esteem depends upon how good I am at this task that I'm now procrastinating? That somehow, I'm a good person when I do good paintings or write good poetry, but I'm a terrible, worthless, unlovable person when I do good paintings or write good poetry, but I'm a terrible, worthless, unlovable person if I fail.

That doesn't sound very logical at all. Let's notice and take ownership of these uncomfortable feelings and just push through it and do the task anyway. That's an example there of how we can choose to reject the path of least resistance, that thing that our brains wants us to do every time. Now I have to say I'm only after regaining the capacity and ability to have that type of discipline around my emotions because lockdown, lockdown really, that made shit of my mental health.

2020 was almost five years ago and really only this summer am I getting back to a position where I can observe my emotions. There's a reason I'm sitting down and enjoying a thunderstorm, a tempest. There's a reason that I'm breathing mindfully, calmly, to peacefully think about and observe with criticality the terrifying chaos of a storm. I'm going to the gym for my emotions. That's what that is. I'm working out, but I'm working out my emotions. An anxiety attack is thunder and lightning. Becoming so furious with anger, where you grit your teeth and furrow your brow,

and become utterly convinced that the person you're angry with is a hundred percent wrong and they intend to hurt you. That's thunder and lightning. It's the path of least resistance and I need to be able to calmly observe and label and notice my internal tempestuous emotions so I can view them like a scientist. So when that rage comes up in me it's not driving my behavior, it's not driving my thoughts, it's a bolt of lightning across the sky that I can, I can watch it and I can think about it

and I can know what it is and why it exists and what it does and its purpose. Like during lockdown, I would have spoken about this at the time, I used to wake up in the morning gasping with my heart thumping as if men with guns were kicking my door down to kill me just because of the sheer stress of what lockdown was and I was in that state of hypervigilance continually. For I'd said, Jesus, nearly two years. And I couldn't leave, I couldn't leave my house without checking I'd locked the door about 20 times. And that wasn't, that wasn't like OCD. I was just so in my head and autopilot with

anxiety that I wouldn't even remember if I'd just locked the door. And worse than that, like when I lock the door now, I like, because locking the door your house is important, so when I lock the door I go, door is locked. There you go. I make a mental note and I get on with my day. I was so rattled from anxiety and my self-esteem was so low that I didn't believe my own inner voice. The confident inner dialogue within me that says, yes you locked the door. Yes you did. You just did it five minutes ago. You locked the door. You made a note of it.

I couldn't believe that voice. And that voice, that's my self-esteem. The belief that I have, that I am a reliable, smart, decent, good person who's worthy of loving themselves. And I need that. I have to believe all that about myself before I can even begin to start doing something like observing my emotions critically. Like that business I'm speaking about there. Oh I notice these feelings of rejection and these feelings of vulnerability.

And I also notice that anger is stepping in to try and protect me from those feelings. Let's interrogate and challenge those feelings as if I was a scientist. That's cognitive behavioural therapy. It's also a high degree of emotional literacy. It's also a high degree of emotional literacy. I can't do that unless I believe and love the internal voice in my head that's having that dialogue. I need to have high self-esteem to even begin doing that. What happens when a feeling like anxiety or rage comes up when my self-esteem is low? I believe the emotion.

Oh my god, I feel terrified and anxious. I don't know why. Let's search for reasons to confirm this feeling. Thankfully, I'm not there anymore. I'm now back to the point where I'm happy with who I am and I have the internal self-confidence to sit with and notice negative, uncomfortable emotions when they rise up in me. And mindfulness practice, that was a huge help in getting me there. I'm gonna sit in this storm, focus on my breathing, and try and notice everything that's happening in the here and now in my environment. That's mindfulness practice.

Anyone can do that. You can do it when you're going on a walk. You can do it when you're going on a walk. You can do it when you're eating a fucking orange. Eat an orange and do nothing else but eat that orange. Notice the smell of the skin, the feeling of it as you peel it off, the sensation as you eat it.

Direct your attention each time just to the eating of this orange. Do it once a day for fucking five minutes. And you're calming and training your mind so that eventually you're peeling off the layers of fucking a feeling of anxiousness that suddenly pops up in your throat today rather than believing it is fact. So mindfulness helps me to build my self-esteem. Another thing that really helps me to build my self-esteem is living authentically,

putting in effort to live a life of love and compassion and understanding for other people and trying to live a daily life where my values are based around that so that when I go to bed at night time or when I look in the mirror and negative opinions of myself might pop up I can say to myself no you're a good decent person you're a kind person you have worth and your worth is the exact same as everybody else's it's not fair for you to be talking shit about yourself in order for me to believe that, I tried to stick to the values that are authentic to me and who I am. And I want to end the podcast on this point.

So I was given a real path of least resistance opportunity this week. So every so often I'd get approached for guests on this podcast. And this week I was every so often I'd get approached for guests on this podcast. And this week I was offered a dream guest. Someone who's like an artistic hero of mine and would probably be the biggest guest I'd ever have in this podcast. I don't want to name them and I'll tell you why in a minute why I'm not naming them. This person is one of the biggest hip-hop producers in the world. A genius. Someone who, like I'm a fucking music nerd, I would die to talk to this person and get real nerdy

about music with him. They shaped the sound of hip-hop into 2000s. It's not Kanye West and it's not Timbaland. It's another person. Now it's not Dr. Dre, but Dr. Dre, I consider him a 90s producer. His last great album, 2001, was actually released in 1999. Long story short, I was approached with the opportunity to have one of the biggest hip-hop producers in the world on this podcast, and I said no. And the reason that I said no is because in the past they've done benefit concerts for

the Israeli Defense Forces. I'm not being performative by saying this on the podcast. I'm not looking for pats on the fucking back. What I'm doing is I'm rejecting the path of least resistance so that I can live authentically to my values. If I had this person on the podcast, fucking guaranteed an extra million listeners, the material benefits of doing this for me and my career would be huge. That's the path of least resistance.

I'm noticing all the insecure feelings that come up in me when I think about that. When I think about that, when I think about that possibility for greater success. I'm noticing the insecure part of me that thinks that somehow I'll be a more worthy person if I bag a guest like that, if I get that many more listeners. I'm noticing the insecure part of me that would receive temporary pleasure out of making other people jealous because I've done this. And I notice the feeling of disappointment because this person's a musical hero of mine

and I'd fucking love to chat to them about music. But I have to sit with all those uncomfortable feelings, notice them, and make a choice instead that's based on living authentically with a sense of meaning so that I can look myself in the eye and believe that I'm worthy of self-love. This music producer did a benefit concert for the IDF. Millions were raised for the Israeli Defense Forces. The IDF are the ones currently carrying out genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza. I'm not using those words lightly. Covered in a podcast about two months ago

describing what's happening in Gaza as genocide and ethnic cleansing. These are the definitions of international bodies whose job it is to point that out. So I can't chat to a person on this fucking podcast who raised money for the IDF. It's not really even something I need to internally debate because it comes down to tiny little children. Two year olds and three year olds, who unfortunately I've seen blown to pieces on the internet. Thousands of them. Have you ever met a two-year-old or spoken to a three-year-old? They spend all day thinking about butterflies and ice cream. They want cuddles and love and to not be hungry. They radiate towards joy and happiness. They seek out joy and happiness

all day long. Laughter. They don't understand jealousy. They don't understand hate. They don't seek out revenge. They haven't begun to compare themselves to other people yet. They're the most wonderful humans on earth who think about ice cream all day and just want love and nice happy things. That's what two-year-olds and three-year-olds are. And the IDF are killing and butchering them and putting these wonderful humans who don't understand what hate is yet, who don't understand anger, they're putting them through, the ones that survive, they're putting them through a living hell and torture that I can't even imagine or fathom because it's never been represented in a horror film. And my values, a core fucking value of mine, is to be on the side of those little people.

Perfect, wonderful little toddlers, no matter where they are in the fucking world. And I used to be a toddler, and you used to be a toddler. We all once had a point in our life where all we cared about was butterflies and ice cream and hugs and bright cheerful things that made us feel happy. For that was all we knew if we were fortunate enough to be in a safe environment. And my mental health practice, I'm trying to get back there. I'm trying to live as much of my life meaningfully in that child state, in that free child state. Jealousy, envy, anger, comparing myself to other people.

That's all the unhelpful shit that I picked up after I was a toddler. I have to stick to my fucking values and a huge facet of my authentic values is standing up for and protecting and being compassionate towards tiny little children. So there's no way in hell I could have a person on this podcast who performed at a fucking fundraiser for the IDF. Even though to be honest I don't think me not platforming this person is going to make a fucking difference. It's about living in my authentic self and avoiding the path of least resistance. Chosen internal value over external values. So that I can try and have some semblance of happiness in my life. This person also had a song about being happy.

I can't remember the name of it. It's a big song about being happy, clapping your hands about how happy you are. The reason I'm not saying the person's name, I'm not trying to protect them. You can figure it out. One of the three biggest hip hop producers of the fucking 2000s who shaped modern music today, it's not Kanye West and it's not Timbaland. The reason I'm not mentioning their name is because generally established media like newspaper and radio, they won't report on a podcast. They like to pretend the podcast don't exist. But if I was to say, I refuse this person as a guest on my podcast

because and I use their name, then one of the Irish news sites, because this person is really, really famous, one of the Irish news sites would put that into a clickbait headline behind a paywall, completely out of context. It would be sensationalized, and this would just result in me being harassed online for two weeks. And I know that'll happen, because I'm in this game a long time. Like I even said to you a couple of months ago, I did an interview with an English newspaper. Now they were sound and I was really happy with the

interview. The interview was about art and creativity and they asked me the question, which one of your relatives are you most proud of? And I answered it really quickly and I said, my grandfather who was in the IRA in the 1920s, he was just a 19 year old farmer and he fought the black and tens. A terrorist forces of the British army who were murdering his civilian neighbours. But I said to he at the time a couple of months ago, I said, I'm after doing this fucking interview now and I guarantee ya, they're gonna put the article behind a paywall

and the headline will be about the IRA. And that's what they did. We've got this interview about art and creativity and then the headline says, blind by, I'm proud of my IRA grandfather. And when you click on it for context, you have to be subscribed. Now I said it, it's not wrong. But when it's framed as an out of context thesis statement as the headline, it's unquote and antagonistic.

So I'm just consistently getting very angry, threatening messages from gammon English middle aged men. And I'm not having a crack at journalism there. I've said it a million times, I love journalism and we should support journalism and journalists, but I feel differently about the business of media. I know it's collapsing, I know it's difficult to earn money, but the business of media, even news media, is entertainment. So that's why I'm not naming this person this week, that's why I'm not saying I refuse

this very famous person on the podcast. A news site would run with that quote as a headline. They can't do that if I don't give them anything to quote. And also some of you might be thinking, blind by, would you not bring this person on as a guest and maybe challenge him or ask him questions about why they performed at a fundraiser for the Israeli Defense Forces? Again, I'm in the business a long time. When you're interviewing really, really, really famous people, there's always a handler in the room and if you ask a question that they don't like or that might be damaging or too challenging, then it's straight up,

this interview is over, we withdraw all consent, we'll bring legal action against you if you put it out. I don't want to do any of that. I don't want to do any of that. I want to actively and mindfully notice my emotions and make choices in accordance with my authentic values so that I can be at peace and be happy with who I am. And if I don't have that, I can't label my emotions and I can't experience meaning in life. And I'm not doing this to be performative. There's been plenty of times when I've done stuff like this before and haven't mentioned it. I'm bringing it up this week because it's relevant and authentic to what I'm speaking about. And it still leaves me with a feeling of selfishness because I don't think it's

going to make any fucking difference. I don't think not platforming that person will stop bombs being dropped in Gaza. And I guarantee you, even just right now in front of me, whether it's my laptop or my computer or my phone, there's some type of conflict mineral. Whether it be coal tin or lithium, I guarantee you I'm using some piece of equipment which only exists because some tiny little toddler in the Congo was shoved down a mine. Our system, our system is based on this type of cruelty. Capitalism is based on that type of cruelty to the point that you get this sense that if you try to be ethical in one area, there's another area where it's deeply unethical and it's a system you just can't

get out of. So ultimately, even me making this decision to not platform that guest, my reasons are ultimately selfish. I want to go to bed at night feeling like a good person, so that I can experience meaning and happiness. Highly individualistic reasons. That's all I've got time for this week. I'll catch you next week. I don't know what I'll catch you next week with because I'm busy this weekend. I'm at the Edinburgh Book Festival

next week. That's another fucking one. Jesus Christ. The Edinburgh Book Festival was... It was being funded by some hedge fund that was investing in the Israeli military or something. But last March, I was part of a protest with a shitload of other artists to get the Edinburgh Book Festival to drop that sponsor, and it did. So that's why I'm gigging at the Edinburgh Book Festival and why I haven't pulled out. So I'm there next week doing a couple of gigs. I'm gonna visit a place called Grangemouth in my spare time. It's a profoundly depressing place about an hour from Edinburgh that has a lot of oil refineries, but I'm visiting Grangemouth because there was a band called CockdDoh Twins that I very much enjoyed but their sound was so strange. I need to visit where they're from in order to understand it so I'm gonna take

a bus to Grange Mouth and look at the oil refineries. In the meantime rub a dog and kiss a swan. Gen, you're like to a pine, Martin. Tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk. Go back to school with Rogers and get Canada's fastest and most reliable internet. Perfect for streaming lectures all day or binging TV shows all night. Save up to $20 per month on Rogers Internet. Visit Rogers.com for details.

We got you, Rogers.. Thank you. you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you... you.... you...