The Blindboy Podcast - I've recorded a podcast every week for the past eight years and I'm taking one week off

Episode Date: October 21, 2025

Eight year anniversary episode  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Book on emirates.ca. Bend heaven in the end of a tenement, you ten-foot declines. Welcome to the Blind by podcast. This week is the eight-year anniversary of this podcast. This week, in 2017, fucking 20th, the before times of 2017, I put out my first ever podcast. I'm not expecting anyone to be interested or to listen to. it. It's just I'd written a book, I'd written a book of short stories. My first ever book

of short stories. And I was like, how am I going to convince people? Because I adored my first book of short stories, the gospel according to blind by. Absolutely loved it. And I'm like, how can I convince people that my book is worth reading? Well, I'm going to fucking read it to him. I'm going to read my book to people. I didn't think the podcast would last. beyond maybe four episodes my actual book The Gospel According to Blindby that came out

I think it was the 27th of October 2017 so I'd initially thought I'm gonna put out maybe I'm gonna read four short stories four short stories to try and plug and promote this book fuck it

why not what's the worst that can happen what happened was the podcast was the most successful thing to ever happen to me in my career up to that point. I'd been an unsuccessful comedy musician before this podcast. That book, my first book of short stories in this podcast, completely changed my life, changed my life and change my career. And that started eight years ago this week. And since then, I've released the podcast every single week, every single week. I have not missed one week

in eight years and I've written three books in that period and I've made I don't even know five or six documentaries and I've been nominated for awards and the first ever episode of this podcast

did you read about Arskine Fogarty was turned into an award-winning short film so I was thinking this week how the fuck do I celebrate eight years of this podcast and I think I think I'm going to take the week off and I say that because

it's what feels right every week I follow my passion every week I follow my passion this week the universe is telling me to take a break it's not just the universe that's telling me so there's this neuroscientist called Dr Michael Keen

He was a medical doctor, then he became a neuroscientist, and he's an expert in neurotechnology. He scans people's brain activity. He's done it to thousands of people to map the activity of people's brains. And so anyway, a couple of months ago, Dr. Michael Keane, he'd read one of my short stories, specifically a short story called Pamela Fags from my last book, Topography, Hibernica. He read Pamela Fags

and whatever it was about that particular story, the way that I was able to connect seemingly unconnected ideas and to connect them and to make them make sense. Michael Keane just went, I need to scan the brain

of the person who wrote this. I'm very fascinated to see what this person's brain activity is like. So he reached out to me. He reached out to me and said, can I scan your fucking brain? Can I give you an EEG scan? Which is, it's an electroencephalography scan and it measures brain activity. So I went and had the scan and it was wonderfully fascinating. And I wanted to speak about, I wanted to speak about that scan and the findings of it this week

and what it showed me about my brain. It was fascinating. It was absolutely fascinating and it painted, And it painted a fairly fucking accurate picture of me, but one thing that I did point out is I do have the brain of a person who's under chronic stress, prolonged burnout, a consistently active brain that doesn't seem to switch off. At one point at a scan, he showed me an image of my brain and said, this is something I'd have to clarify with him. But the gist was, there's neurons firing in my brain that other people would have to take drugs in order for that to be going on whereas for me that's just how it is

but I also said to him look every week for the past fucking eight years I do it a deeply intense podcast where sometimes I might work from seven in the morning until six or seven the next day I'll go like 24 hours straight working with no sleep I go into obsessive, deep focus and research and writing that I don't come out of and I do it because I love doing it, I adore doing it

but I've done this every single week for eight years and now I'm looking at a brain scan that's showing that to me it's showing me that it's quite a stressed brain, quite a stressed brain burnt out that doesn't get a chance to stop and that's not autism but the autistic part

maybe a norotypical person would have given up by now the thing with being so this scan obviously can't show if somebody's autistic but it will show results that you would see in other nora divergent people or other people who are

engaged in high levels of performance or creativity the thing is with autistic people. If we're engaged in our passions, like there isn't an off switch. Flow, as I call it, or hyperfocus as other people would call it. When I'm in flow, I don't know, I don't know this time passing. I don't, I'll forget how to eat or when to eat. I fucking, I'll walk out into the street with one shoe on. All of this stuff comes at a price. And all I'm saying is this week I saw a scan. in my brain and it showed me the fucking price.

And the thing is, when you're seeing that much stress in your brain, it's a tough one because I'm not necessarily deeply, mentally unhealthy. There's different types of stress. There's positive stress and negative stress. So positive stress, that's energized focus, purpose, excitement, creative flow. I get loads of that. And then you've got your negative stress, which is feeling overwhelmed, fatigued. anxious, depleted, burn out.

I don't want to get into it too much because if I get into it too much, now I'm doing a podcast. My biggest fear is having to work a normal job. What I mean by that is a job that requires me to perform as a neurotypical person, a job that requires

social interaction with people. I don't want to be back in school. I don't want to be back in school. A lot of jobs are like being back in school. okay, school didn't go very well for me. Quite a lot of neurodivergent people tend to have difficulty with employment and the neurodivergent people who find employment,

you tend to see a lot of people in the arts, a lot of people in the arts. Whether they know that they're neurodivergent or not, they will end up finding and creating jobs and environments that actually are subtle accommodations for their own neurodivergence. And this can mean working in isolation for long periods of time, making your own schedule with your work, having a job where you don't have to wear a uniform

or don't have to wear a suit or whatever clothes that might be uncomfortable, that you can have a job where you can wear your comfy clothes all day, or be nude if that's what works for you. Or most importantly, a job, whereby you are focusing on the things that you're passionate about and that is also what pays your bills. So the lucky Nora Divergent people they tend to find these type of careers for themselves

because we live in a capitalist society, okay? And at the end of the day it comes down to how are you paying your bills? How are you surviving? I'm one of the lucky Nora Divergent people in that I've found a job and a career whereby I can earn a living while accommodating most of my fucking needs and I try to live on the edge of that

like you know I work in a fucking office building I'm here now I'm in a corporate office building surrounded by solicitors accountants all of this shit like the reason I do that I'm going to explain this to the neuroscientist again he looked at me like I was fucking mad

but again this is that this is why he was scanning my brain it's the connecting things that seem seemingly unconnected the reason I work in an office I'm actually inspired by Tibetan monks that meditate around

rotting corpses and I've mentioned this many times but there's Buddhist monks in Tibet and in this area of Tibet in the mountains the soil is very rocky so when someone dies they don't bury this person in the ground

instead what they do is a Tibetan sky burial. They leave the body on a mountain and vultures pick at the bones and scatter the dead body around the valleys. See, you have these valleys in Tibet which are full of rotting corpses, skulls, legs, the whole shebang, people that you know. And these monks sit amongst the valley of the rotting corpses and they meditate and they do that so that they can confront their greatest fear and their greatest fear is death they sit with and smell with

and live in death in order to accept it that's why I work in this fucking office building because it's my greatest fear I work in this office building and I meet all my fucking needs I'm sitting in here in my office

in a ridiculous looking baggy track suit 3xl baggy track suit giant rubber crocs a carpet, a carpet that I'm going to have to replace this carpet when I leave the office because I have worn a path in the carpet from pacing up and down so much all day thinking about ideas. I'm here because I want to, I want to meditate amongst the corpses. I want to meditate beside my greatest fear. My greatest fear is if I worked in this building, okay, and I was working in here, for a company and I would have to wear clothes that don't meet my sensory needs

or that I'd have to pretend to be interested in things that I'm not interested in and then suppress whatever fucking mad shit I need to focus on that day and then the biggest fear of all is that engaging in small talk with colleagues would be a necessary part of my life not that And you have to remember I have worked in this environment before. I've worked in a call center. Okay, so I'm, this is from lived experience. And I did 16, 17 years of school.

Every neurodivergent person is different. But by far, the most stressful and hardest thing for me is needing to maintain office relationships. What I mean by that is, when I worked in a call center long ago. Now, what I did get fired for, I got fired because first off, I was sitting horizontally in my chair.

You're not supposed to do that. I needed to do it because I wanted to get up and walk around. I was sitting horizontally in my chair frequently. I printed out 93 pages about CIA crack cocaine smuggling and was reading them under my desk. But the other thing that got me fired, and this was a big one, I didn't know that you're expected to go for lunch with your team.

So the team of people that you work with in the fucking office, there is an expectation to sit down and have lunch with these people just because. And I used to not do that because when lunchtime happened, I just desperately needed to go to the car park by myself and be alone with my thoughts and pace up and down pace up and down the car park like I don't know if you can hear this

but someone next door is removing packaging tape long reams of cellar tape in the room next door I think it's an accountant but isn't it great that I don't have to say hey what are you doing with that cellot tape and have a sellotape well we couldn't have a

set of tape conversation because then I would need to start speaking about what, is this still going on? Can you hear that? That person would need to hear about the history of set of tape. No, do you know what I'd do? If I was actually next door, hope you can't hear me now, if I was, so someone next door is aggressively pulling reams of set of tape because they're packaging something together, if they were my call worker and I was stuck in that office and they were doing that, I'd just simply turn around and go on my set of tape monologue. What's the most interesting celetape? fact I can think of, like, this is fucking fascinating, right?

But there's this phenomenon called tribal luminescence. And they only discovered this in the fucking late 2000s, right? When you rapidly, like what you're hearing there, when you rapidly unpeal cellotap, okay, you use friction to very suddenly break chemical bonds, okay? But when that happens, it actually gives off a fairly significant electrical charge. Right? If you turned the lights off,

now this is what I'd start doing if that was my co-worker. First off, we wouldn't be able to turn the lights off. Do you know why we wouldn't be able to turn the lights off? Because his office doesn't have a light switch.

My office has a fucking light switch because I'm autistic. I had to request a light switch. Everyone else's office, they've got these lights that turn on whenever people move. Sometimes other people's lights just turn off

because people are able to sit at their desks and not move. But anyway, If this was my office, I'd say to him, let's turn off the lights and open your cellotape really fast so we can see, so we can possibly see the, let's turn, close the curtains as well, let's close the curtains and turn off the lights. Now, Roy, I want you to rapidly unpack your cellotape and make that noise you were making and let's see if we can see a little spark. Because, and then what happens? Who's this fucking lunatic? Who's this lunatic? What's he talking about? I'm just trying to pack this. this package here with some cellotape. Why is he speaking about electrical charges?

And I'd say, you don't understand. And if you're thinking, come on, blind boy, you wouldn't really ask him to close the curtains and turn off the lights and play with the cellotape, would you, in an office environment? I fucking would. Yes, I would. If I got passionate enough about the celetape,

if the idea of it excited me enough, then I'm going to forget about propriety, I'm going to forget about social rules. I will say or do an eccentric thing. which invites social rejection. I'll be stared at like a weirdo and I'll be thinking, why is this not fascinating to you?

Let's turn off the lights. Let's turn off the lights and let's put down the curtains please and we'll see your cellota tape is going to glow if you rip it apart rapidly. And then I'd follow that up by saying and this is a fact by way,

this is fucking fascinating. So if the lights were off in the office and you started tear in the cellot tape apart rapidly, right? You might see those little faint blue glow. You might see it. But, and this is what the scientist discovered in 2008, if that was to occur in a vacuum. So if you took celetatepe apart in a vacuum, so there's no air, so this effect tribuluminescence, right? So light or radiation gets released when chemical bonds are broken suddenly by, friction. In a vacuum, right? No air. Well, you don't have the friction of the air. If you were

to rip the cellotape apart in a vacuum, that the light jumps into the x-ray range and you could see the bones of your fingers. So let's go back to the office now, because your man's next door opening his cellotape. If I was in that office, I'd be talking this shit. I'd be saying, do you know if we had a vacuum right now? We could actually look at the bones of your hands just by opening that cellotape. And that's fact. They found that in 2008 at the University of California.

Look it up. Look up. Celetape can produce x-rays when it's in enrolled in a vacuum. You can see the bones of your own fucking hand. Isn't that amazing? Isn't that fascinating? The point I'm trying to make, that shit

doesn't fly in offices. I know. I was fired for it. I was fired for that many fucking years ago. The fuck was I'm talking about? That's actually not the hardest part. That would not be the hardest part of being in an office because some people like interesting facts like that. That can actually the hard part about working in a normal job or an office for me was I would desperately

need lunchtime breaks any opportunity to be by myself because being around humans, was so overwhelming and so stressful that I'd need to be by myself just to meet my needs, the needs of my nervous system to experience in anything resembling calm and if you do that in an office or in school

or any system which is designed within capitalism to meet the needs of neurotypical people if you are a loner in these situations it is interpreted as rejection and you're punished and people think you don't like them I've lived it

it's happened to me I think I could tolerate I could tolerate an uncomfortable uniform I could probably tolerate the small talk in the office even if it meant bringing up the cellotape facts people would just have to live with it the thing that I would not be able to do

would be sitting down with people at lunch just because that's what you're supposed to do and not having my own time for pacing other banging doors, not having my own time for pacing up and down. Unfortunately, this is turning into a fucking podcast now and this was not, this was supposed to be five minutes long. Lads, I work in this office building so that I can meditate amongst the rotting corpses. I'm not referring to the accountants and solicitors and people who work in this building as rotting corpses. What I'm saying is, at all times, I'm surrounded by the

thing that I fear the most. I have the grey fire retardant carpets here. People walk around dressed in office clothes. This is the real deal. I'm in the belly of the fucking beast here. This is as uncreative, this is as far from art as you can imagine. And yet within this space, I've found somewhere where I can be an artist and also meet all my needs as a noradivergent person. this is my office, the door is closed I can wear whatever clothes I like I can do whatever the fuck I want because I'm my own boss

I say hello to people if I want to say if I want to chat to someone down in the canteen I'll do it but it's on my own terms so by meditating with the rotting corpses you know the Buddhist monk who is present with death that's what I do

I am present every single day with the thing that I fear the most and why do I do that the Buddhist monk is present around death so that that monk can appreciate being alive the present moment I work in a corporate office

to help me appreciate how fucking lucky I am that I don't have to work in a corporate office that even though I'm in the building even though I can smell the stench of death actually I can spend the entire week reading about celetape and my job is to try and connect that fact about celetape with some other fact and generate it into a hot take that I write

to record and put out as a podcast and that's what my job is and it's also that gratitude that has me releasing a podcast every single week for eight years and not missing it I've managed to find a way to be autistic under capitalism but that fucking brain scan this week has showed me that maybe I've been a little bit too autistic for too long and I need to chill the fuck out

and if you're thinking there's other people blind by who have podcasts that they release every single week most podcasts most podcasts are interview podcasts it's people sitting down talking to each other the cognitive demands of data are quite different like I even saw a report recently that like the reason

like it's something I struggle to understand it's like why are so many podcasts people just sitting down chatting to each other why is that the format for so many podcasts I mean a podcast is a space where you can do anything you can do anything you like

a podcast is just it's a unit of time that contains audio you can fill it any way you like why are so many people sitting down talking to other people Why is that what a podcast means? And it's because of capitalism. If you have a podcast where it's you and another person chatting,

that's actually the friendliest model for advertisers. Because it's not written. It's not planned in advance. You can very easily drop an advert into a chat. You can discuss a product. Also, it's just easier. It's easier to make a podcast. where two or three people are chatting.

You arrange a time, you have some talking points, you all sit down in your chat and then maybe edit a bit of it afterwards. Whereas I do monologue essays that are written that take days and days to make and most weeks require me to work for almost 24 hours straight to make sure that something good goes out on time. So that puts me into a very small category of podcasters.

Even other monologue podcasts that I know of, a lot of it seems to be they have a few notes and they sit down with the mic and they freestyle. Like this week's podcast is, this isn't a fucking podcast. This wasn't supposed to be a podcast. This was supposed to be me showing up for five minutes saying I'm not doing a podcast. This is what I call a phone call, where I just press record and talk.

talk. The vast majority of monologue podcasts out there are phone call podcasts, usually by a comedian where they're, they'll just riff on a topic, press record and that's it. I don't. I do very heavy research and I write with my mouth for you to read with your ears. I use audio software to edit with the same precision that a word processor has. So generally when you listen to one of my monologue podcasts, you might be hearing an hour of audio, but it could have taken 18 or 19 or more hours to record that one hour. Because it's a piece of writing. It's a piece of writing that you don't hear it as a piece of writing, but it's a piece of writing. That's why I call this podcast a novel, but long story short. I saw a scan of my fucking brain this week that showed very, very

significant stress as a result of sustained cognitive load without rest across eight years and it made me want to take a week off it was like a little sign from the universe take a fucking week off because I know what I need to do here's the thing with that scan like it's it records my my brain activity right now as it is right now

it showed high beta waves and low frontal midline theta waves and that paints a picture of consistent alertness and hypervigilance and not a lot of calm at all

but just like if I was going to the gym every week for eight years and was only working on my legs then it would show evidence of that I'd have massive leg muscles neuroplasticity comes into this the neurons that fire together

wired together I need to take a break I need to get I need to meditate I need to get back to meditation focusing on staying in the hearing now really working on my breathing

and chilling the fuck out so that my brain can get back to experience a feeling of safety. That scan showed a brain that doesn't feel safe. The scan showed that... So I chased the dragon of Flow. That's what I do each week.

I research and write because I love it. I love it when I get that hot take and get to be absorbed in my interest and reach the wonderful dreamland of Flow where writing comes. from. But the next day, it feels like an ecstasy come down. Exhaustion and dizziness. My scan showed this high beta activity, right? And that shows that there's a thing called the dopamine and the noradrenaline system, which is, it's rewards, anticipation, the feeling of novelty,

the feeling that, the, the chemical rewards from the, the feeling of achievement. When I research and research until I eventually find a hot take that turns into a good piece of writing, I'm engaging that system in my brain. But I've done that every week for eight years without any rest or recovery afterwards. And I've done that for so long on a loop that my brain also releases cortisol, which is the stress hormone. And now I'm seeing that in a scan of my brain. And the morning after I record a podcast, even if I loved making that podcast the night before, I sometimes wake up with a jump scare and I don't know why, I never know why. Like if I work on a monologue podcast and maybe I did 17, 18, 19 hours and I get to bed like a zombie and finally sleep, I will

wake up the next morning, like suddenly in sweats with my heart thumping and I don't know why. It's almost like that hangover feeling where if you get the fear, I don't know, you were on a night out and you can't remember who you spoke to or if you said something foolish and then you wake up suddenly the next day with that hangover going, oh my God, did I meet that person? What did I say? I'll get that in a Wednesday morning after a podcast goes out. And it's like for no reason. It's like, why the fuck is that happening?

And now I know why. It's so intense that the stress hormones get released too. And then the next day I get like an ecstasy scag. I get an ecstasy scag from putting out podcasts. But here's the thing. I mentioned neuroplasticity. And like I said, if I'd been going to the gym for eight years and just training my legs, you know, you'd see that in my musculature and the brain is quite similar.

And that's the evidence of the high stress and the hypervigilance in my brainwaves. that is reversible that's reversible because of neuroplasticity the neurons that fire together wire together and what I need to work on

is it's calm to normalise my dopamine and cortisol cycles meditation meditation isn't the daily part of my life anymore. Like a playful, enjoyable part of my life, as opposed to like a thing that I must do are using words like discipline. I'm not disciplined enough of my meditation. If you're a proper

10 foot deckland and you remember the earliest, earliest episode of this podcast, going back eight years, I used to speak a lot about meditation and I used to speak about meditating by a river. and an otter called Yartier-Harn would appear. It's eight years ago. Before this podcast started, I was literally meditating. Every single day, 15 minutes by a river.

It was really important and, like I say, playful part of my day. And when I say playful there, I wasn't doing it to feel a certain way. I wasn't doing it like I need to do now to become less strong. rest. Meditation was a deeply enjoyable part of being alive. If you cook yourself a nice dinner, or even something as simple as a new bag of coffee, like if you make coffee and you enjoy coffee, I'm supposed to reduce my caffeine as well, by the way, I do quite a lot of tea. But anyway, look, when you open a new bag of fucking coffee beans

and that first sniff where you're like oh my God that's amazing that little moment where you inhale or simply take time to absorb yourself in the wonder and beauty

of something you really enjoy meditation is like that but for being alive for your day for the gratitude of just existing that's what meditation is like playful, enjoyable meditation. The stillness of it,

the wonderful, beautiful stillness of meditating. Sitting so still that you become a little leaf or a frog or an ant. And just existing for 15 minutes with this unbelievable, slowness and deep diaphragmatic breaths. That's a proven way

of changing your foot. fucking brain chemistry. That's a proven way over time to have the type of brain and nervous system that can switch off and be calm and feel safe when it needs to. I don't meditate daily anymore. I meditate occasionally. I don't meditate daily because I'm too busy. I'm too busy or else I can't switch off my thoughts if I have a hot take or if I'm deep in my my research and writing, I start to feel guilty. I would feel guilty and shameful. I would consider it extravagant to go, I'm going to take 15 minutes or a half an hour to sit down beside a river or near a tree. So I re-engage him with a mindfulness practice, mindfulness and meditation

practice and breathing practice and body scanning. And all of these things that I used to do these before the podcast started. This here is the vicious loop. When I began this podcast eight years ago and when I started to write short stories eight years ago, I was actually in a state of chronic stress before then too, except it was...

I was approaching the end of my 20s. I thought my entertainment career was over and I'd more or less just given up and said, fuck it, that's not going to work. Let's start looking for that normal job that you're so scared of. And that's when I started to engage in

daily meditation practice. The stress and fear of that was so great that I started to engage in daily meditation practice. I'm talking maybe 2016, but then after months of daily meditation practice

and finding this wonderful, calm, feeling a safety within myself. It was out of that that I first started to write short stories. Creativity came from that feed and a safety. And then the short stories became successful and then this podcast became successful. And then I found myself so busy that I wasn't meditating daily anymore. And that's something I'd like to work on on my week off

from this podcast. I want to figure out, how can I get a daily meditation practice in again? So I know that because of neuroplasticity, with self-compassion and being nicer to myself and allowing myself to have that time in my day to meditate and not to self-flagellate and tell myself, you're wasting time.

You're supposed to be working. You should be working and thinking about hot takes, not meditating. I want to challenge that internal criticism because I know enough about psychology that that's a teacher who wasn't very nice to me when I was a kid and their voice is popping back up in my own head. So that's why there's no podcast this week, even though I've just recorded 30 minutes of whatever the fuck that was. Listen, there's nearly 500 podcasts. If you want to listen to a podcast this week, there's nearly 500 episodes that you can go back to.

And I know some people have listened to them all. I've seen the Sopranos, the entire, entire seasons of the Sopranos like 19 times now at this point of my life and I can still go back to like season one or season two and watch an episode and it's just gone. It's gone from my brain as if I'm seeing it anew. So even if you've listened to every podcast this week, go back and listen to an earlier podcast. You can listen to Pamela Fags if you like, the story that was so strange a neuroscientist wanted to scan my brain. So I suppose that's all I've time for this week. It's only 30 minutes because it's not really a podcast this week. I'm taking the week off. I'm going to have Dr. Michael Keane on as a guest. I really should have recorded the chat that

we had when he was scanning my brain. He's really fascinating. He's a very fascinating person and his area of expertise is actually the neuroscience of Irish trauma. Like how the years of colonial history, the impact that that can actually have on Irish people's brains. So when I was finished chatting with Dr. Michael Keane and said thank you for scanning my head, I asked him to be my guest at my gig on Halloween night, my last gig of the year, Poka Festival up in Mead. My guest is going to be Dr Michael Keen and we're going to, we'll probably speak a little bit about my brain scan and also the neuroscience of Irish trauma.

But there's a few tickets left for that. It's in mead, you see. It's in trimming mead, which is a little bit out of the way. But if you fancied going to that on fucking Halloween night, uh, work away, poca festival, Halloween night in mead. My guest is going to be Dr. Michael Keane. Look, let's do a fucking ocarina pause. I don't have an ocarina either.

We go for the yogurt lid again. Actually, I do have an ocarina. Hold on. Oh yeah, someone Give me this in Belfast. Very large, Ocarina. I don't know how to play this one yet.

It's got, I'd say, about 19 holes. We know you love the thought of a vacation to Europe. But this time, why not look a little further? To Dubai. a city that everyone talks about and has absolutely everything you could want from a vacation destination. From world-class hotels,

record-breaking skyscrapers, and epic desert adventures, to museums that showcase the future, not just the past. Choose from 14 flights per week between Canada and Dubai. Book on emirates.ca. Feeling unsure in your career path,

RBC has programs and resources to help you open the door. Discover RBC-led internships, scholarships, networking opportunities, and upskilling programs designed to help you launch or further your career. At RBC, your idea of career happens here. Learn more at rbc.com slash open doors. We know you love the thought of a vacation to Europe.

But this time, why not look a little further to Dubai, a city that everyone talks about and has absolutely everything you could want from a vacation destination. From world-class hotels, record-breaking skyscrapers, and epic desert adventures, to museums that showcase the future, not just the past. Choose from 14 flights per week between Canada and Dubai. Book on emirates.ca. today. Calgary, also known as the Blue Sky City. We get more sunny days than anywhere in the country, but more importantly, we're the Canadian

capital of Blue Sky Thinking. This is where bold ideas meet big opportunity, where dreams become reality. Whether you're building your career or scaling your business, Calgary is where what if turns into what's next. It's possible here in Calgary, the Blue Sky City. Learn more at Calgary Economic Development.com It sounds like I'm hurting the ocarina this one. This was a very whiny ocarina. Look, you'd have heard an advert for

bullshit there. I'd know what the fuck they're advertising. I'm actually trying to take the day off. I'm trying to take the day off. You know the crack with Patreon, all right? Patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast. This is how I earn a living It's how I rent out the office If you want to pay me You can

If you don't That's fine Listen for free Patreon.com forward slash The Blindby podcast You know the crack Just looking for the price of a pint Or a cup of coffee once a month

Looked as a lot of gigs in early 2026 I'll list them out for the crack Starting The end of January Waterford Theatre Royal You into that

February Vickers Street We love a bit of Vickers Street, don't me? Belfast, Waterfront Theatre, that's nearly sold out. Is that the Waterfront Theatre? Am I playing the Waterford Theatre? Where's the Waterfront? Oh yeah, that one.

Yeah, that's nearly sold out. Galway, Leisureland, glamorous shit there. Um, Killarney in the Eyneck. There's a Cork Opera House gig there in fucking March 26. Limerick, good old Limerick at the University. concert hall, then a big massive tour of England, Scotland and Wales. I don't want to be reading out gigs this week. Fane.com. UK forward slash blindby if you want to hear of any of the gigs in townland. All right. I will be back next week with a hot take. But this week, there's no

podcast. I just heard there wasn't a podcast. It was a phone call. It was a voice note. I'm going to go and work on rebuilding my nervous system. And make time for, I don't always have to be meditating amongst the rotting corpses. I need to make time for meditating in beauty. Instead of meditating around the thing that I'm terrified of, to meditate and be present in the wonderful, gorgeous beauty of life and the sound of wind in trees. and water, tinkling and bubbling, and the joy of a fresh breeze up my nose. I mean, that's what it's about, isn't it?

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