The Blindboy Podcast - Marble Charles

Episode Date: April 24, 2018

Psychological operations, sound as a weapon of war, magicians Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Drape your faces in ancient paste and dance to the pipes of Robert Redford. He stands in the hallway, crying over an immersive play he just attended on his Oculus Rift. Will you console him, you droopy fashionoos? What's the crack? God bless. How are you getting on? Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. Number 28. Holy fuck. Do you notice anything different this week? Huh? Something about the sound? You may not, but I fucking do. The echo is gone. We are back at peak podcast hug.

We have maximum fidelity. Because I am recording from my brand new studio. It is a dry room. And the reason that the fidelity this week is fucking class is because of an act of soundness from one of the listeners a very generous act of gas country as you know

you've been listening the past couple of weeks I've moved into a new studio and the sound for the past while hasn't been completely up to scratch we've had two issues there was an echo in the room this echo is now gone, listen

O'Lan Johnson, hello O'Lan Johnson there's no echo this room is as dry as a bishop's shin because bishops bishops don't have sweat glands. When a bishop becomes a bishop, God confiscates their sweat glands. Gives them back to them when they die.

But this room is fucking dry. And that's what I want. And the reason it's so dry is because two incredibly sound listeners, two gas cunts, Fiacra and Etna, who run Avenue Road Studios up in Portobello in Dublin, got on to me on Twitter and they said, we listen to the fucking podcast. We've been hearing what you're saying about the sound of your room. It sounds very lively we build studios we'll come down and fit your fucking room with some acoustic paneling and they did they called down lovely people and they brought some faker makes these uh Acoustic panels himself. Out of rock wool.

Rock wool is. It's like asbestos. That won't kill you. So what he did. And it was brilliant to see. The two of them came down. And they had a mirror. I'm like what the fuck.

Are you doing with a mirror. But they sat down. At my desk. And they used the mirror. To plot. Where the sound. sound was travelling in the room. And then based on this reflection they placed panels all around. And there was even a panel above my head. And Fiacre, God bless his soul, he even screwed the grate onto my wall. There was a, what do you call those things in the wall

where it goes into the outside a ventilation grate I didn't have a cover for it, I just had it stuffed full of duns bags and it was making the room very humid but Fiacra used his drilling ability to put a cover on the fucking

vent which technically has nothing to do with sound that was just me kind of taking advantage and getting him to do DIY but anyway and he also stuck for I've got a lot of guitars you know and I've got fucking

how many guitars have I got I've got an acoustic two electric guitars. A bass guitar. A banjo. And a lap steel. And these things take up a lot of space. So I bought these kind of hooks that you stick onto the wall.

And you hang guitars off them. Which you know. Free up a lot of space on the ground. So he drilled those into the wall as well. So a very very big thank you to Fiacra and Etna from Avenue Road Studios

and what I'm going to do now is I'm going to plug the fuck out of them for their soundness Avenue Road Studios is, it's up in Portobello in Dublin, it's about 5 minutes from the Barnard Shaw pub and it's a rehearsal spaceobello in Dublin, it's about five minutes from the Bernard Shaw pub,

and it's a rehearsal space that the two of them built themselves, and they've a few different rooms, they've got a drum kit, guitar amps, a PA, vocal mixer, the whole shebang, what you want, tea and coffee is free, and you can rent rehearsal spaces, if you're a band up in Dublin, or whatever you want to do, even if you want to write some fucking tunes, go to AvenueRoadStudios.com and call into Fiechra in Etna and use their business, please. Because they're, again, small Irish business just doing their thing. Support them and they're sound enough to come down to me and fit my studio with fucking panels and listen to the sound of my studio with fucking panels and listen to the sound of my voice it's fucking lovely and i have a panel above my head it feels like star

track i have a panel fucking drilled to the ceiling it's fantastic so thank you very much to the lads so now that i did stick the fucking panels around the room, I got thinking, I was looking at, Blade Runner, as you know, I absolutely adore the film Blade Runner, mainly, what I love about Blade Runner mainly,

it's visual and aural aesthetic, the storyline is fucking incredible, obviously, it's very existentialistist it calls into questions about you know what what is a human but what keeps me going back to blade runner over and over again because i watch it at least once a month and i listen to the soundtrack to blade runner once a week if not every day the blade runner soundtrack is one of the soundtracks i'd listen to when i'm writing writing composed by Vangelis

who was a Greek, I think he's the only Greek musician I listen to but the visual aesthetic of fucking Blade Runner is just gorgeous, I love it especially Harrison Ford's apartment and

the setting that was used for Harrison Ford's apartment is a building in Los Angeles designed by the famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright called the Ennis House. And it has nothing to do with Ennis in County Clare, unfortunately. It was built because the man who owned the house, his second name was Ennis. But anyway, Frank Lloyd Wright built this mansion kind of inspired by Mayan architecture Mayan and Aztec architecture

so if you look at Harrison Ford's apartment in Blade Runner, the walls have all these kind of Aztec panels and I found a fucking company online based in Sweden I think who make acoustic sound panels.

Based on the Ennis Frank Lloyd Wright design. So I got on to them. I gave them a mail. I'm trying to see if I can order. Some. Some of these fucking panels. That are the same panels in Harrison Ford's apartment in Blade Runner. And any available space in my studio.

I'm fucking covering the place. In Blade Runner panels. And I'm putting lights all over the room. And I'm going to have this studio looking exactly like. Harrison Ford's apartment in Blade Runner. I'm going to do it in time. For October 2019. Which is when the events of Blade Runner happen.

And I'm going to wear a trench coat. And drink Johnny Walker whiskey and wonder whether or not I am a human or an android. That's what I'm going to do with myself. That's what I'm going to do with my life. If you're a first time listener to the Blind Boy Podcast please go back

to the very start. Just do because like I'm after going fucking 8 minutes there now talking shite and regular listeners are ok with this but if you just started do you know what I mean you're just going to go what the fuck is this go back to the start

please God bless one of the things that I said about this podcast a few, near the start was when I was asking you to contribute to the Patreon one of the reasons that I wanted the Patreon is to reinvest some of the money that you give me into creating

into turning this video from an audio experience into also a visual one to try and the ultimate goal is to do the full joe rogan whereby the podcast is available as a video as well that's the ultimate goal i don't know how far away i am from that but i have been working on creating a space which visually replicates what I consider to be the podcast hug. The podcast hug, of course, is you'll hear that soft jazz piano in the background, the fidelity of my voice, the bass frequencies. the bass frequencies i want to you know podcasts for me are a relaxing space where you know we throw on a podcast and it takes us away from the visual and aural cacophony of our daily social media lives and you get an hour of mindful contemplation Where someone else's voice.

Inhabits. The busyness of your own head. That's what podcasts do. And that's what I try and do with this podcast. So I want to do that visually. So I'm working on a space at the moment. A corner. Which. The aesthetics that I'm building.

Half Blade Runner. Half David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch and with a lot of otter related paraphernalia I have my eye on an otter fountain it's this

sculpture of some jocular otters getting on on with their lives doing otter things and it's about four or five foot tall with led lights and it has the most beautiful sound of trickling water so i'm gonna get in my hands on that dressing up the space and then I don't know when, hopefully in the next couple of months we're going to be dealing with a visual podcast hug where I can produce video content

em I want it to look do you know like when a fucking like if Donald Trump does a talk into the camera and he's got like a fireplace behind him or shit like that or Vladimir Putin or even

Michael D Higgins any politician I want it to look like that except except it's half Blade Runner half Naked Lunch and very heavily very heavily spiced with otter sculptures

that's what I want to do with my life and thank you so much to everybody for supporting me in that I love you very much I'm talking awful fast this week I just noticed because I had a cup

of coffee before I did the part, I have a little bit of it left actually I've got a small bit of coffee left but then a boiling hot cup of tea also so I'm just going to take

one sip out of the coffee which I shouldn't because it's making me talk quick and then I'll calm down from here on in but in a bizarre kind of feat of youngian synchronicity this is the second time that the audio fidelity of this podcast has been indirectly caused by the irish singer

who i know listens to this podcast how are you getting on Andy give me a shout sometime I'd love to have you as a guest but yeah Fiacre who fitted out this studio he actually played drums on Hosier's track take me to church and then another time a couple of months back I can't remember his name and I'm so sorry that I can't remember your name, I even went through my Twitter DMs to try and find you, but, one of Hosier's buddies, had a microphone,

which belonged to Hosier, it was a, a little condenser microphone that you put into an iPhone, for, when I wanted to do podcasts on the fly. If I was travelling. So one of Hosier's buddies. Sent me down.

This brilliant condenser microphone. For iPhone. So that's twice. That Hosier has indirectly. Contributed. To the fidelity of my studio. So. Thank you everybody. What am I going to talk about this week?

Last week we spoke mostly about dogs. And last week's podcast was... I know I was kind of sad a little bit, wasn't it? Because I was kind of sad a little bit wasn't it because I was talking about the how dogs are bred for human pleasure and labour and then I went into a

a World War 3 rant but but at the end I reminded you to embrace the beautiful summer weather and I hope you did em I was down at Yorty O'Hearn's couch I reminded you to embrace the beautiful summer weather and I hope you did. I was down at Yorty O'Hearn's couch there on Saturday and it was fucking gorgeous.

This weekend, in Limerick anyway, it was the first weekend of summer 2018 as far as I'm concerned. It was fucking beautiful, gorgeous and warm. The type of warmth whereby it comes down off of the sky but bounces off the tarmac to come up and meet your chin do you know that type of warmth em this week

I don't sound let's talk about sound because I started off ranting about sound and Because I started off. Ranting about sound. And how sound can be used. Maybe. Not for pleasure.

But for pain. And. There was a thing I was reading about. Called. Operation Wandering Soul. Which was a very bizarre CIA, what would you call it, CIA psychological warfare, right, the CIA are nasty fuckers, Millions. Billions. Billions and billions of dollars are spent.

On their nastiness. And during the Cold War. Psychological. Warfare was a pretty. Pretty big component. Of how the CIA fought their war. Now I spoke about this before. I was talking about how the CIA.

Quite openly fund films movies as part of the ideological state apparatus to influence the people of America or the people of the world towards a neo-conservative view I spoke about how the CIA

funded American abstract expressionist painting as a way to move the cultural I spoke about how the CIA funded American Abstract Expressionist Painting as a way to move the cultural centre of the world away from Europe and towards New York. But Operation Wandering Soul very fucked up.

So during the Vietnam War right if you don't know what the Vietnam War was it was part of the Cold War theatre of conflict in which the Yanks and the Russians two nuclear superpowers they never had any direct

conflict so what they did is they fought proxy wars the Russians and Americans would never clash heads themselves what they'd do is two conflicting ideologies of democratic capitalism versus communism so with vietnam you had vietnam wanting to become communist and funded by the russians and then the Yangs going fuck that.

That's not happening. So the Yangs fought the Viet Cong. Who were a guerrilla communist organisation. How they operated wouldn't have been too far. They would have been quite similar to the old IRA in Ireland. In that they were made mostly of poor farmers

who used subterfuge and guerrilla warfare to fight very well equipped imperial power and so what Operation Wandering Soul was

is a CIA funded audio warfare so if you think of your average Viet Cong soldier or volunteer or whatever you want to call them they were fucking dirt poor farmers with no education

living in the hills of fucking jungles with guns right never seen a television in their lives never seen a fucking radio nothing so there's this within Vietnamese culture they believe that the dead, that their dead have to be buried in their home village, right? Burying the dead correctly is very important in Vietnamese culture. And if the dead are not buried correctly, or if the body is never found, they believe that the soul will forever wander aimlessly in pain and suffering. aimlessly in pain and suffering kind of like uh i don't know purgatory or not even purgatory like uh do you know at halloween we have jack jack o'lanterns the pumpkin thingy that comes from

an old irish pagan thing um in irish i would know i'd know what you call it irish paganism or irish catholicism or how the two things intersect but the irish believe culturally or the ancient irish believe that uh there was a fella or was it the irish americans i'm not sure there was a fella anyway called jack o'lantern i think and he had to wander hell or purgatory and it was dark so he carved a turnip and put a candle in it and in america this turned into a pumpkin because there was no turnip so that's where jack o'lanterns come from anyway i digress the vietnamese have a similar belief that if the dead are not buried correctly, your relatives will wander forever screaming and howling into the night. So anyway, what the CIA did is that when the big problem that the US forces had against the Viet Cong is that you couldn't see the enemy.

They had a massive network of tunnels that dug into the ground where they would kind of go underground. The Viet Cong would go underground in these tunnels, come out of these spider hatches and hit the Yangs very quickly and sharply from the jungle. So the Yangs don't know where the gunfire is coming from they just hear a lot of shots couple of shoulders soldiers are dead and then the yanks are just aimlessly firing into the jungle and the lads are gone they're gone back underground hit and run attacks guerrilla attacks which is what you know what are you going to do if you're fighting a well-equipped army that's all they had they used the environment to their advantage so the yanks were getting pissed off with this one kind of uh one thing the yanks did to fight this was the use of a defoliant called

agent orange they in helicopters they sprayed miles and miles and miles of vietnamese jungle with this weed killer called agent agent orange and it just it got rid of all the leaves so it meant that the vietcong had nowhere to hide now one of the problems with agent orange is it would drive u.s soldiers psychotic It had a psychotic property to this pesticide, not pesticide, to this weed killer. So a lot of US soldiers went back to the US, not only psychotic, but their chemical psychosis being rooted in the trauma of war.

So there were quite a few Vietnam vets getting some powerfully disturbing visions because of Agent Orange. So another thing that the US did was Operation Wandering Soul. They recorded Vietnamese prisoners crying and screaming and then placed speakers hidden in the jungle.

So when the Viet Cong soldiers were on their patrols, and like I said, these are people who didn't have an education or unfamiliar with technology, they're walking around the forest at night with their belief that improperly buried dead are forever wandering the forest too and all they're hearing are

screams and the things that the recordings were like go back go back you will die really chilling stuff so all the Viet Cong soldiers just put their fucking guns down and ran because they have no context for what's going on they just hear hear these

fucking these speakers and think that they are the souls of the dead I'll play for you now a little clip of some of the operation wandering soul shit that was played out of the Operation Wandering Soul shit that was played out of the speakers and the quality isn't great but just imagine like being in the forest at night time in the pitch dark not even knowing what a radio is and hearing this all around you. so highly fucking disturbing I think you'll agree that was Operation Wandering Soul by the CIA going straight to number one there

but yeah that's what they were doing but it still kind of goes on today the psychological operations in Guantanamo Bay you know the war on terror they were using audio

to interrogate prisoners that they believed to be members of Al Qaeda and one thing the CIA were using was the music of Westlife true story when they were interrogating prisoners they would play them mainly heavy metal,

very, very loud heavy metal, non-stop, 24 hours a day for weeks on end, to the point that the prisoner couldn't sleep, couldn't do it, like deafening, non-stop and what it does is that kind of it frazzles the brain a bit you know it um it creates an intense anxiety and a desire to break free of it and have some peace but for every we'd say 100 hours of dark heavy metal that was being played the CIA would intersperse it with a softer more melodic song and they chose Westlife so they would play some Westlife

for the prisoner and what this did is when it's kind of dropped on the prisoner arbitrarily it creates a false sense of security which can be very damaging because it stops the brain getting used to the cacophony

of the heavy metal by giving this completely random glimpse of hope and then the metal starts again so the brain resets and there's a group of ex-Guantanamo prisoners who are now suing the psychologists who assisted the CIA in developing these techniques of audio torture.

Another kind of freaky sound thing that's used in warfare. Now it's not psychological warfare in that it's not designed to disturb anybody but there's these things called numbers stations from the cold war and they're just weird and chilling

nobody's fully sure what numbers stations are and they certainly weren't during the cold war and there's a type of radio called shortwave radio and the only thing i can describe it as it's the deep web of radio um it's like military radio radio, some emergency broadcasts. So during the Cold War, before the fucking internet, 50s, 60s, 70s, some people would have, you know, a shortwave radio at home themselves.

And they'd be radio enthusiasts. Geeks, I suppose. Nerds. And the reason someone, a civilian would have a shortwave radio is that you might end up communicating with somebody halfway around the world and you know that's before the internet

that's a lot of crack so people would scan through the shortwave frequencies hoping that they might find another human voice on the other end and have a chat or whatever before the internet. But what would happen throughout the 60s, 70s and 80s is that occasionally people would land on a shortwave radio frequency

that would just have very weird either sounds or a repeating robotic human voice and there was conspiracy theories people thought that they were hearing the sounds of ghosts or aliens

and these frequencies that were coming out of most countries were known as numbers stations. And I'll play you an example now of what a numbers station sounded like. 3-9-7-1-5 3-9-7-1-5 Продолжение следует... Now that's they're pretty fucking

chilling and imagine being in fucking chilling and like imagine being in you know out your back garden or in your shed fucking around with your shortwave radio and you come across that out of nowhere and

you've no fucking internet to look it up there's nothing about it in the library and you've just found this frequency of a weird robotic voice or melodies over and over never ending just repeating the same thing over and over

and some of these stations would go on for months and then completely disappear and then come back a couple of years later and that would have been quite fucking terrifying, you know, and it really baffled shortwave radio enthusiasts as to what the fuck are

these things, you know, and like I said, naturally, they start to think kind of supernatural. Now, we do know now, like since the Cold war has ended what they more than likely were were kind of codes are codes or instructions for for spies that were situated either either on the on the russian side or on the western side. Situated in countries. And if a spy was in a country. And needed a code that was meant just for them. They would find the shortwave radio. And tune into the number station. And then decipher whatever information was being sent to them.

I've no idea why it had to be so fucking freaky. No idea whatsoever. But there's some number stations still run today. Now, even though that audio is terrifying, me, as somebody who adores audio, I think they're quite beautiful. They're bizarre and strange. And when I first heard about them,

it was when I first, I would have been a teenager and I was first arsing around the internet, finding myself in different holes. And I heard about number stations and I couldn't hear, I'd read an article about it. And the internet was at the stage at the time where I couldn't actually hear any number stations.

Because I think I was on dial-up connection. So I managed to source a CD called The Connacht Project. And it was a CD, three CDs where somebody had collected several number stations from around the world. And put them onto a CD collection and I had that when I was a teenager and I was fascinated fascinated with these things which I

didn't know an awful lot about and the mystery of them is kind of, you know, they're not as fun now, now that I know what they were, which is just pretty boring messages for spies that will never understand what they meant, just numbers, repeating numbers over and over again, and I suppose they were so freaky, because just the nature of shortwave radio, it's just a shitty

quality of radio, and it's not it's not a psychological operation as such you know but it is if you stumble across it by accident because it would scare the shit out of you

but there's other mad stuff magicians have been used in warfare quite a bit as a form of psychological operation

the first major use of magicians in warfare was by the French, by Napoleon III, who was Emperor Napoleon's nephew, I believe. French lad. There was a legendary French magician called Albert Robert Houdin. And the name sounds kind of familiar because Harry Houdini the famous magician was so obsessed with this French lad from the 1850s that Houdini named himself after Albert Robert Houdin and Hon invented. A lot of the kind of parlor tricks. And sleight of hand.

And modern. Illusionary magic. But anyway. The French are. Colonial pricks. Like the British and the Spanish. And the Yanks. A very colonial people.

And the French had control of Algeria in North Africa under Napoleon III and the French were fierce fierce worried about a revolution and an uprising in Algeria

and they didn't want a war, they didn't have the money for a war in 1856 so Napoleon the third, clever boy thought of a fucking clever idea there was a tribe

a religious tribe called the Marabouts in Algeria and they were gaining a fierce amount of support with the locals and Napoleon feared that these marabouts would lead the revolution that would free Algeria from French control. So Napoleon gets on to Albert Robert Houdin and Houdin goes down to Algeria and meets with some of the tribes and the elders the stage so this is a man

of huge standing and respect in his tribe and community somebody that they all look up to as being a powerful warrior so on stage hoden has this wooden box it's a heavy wooden box now very heavy not you know you'd want to be pretty fucking strong to be lifting it so he invites up the head of the tribe the strong man and says lift up that box so the algerian strong man lifts up the box over his head the crowd go mad they start cheering and clapping because here is their warrior exhibiting his strength they feel dead proud so then hoden says to him with a wave of this wand i'm gonna sap all of your strength from your body and of course everybody laughs and the strongman goes all right go on so giggling so houdin does waves his wand over the body of this algerian strongman this tribal leader

what the tribal leader doesn't know is inside the wooden box is a very strong magnet that's connected to the floor so essentially what what hoden did is that he then turns on this very strong magnet waves the wand over your man's muscles and says the words behold now you are weaker than a woman try to lift the box so the strong man tries and the box that he was able to lift the box. So the strongman tries. And the box that he was able to lift a couple of minutes ago, he can no longer lift because the magnet has it stuck to the floor. But of course, these fucking Algerians haven't a clue because they're not an advanced, technologically advanced civilization like the French.

So your man is pulling and pulling. And it's not a joke anymore now he's freaking the fuck out because he can't lift up this box and he can't understand it and he starts screaming screaming and roaring freaked out and runs out of the theater absolutely fucking terrified and then everybody in the theater they're just after seeing their tribal elder have his strength sapped from his body so they fucking freak out they're going who is this

French cunt what special powers have these French bastards have that they can do this we're not fucking with these lads so then afterwards to solidify it Houdin again meets up with some tribal elders

he hands one of the lads a rifle and in the rifle is a blank bullet of course the lads don't know what a blank is. Hoden stands in front of the gun, he says to the elder, shoot me into the face the elder is like, I'm not doing

it, no I don't want to shoot you. He goes promise you, shoot me into the face the elder is like, I'm not doing it no I don't want to shoot you, he goes promise you, shoot me into the fucking face so the elder cocks the gun, pulls the trigger, big massive bang, smoke no bullet leaves the chamber of course and Houdin

opens his mouth and appears to have caught the bullet in his teeth one of the oldest tricks in the book. Of course, who'd invented it? At this point, the Algerians are just like, this guy's a fucking lunatic. We cannot take on the French. Not a fucking hope.

He's after sapping the strength of your man. He can do that to all of us. We'd be fucked. And they can catch bullets in their teeth. Forget about it. The revolution is called off and through that psychological warfare the french managed to hold on to algeria for a long time and eventually the algerians got independence i think it was the 1940s or 50s they had to buy their independence off France and as far as I know they're still paying

off the debt, France didn't even give it back to them they were like, I think they did have a war, there was the civil war there was the French Algerian war that's why there's a lot of Algerians in France today

but Algeria, yeah, they had to buy back their independence. Millions and millions and millions. And they're still paying it off as far as I know. If they haven't recently paid off the debt. Because the French are cunts. Colonial boys. Nasty fuckers. So we've reached the halfway point of the podcast now.

And usually what we do is we have our ocarina pause um which is where the app acast inserts a digital advert into this podcast which you may or may not hear depending on your geographic location and what I do is I play an ocarina which is a Spanish clay whistle. Now for the past few weeks I have not had my ocarina so I played kines, I played with my flick knife last week and then before that I tapped a sherry glass to create a kind of a digital Angelus for the people who are not hearing the advert. You'll be

very pleased to know that I have located the ocarina. I have it in my possession. So we're going to head back to our regular ocarina pause. Um I'm just thinking in the context of numbers stations

I wonder what if someone just stumbles across this podcast at just the point with the ocarina pause and it's a little bit like a modern numbers station so here is your ocarina pause a pause. No, no, don't. The first omen. I believe the girl is to be the mother. Mother of what?

Is the most terrifying. Six, six, six. It's the mark of the devil. Hey! Movie of the year. It's not real, it's not real. It's not real. Who said that?

The first omen. Only in theaters April 5th. Will you rise with the sun to help change mental health care forever? Join the Sunrise Challenge to raise funds for CAMH, the Center for Addiction and Mental Health, to support life-saving help change mental health care forever? Join the Sunrise Challenge to raise funds for CAMH, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, to support life-saving progress in mental health care. From May 27th to 31st, people across Canada will rise together and show those living with mental illness and addiction that they're not alone.

Help CAMH build a future where no one is left behind. So, who will you rise for? Register today at sunrisechallenge.ca. That's sunrisechallenge.ca. that was slightly longer than usual because I missed it because I missed that ocarina and I really wanted to play it for you so if you're lucky you heard that

if you're unlucky you were sold some bullshit okay you were sold some shit em oh oh yes my book the gospel according to blind boy em Oh yes. My book. The Gospel According to Blind Boy.

It completely sold out. About two months ago. You know. We didn't expect the book to sell as well as it did. But it completely sold out. And the book company did not print enough to meet sales. So for the past about two months people have not been able to buy this book and it's been fucking sold online at stupid prices which i was annoyed about

because there's nothing i can fucking do about that you know what i mean there's people who've ordered it on amazon it's not being delivered all of this i'm pleased to report that tech the paperback of the gospel according to Blind Boy should be in shops today, the reprint. I was told it'd be happening today. So go into your local bookshop and there it is, available. Now, another thing I found out is when it was announced that it was being reprinted, so many bookshops bought it up that now they think it's going to sell out again really quick

so another reprint has been ordered so there's the market will be flooded with my book of short stories which I it's nice and weird and dark if you go back to the earlier podcasts you'll hear some of the short

stories that I read out. This podcast started off as merely an advertising exercise for me to try and sell the fucking book. And I didn't, I had no intentions of this podcast being 38 episodes long. Thought it was going to be three or four. Didn't think people would be interested in listening to me talk out of my hoop every week. But I guess ye are. Listening to me talk out of my hoop every week. But.

I guess ye are. So. Next week's podcast. Is not going to come out on Wednesday morning. It's going to come out on Monday. Right. And there's a reason. For this slight disruption.

Today. I went up to Dublin. And I. I interviewed the actor Cillian Murphy for the podcast, okay, and the reason Cillian is coming on the podcast is because, to speak about Repeal the Eighth, all right, I'm very concerned about men not voting in the upcoming referendum. And Cillian Murphy is concerned about the exact same thing. So we speak about why we feel men should be registering to vote. Why we feel men should be voting to repeal the 8th Amendment. Why it is not just a woman's issue.

Why it's an issue that affects society. So tune in to that next week on Monday. It's going to be out on Monday. Because I want it out as early as possible. So we can get lads registering. Because the deadline for registration is the 8th of May. And double check that you're actually registered. Because a few people get.

Kind of stricken off arbitrarily. You know. And if you're thinking. Fuck sake. I'm not interested in that. We also talk a little bit about Peaky Blinders. And whatever as well. But.

We're just trying to use our platforms. And he's got a much much bigger platform than mine. You know. So you've got that to look forward to next week also we recorded some short video segments about repeal and these will be online in the next couple of days

you'll see them on social media but the full interview is going to be on this podcast next Monday and thank you to Yvonne McGuinness and Michelle Darmody for making the interview possible I can't wait for to go out is there anything else that I was going to talk about and I'll leave that for another nah, nah I'll talk about this

what are we 45 minutes I'll talk about this for a bit because it's something I came across on the internet and it has nothing to do with sound but I'm trying to trying to figure out the unifying theme of this week's podcast, you know.

It's been kind of weird, it's been strange, you know, fucking psychological operations and just kind of weird stuff. So in the theme of weird stuff, but it has nothing to do with psychological operations, it's a very rare style of natural disaster. It's a very rare style of natural disaster. And there's only two known recordings of it in kind of modern history. I'll tell you what, we'll see what you think of this. 1886 in the north west of Cameroon 1746 people and 3500 animals livestock just

dropped dead dropped fucking dead people came across the scene and an entire town. Was just everybody on the ground. Dead. No kind of evidence as to. What had happened.

People dying in their sleep. Almost like. Pompeii. But no lava. No smoke. No fire. No visible trauma trauma on the bodies save for

kind of some people had blistering on their skins and things like that so no one knew what it's a little town beside Lake Nyas in Cameroon

and it was baffling people. It was scaring the fuck out of people. Going, what the fuck happened? What happened? So what it was, it's a very, very rare natural disaster. Where a body of water is kind of trapping carbon dioxide in the bottom of the lake, you know, and all of this carbon dioxide can get released at once. So what happened to the poor people in Lake Nyos is because of,

some people think that it might have been either an earthquake or volcanic activity. A shit ton of carbon dioxide gas released itself from this lake. Now this is invisible. First off as well like 70% of the air that we breathe is carbon dioxide but this was pure carbon dioxide no oxygen so this invisible gigantic cloud of carbon dioxide slowly creeped down a mountain

at night time and suffocated 2000 people and a lot of livestock and it's only ever happened twice in modern history the Lake Nyos disaster

how fucking mad is that so we're 50 minutes into the podcast now which means that I answer a few questions that you ask but before we do that I'll get few questions that you ask. But before we do that, I'll get to the part where I ask for your support. This podcast is funded by you, the listener.

Through the Patreon page. Patreon.com forward slash TheBlindBuyPodcast If you like the podcast, if you're enjoying it. If it's providing you with a weekly podcast hug and you know you can listen to it for free if you want I don't mind but if you're like do you know what blind buy

I like that so much I would buy you one pint a month for your five hours of monthly content. If you're feeling so inclined. Please go to the Patreon page. Patreon.com forward slash The Blind Boy Podcast.

And donate me the price of a pint a month. Or a coffee. Because. It just it makes a huge difference to my life. It gives me independence as an artist I don't have to be fucking pandering to fucking

television companies pitching bullshit that I don't want to do and I actually I love doing this podcast I like the fact that we just had an hour there of talking about interesting shit

do you know I couldn't do that on television not a hope some prick would be in you know some cunt would be oh I liked a bit about the numbers and the numbers project but do you think you can talk about Brian McFadden actually do you know what I did actually yeah

I mentioned Westlife yeah and then they would have said can you mention Westlife but don't don't talk about how the CIA used them for torture say something good about Westlife that's what would happen if this was on television and then I'd have to provide balance

to the shit that I'm saying no hot takes there'd have to be balance so I quite like this podcast and the complete and utter creative control and I'm answerable to nobody other than you and you're free to make suggestions and all of that and I take them on board and we do this as a collaborative journey so if you like that and you fancy giving me a few quid every month please do go to patreon if you don't and you can't afford it. That's grand.

You can listen for free. I'm appealing to your soundness. Alright. Let's get on. To the questions. You bastards. Oh. I went a full podcast.

Without someone texting me. And I got a text. From a cunt. Okay. Anthony. Oh we've got a. We've got a live one here. Anthony's got a question, which I'm going to try and tackle,

and it looks like a toughie. Blind boy, there has been an awful lot of talk on the fragility and toxic nature of masculinity. This is leading to the marginalisation of the young white male who cannot express their viewpoint for fear of being branded chauvinistic. Can you comment on toxic radical feminism, which is a lot more socially acceptable than the equally as disgusting toxic radical chauvinism,

or how damaging enforced gender quotas in the public service can be. I think we have a different viewpoint of what toxic masculinity is, Anthony. For me, first off, masculinity itself isn't necessarily toxic. What I'm talking about is gender stereotypes, right? That are unhelpful, that lead to poor mental health. So for me,

I would say how I was raised to be toxic in a masculine sense is that I was very much raised as a man to not speak about my emotions. Right, that's one. Definitely. Suck it up. Be strong. You're a lad.

If you have a gripe with somebody, hit him a slap. Certainly don't show weakness. hit him a slap, certainly don't show weakness, do not profess to the other lads that you might be in love with a girl because she's only an object, that's to be fucked, don't show vulnerability, all of these things how I was raised, that's an ideal of masculinity that is not helpful to my mental health. That doesn't mean that like masculinity itself is toxic. I mean I'm not sure what fucking masculinity is to be sure, to be honest. But not expressing emotions, that's fuck, that's toxic as fuck. Do you know? And it's an unhelpful stereotype of my gender. And I don't want to live up to that.

It doesn't help my life. So I'm working hard to discard that. Can you comment on toxic radical feminism? I'm not sure what that means. I'm not sure what that means certain people who profess to be feminists also happen to be

assholes but that doesn't mean that the asshole represents feminism it's like within any group anything whether it be feminism or railway enthusiasts, 10% of any group of people are going to be loud and obnoxious.

And often the detractors will highlight and elevate the voices of people who are essentially just being assholes. And then these people represent the entire movement. So, I don't look at, if I see, I don't know, if I see somebody online who's, like does YouTube videos, radical feminist, goes nuts, I don't look at those people and go oh feminism I go look at that person being an asshole or possibly suffering from mental health issues and in pain and expressing that as anger but I don't look at that as encapsulating all of feminism in the same way

that if I see a man expressing what I perceive to be toxic masculinity I don't consider him to represent all of the gender of men do you know um toxic femininity like I've never heard I've never heard that phrase but there are certainly I've never heard that phrase, but there are certainly gender stereotypes. First of all, that's difficult for me to answer because I don't understand the female experience. I don't know what it's like to live that because I'm a cisgender man, so I don't know. I can speak with experience about toxic masculinity but regarding the situation for for women I'm just an observer but there are certainly if we take the word toxic to mean that it is toxic for the individual and those around them

there are certain expectations on the female gender which are not helpful for women, such as having the pressure to look a certain way. The definition of female beauty being purely physical and a certain way, ignoring the reality that people just simply have different body shapes and that is the reality there is no ideal everyone has different fucking body shapes it's that simple but women more so are than men are raised to believe that one type of body is

the perfect one and we see that toxically expressed in the massive levels of body dysmorphia and eating disorders in in females um i was raised as a man to believe that i must provide for a woman and if i do not provide for this woman I am a failure as a man that is a toxic viewpoint for me that is a toxic ideal it becomes increasingly unrealistic in our current economic economic climate for me to be able to do that women are similarly raised to believe don't go out and get your own stuff don't be the best that you can be find a man and let him provide for you that's toxic that's not very good for a woman's mental health to have that and it certainly doesn't help how she progresses in the world um i spoke before about you know from a young age little boys are raised to believe that

anger acting out anger either verbally or physically is an appropriate and rewardable response to a stressful situation young girls are raised to believe that verbal anger or physical anger or assertiveness is a bad thing for a young girl to express. However, tears are an appropriate response to a stressful situation. And sometimes not only appropriate, but that crying is the only response appropriate for a young girl in a stressful situation. So you end up with,

you know, if you raise a little girl like that, you end up with you know if you raise a little girl like that you end up with a woman who deals with stress through tears you know anger is expressed as tears not expressed as being angry and then the world calls her irrational that's toxic you know know that's of no benefit to the person these are toxicity are about gender stereotypes

and unrealistic gender stereotypes and for us to live up to these things it will cause us a continual cycle of pain. Because they are ideals that cannot be reached. But one thing I will say, they tend to be created by a male patriarchal structure of power. Okay? That tends to be what creates the issues with both genders

in terms of unrealistic stereotypes. If people disagree with that, send me a DM. Send me a DM and educate me otherwise, please. Because I'm open to fucking criticism. I'm open to change. That's how I see it right now. And if someone disagrees with it and wants to change my mind,

I'll change my mind around that if I receive new information, you know? But that's the best way I can answer the question. And regarding gender quotas, I don't see a problem with gender quotas. I don't see a problem with inclusiveness in the workplace around race. I just don't see a problem with that. And another thing too, a reason I think that toxic masculinity

specifically gets as much attention as it does is because at the farthest end of the spectrum it expresses itself quite destructively and violently. At the far end of the toxic masculinity spectrum, you get sexual violence. You can't say the same for women, you know. You do get maybe toxic femininity expressing itself inwards as, like I mentioned bodiless morphia

and and you do get that too with men with with uh you know toxic masculinity is most certainly responsible for some male suicide but generally uh male toxic masculinity it can be quite destructive and disruptive for society you know and that's why it gets a lot of attention Keith asks oh Jesus Christ they're fucking tough questions this week I just wanted to

do a podcast on bad sounds alright Keith asks have you ever experienced irrational xenophobic fear on your travels? Is it just me or is it normal? And if it is normal, why do you think it happens? Yeah, I've said it before.

Um... I was raised to be fucking sex Sexist racist and xenophobic. That's the culture I come from. And. Do you know what I mean. It's the whole fucking checking your privilege thing. It's like. Don't pretend.

Don't pretend to yourself that. You've managed to escape being xenophobic, or classist, or racist, or sexist, chances are if you grow up in that society and you're at the kind of the top of the system, which I am as a fucking, a white man who's also straight, like, a white man who's also straight like I have unconscious biases that I was raised with that doesn't make me a bad person

and yes I have been abroad and seen a person from a different culture and all of a sudden I'm confronted in my head with negative unhelpful stereotypes about that person but what i try and do as an adult who can educate themselves i'm first of all honest with myself about these things and i try and catch them in the moment

and challenge them okay when you don't take ownership of, we'll say, racism or xenophobia that you were raised with, when you don't take ownership of these things in yourself, and you pretend, oh, I'm not racist, I'm not xenophobic, that's when microaggressions start. That's when, you know, there's this thing with that fucking touching black people's hair right where when a white person can meet a black person their

inherent kind of stereo to racist stereotypes that they were raised with comes up in the person. And rather than take ownership of that, their brain goes into defense mechanism mode. They get uncomfortable around the person from the other culture who looks different or whatever. And they act it out as an excessive niceness. And before you know it, that person is saying, Oh, I love your hair. It's so curly. Can I touch it? And then they're touching the person's hair. That's a microaggression.

And it comes about when somebody doesn't acknowledge their privilege, when they don't acknowledge that they've been raised with this type of stuff and a defense mechanism kicks in and you're being overly nice and now you're crossing the other person's boundaries because you're not being authentic with yourself do you know what i mean and that's a tough thing to say but i'm certainly not going to sit here and pretend that it's like oh yeah racism I missed that one even though I was raised in a fucking culture which is

essentially racist or xenophobic or whatever the fuck you have you know but blind by we're Irish we don't have racism here direct provision it's happening now the complete and utter dehumanisation

of asylum seekers and refugees because they're just too different it's happening now there's your fucking racism in Ireland right now and when I say racism this is the thing

I don't mean burning fucking crucifixes i just mean the unconscious cultural idea of people who look different to you being very different and then othering them in your interaction with them saying something or doing something that reminds that person that they are not the same as you or they are lesser than you do you know what i mean and that's the kind of modern face of racism that we all have to and xenophobia that we all have to take ownership of, try and catch it in ourselves and change. I mean, that's all I can say on that. And when I say things as well like fucking white male privilege or shit like checking your privilege and things like that, I know that there's a large proportion of listeners right now rolling their fucking eyes and the reason you're rolling your eyes is because

it's uncomfortable right it's uncomfortable to think about we don't like thinking about it but it's worth thinking about from a mental health perspective for yourself so you can achieve greater empathy and so you're not making other people from a different culture or skin color or whatever the fuck you have so you're not making them feel uncomfortable just take ownership of it it doesn't necessarily mean you're a a bad person it's ignorance but as an adult you have the full choice to take ownership of it. And what I like to do in these situations, because most of the audience listening is Irish, I'll try and put it into an Irish context that you can relate to. Because Irish people will fucking roll their eyes when they hear a black person or an asian person on the internet talking about racism they

experience irish people will roll their eyes at it but then when a when a british person or a british news organization dares to call an irish celebrity british the same people get up in arms if we hear an a british person express ignorance about the potato famine to not know what it is to not understand that we view it as genocide we get up in arms so please remind remind yourself of that anger when a british person speaks about the irish and then apply that to someone from another race or culture or whatever like again the Irish like I mean we have a little bit of a window into this okay we certainly did 200 fucking years ago now not really but we kind of do a small bit like I go over to london a lot and i worked in in the offices of a creative company in london

just just for a little bit for about two weeks it was it was a television thing i was doing and british people love the irish right they love us they think we're hilarious we're funny they like to do our accents they think we're gas they love having us around very amicable and nice okay and i had this experience in this office that i was working with in laughing blah blah blah until it came to actually expressing ideas and wanting them to be taken seriously then all of a sudden you're the mad paddy you're the crazy paddy with his crazy paddy ideas that's the microaggression there you're a source of entertainment but when it comes to actually being taken seriously british culture and their privilege and the culture they

were raised in to believe that irish are thick backwardsers, they've been raised with that, they're not aware of it, and they express that then unconsciously as being incredibly nice to you, and then not really taking you that seriously when you want to be taken seriously. That's a microaggression. I remember being outside a pub

and just chatting with a British lad who I'd just met. And you know me from this fucking podcast. I'm interested in art, science, culture, the whole fucking shebang, right? So whatever chat I was going on to this fella, I'd obviously gotten into a hot take rant about something, probably something to do with philosophy or art, something that would be categorized as intellectual okay so I'm just there as a human being speaking to another human being

who happens to be British just speaking to him about probably something I saw in the British Museum that day and me having gone on this rant and I could see him agreeing with me and he's talking away and then like a minute later out of nowhere he comes out with this comment that's unrelated about my friend says the Irish are really stupid

and I felt that felt terrible to me I was like what? so basically this British man had heard me speak with authority about a subject that he considered to be intellectual then for him his prejudice came up unconsciously going oh this this thick irish man is something smart. That doesn't make sense to me. I thought the Irish were thick. He felt uncomfortable

because he understands that that's rude. He pushed it down. He didn't acknowledge it. He pushed it down. And then it creeped back up unconsciously as this Freudian slip about the Irish not being smart. That's a microaggression.

He's not a bad person he was just simply unconsciously confronted with his prejudice didn't know how to deal with it didn't take ownership and it expressed itself as a comment that made me feel very small and made me feel othered and in that moment I wasn't a human being being passionate about that thing that I love about art or whatever it was I wasn't a human being then I was oh fuck I'm a useless fucking thick paddy and we've done nothing but build these people's roads do you know what I mean so if as an Irish person you're listening to that and you're going fuck it you're making sense

yeah I can relate to that if you can relate to that please hear out either it be a fucking woman or a black person or a traveller or whoever the fuck hear that person out and believe

their experience. If you can relate to my experience there. About how the Brits think that we're stupid, bomb planting, potato eating, thick fucking mix. Do you know? And keep an eye on the... When you cringe. When you hear somebody talk about privilege or some shit like that, see, that shit's tough to fucking talk about, that's tough to fucking talk about, because

then I'm scared myself then of saying the wrong thing, do you know, because I don't know what it's like to be a different fucking culture, I don't know, but I answer, I look through the fucking. The Patreon or Twitter. Where you ask the fucking questions. And I answer the question that I see. So again. If you don't like any of the answers.

Give me a fucking DM. Change my mind. If I got something wrong. And I'm not. Conflating the contemporary Irish experience. With. Microaggressions from the British with

we'll say black people microaggressions prejudice in America and a culture of prejudice towards black people that microaggression

finds its way into a policeman. Whereby the. Culture has. Criminalized black people. Based on the color of their skin. And then that policeman pulls the trigger. And the black person is dead. And that's why.

That shit's really important. Do you know. And I'm not trying to conflate those two experiences. I'm just trying to. Offer an avenue of empathy. For an Irish person person because the Brits think we're thick it's the bottom

level of the scale but you go up to the top and people are getting shot because of opinions about how they are

there's a black man he's a criminal bang that's the reality I finish up on that now because that's Jesus what are we 70 minutes into the podcast

because I had to answer those two incredibly difficult questions that will get me into trouble probably have a lovely week enjoy the summer you know the same thing I say every week enjoy the summer you know the same thing I say every week enjoy the summer

increase your empathy make connections with the earth, look for otters or crayfish if anyone sees a crayfish let me know if you're looking at any still water I'm obsessed with finding a crayfish

in the wild in Ireland they're freshwater clawless lobsters I don't think they're native to Ireland but they do exist and I will spend a long time looking into streams to try and see one I've never seen one

I have once in my life seen an Irish lizard there is a native Irish lizard they're brown they're very good at hiding and once about three years ago on a boiling hot day in Limerick I looked down at my feet and there was a little

Irish lizard basking in the sun but I want to see a crayfish go in peace you absolute cunts. 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 and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket

to Rock City at torontorock.com.