The Blindboy Podcast - Mental Health, Biodiversity and Mythology

Episode Date: March 28, 2023

An anticolonial argument which explores the connections between our emotional well-being, mythology and biodiversity Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Get kicked out of Cardiff, you groaning Fiona's. Welcome to the Blind Byte Podcast. I hope you're all getting your beaks wet with the extra hour in the evening. Isn't it magnificent? It's bright after six o'clock. The sun is climbing higher in the sky. Sideways slanty evening sunlight that makes dogs look pink.

Evening fucking walks. Where the air smells floral and that other smell it's not chlorophyll, it's that smell of buds on trees the smell of a leaf being born so I had two magnificent shows up in Dublin last week two sold out shows in Vicar Street

thank you to everybody who came along they were wonderful nights one of the guests who I spoke to in Vicar Street. Thank you to everybody who came along. They were wonderful nights. One of the guests who I spoke to in Vicar Street was a fella called Collie Ennis. Collie is somebody who I've had on this podcast before. One of the earliest podcasts. And Collie is, he's an expert on insects and frogs. His main concern is biodiversity.

Biodiversity is the variety of life in an ecosystem. The abundance, the variability of living organisms at different levels within an ecosystem. So that means trees, grass, plants, the insects that pollinate those plants, the insects that live in that grass and those trees, then the larger animals like birds that rely upon those insects for food, and then the birds who nest in those trees going right down to the level of the soil with worms and fungus that's biodiversity, it's an ecosystem it's nature, it's the natural world

it's the way that all living things rely upon each other and biodiversity is collapsing because of human behavior and this is important because we need a healthy we need healthy biodiversity so that we can have food so that humans can have food we eat plants and in order for plants to grow and be healthy and provide us with food the plants need insects they need pollinators they need insects that help the plants to fertilize and also organisms and insects and worms and maggots and all sorts of stuff to keep soil healthy so that plants can

grow we can't replace this stuff with technology and that's why biodiversity is important. Collie who I spoke to last week in Vicar Street, his main concern is frogs. He dedicates his life to preserving the habitats of frogs in Ireland because frogs are a keystone species. A keystone species is an animal that an ecosystem relies upon. So if you remove this one animal from an ecosystem, then there's no telling what might happen. And frogs in Ireland are disappearing. They're dying out because they don't have anywhere to live anymore. A keystone species is disappearing and we don't know what will happen if they do. To give you an example of the impact that one keystone species can have upon an ecosystem,

I always like to speak about Yellowstone National Park over in America. Now they call it a park, but it's probably the same size as Ireland. Yellowstone National Park is just this fucking giant wild area that covers three states in America, Wyoming, Montana and Idaho. And around the early 1990s, scientists started to realise that the rivers in Yellowstone National Park weren't very healthy. There wasn't a lot of life in the rivers. There wasn't a lot of fish. The salmon numbers were disappearing and they couldn't attribute the dying river

to the usual culprits they couldn't attribute it to pollution or a toxic chemical spill in the water they couldn't attribute it to overfishing they didn't understand why the fuck are all the salmon disappearing

why are these rivers divide of life forms? What's going on here? And they started to realise that a keystone species had been eradicated from Yellowstone National Park for like 70 years.

A very important keystone species was gone. And this was the wolf. And like I said, Yellowstone is massive. Probably the same size as Ireland. But humans had killed all the wolves in Yellowstone National Park sometime in the early 20th century. Now when I say humans of course I mean colonisers. Europeans. Europeans who became Americans eradicated the wolf in Yellowstone National Park for a number of reasons. Could have been trophy hunting. Also European colonists

would find themselves living in areas in Yellowstone where indigenous Americans did not live. Europeans settling within the wolves territory and now all of a sudden the Europeans are afraid that the wolves will attack them so they kill the wolves and then the Europeans have livestock or grazing animals so they kill the wolves for that reason. But wolves became extinct in Yellowstone because of colonising and then 70 years later the rivers are dead. so in 1995 some scientists in Yellowstone decided why not reintroduce wolves I know it sounds mad but they're a keystone species why not bring wolves back and just see what happens so Yellowstone naturally has a lot of elk. Elk are like giant deers, okay, big deers

with antlers. And these are naturally present in Yellowstone. And they were grazers. Elk would graze on the ground and eat shoots and eat leaves and eat grass and eat flowers. But the elk had one predator, and that was the wolf. So what happened when the wolf disappeared? The elk were like, we can do whatever the fuck we want. There's no one, no one's here to kill us. The humans have killed all the wolves. We can do whatever we want. So the elk population exploded. Every elk that was born survived. There was no pack of wolves there to control the population of elk. And because there was no predators around, the elk stopped behaving like elk.

They stopped being nervous. They stopped being cautious. They stopped moving from place to place to avoid the wolves. Instead they said, nothing's going to happen to us. Let's just do what we like. So the elk now, who aren't scared of wolves, started hanging around near the riverbeds where the soil was most fertile. And there's loads of little young trees and young shrubs and young plants coming right up out of the soil.

And the elk sees it and goes, absolutely yummy. A young willow tree that's only a week old, I'll eat that. So the elk for years just started hanging around riverbeds. And then they became the predators of any young sapling tree that was trying to grow near the river and the elks would just eat it up until the trees started to disappear now all the trees are disappearing because the elks are eating all the baby trees and now all the plants that exist because they exist around these trees, all those plants start to disappear. And now all the insects that rely upon those plants start to disappear.

And now because those insects are disappearing, bats that feed off those insects, mice, voles, all these little mammals, lizards, frogs, all these other animals that rely upon the insects that need the plants, that need the trees. Now they're all gone and the area is becoming bare. And this area, which is near the river, that's known as a riparian habitat. These are very unique habitats. We have them all over the world.

Like where I go jogging in Limerick, near Plassey, where the otter Yartia Herne lives who I haven't spoken about in years but a riparian habitat is an area where like a river meets land it's that in between where a river is flowing through land it's like a buffer zone between a river and land they're very fertile areas because they benefit from all the the nutrients that a river carries but in Yellowstone the elk no longer had the wolves killing them so they just grazed the fuck out of all the riverbeds and killed the riparian area and it did this because the river needed trees there were parts of the riverbeds and kill the riparian area and it did this because the river needed trees

there were parts of the river that required cover by trees to create shade because the trees create shade over the water which then makes the water cooler which allows certain fish who need colder temperatures to live now the trees are gone because the fucking elk are eating them all. And now the water is too hot. Also now because the water is too hot, not only do the fish who live in that water, not only can they not survive, but the plants that live in that water, that provide oxygen for the water,

they now disappear too. But those plants that oxygenate the water, there's loads of insects that rely upon those plants for food. So now those insects are gone. So now the fish who eat those insects, they don't have any food. So now the fish die off. And then there's beavers and the beavers eat the fish. But now the beavers don't have any fish to eat. But the beavers are real important because they build dams and those dams that they build create natural wetlands and marshes and swamps where you've got turtles lizards frogs toads all these other animals that

rely upon the wetlands that are created by the beavers who eat the fish who eat the insects and the plants that need the shade from the trees that can't exist because the elks are eating the young trees because they're not being hunted by the wolves. And then on top of it all, the shape of the river is changing. The river itself is eroding and filling with dirt and sediment because the hooves of the elk are destroying the soil around the fucking riverbeds. And after 70 years years everything is gone everything's dead you just have a barren river with no fish with no plants going through a barren

landscape with no turtles or frogs or beaver or trees or. A dead and dying landscape, completely devoid of any type of biodiversity. All because one species disappeared. One keystone species, the wolf. And how did they know all this? Because in 1995, they brought wolves back to Yellowstone. They reintroduced wolves into their natural habitat. And what happened completely surprised them. The wolves were back.

So now the elk started getting scared. Now the elk were like, shit, who are these cunts that are going to eat us and eat our children? So the elk now started to move around again and they stopped over grazing and because the elk stopped over grazing now the young little baby trees had a chance to grow. Then the trees grew and when the trees started to grow all the little plants that relied upon the trees underneath them they started to grow too. Then the insects came back and then the insects came back and then

the mice came back and the rats came back and all the other little animals that ate those insects and then slowly but surely the entire habitat started to repair itself you started to see beavers building dams you started to see swamps full of turtles and frogs and you started to see rivers full of fish and salmon everything repaired itself because they reintroduced a keystone species one animal the wolf the apex predator

now when I mentioned how the wolf became extinct in Yellowstone National Park I made a point of mentioning that it was European colonisers who caused the wolf to be extinct. It wasn't the indigenous Native American people who had been living there for thousands of years that caused the wolf to be extinct. They had managed to live in harmony with the wolf. It was the colonisers who made the wolf extinct. And this is important because

there's something I'm realising more and more, especially the past year, because I've been focusing quite a lot on folklore and mythology the past year on this podcast. I've been delving deep into Irish mythology. And the reason is, is because I've started to view mythology differently. I now understand mythology, Irish mythology in particular, to be a map of the landscape.

Irish mythology, which could be thousands of years old, came from a culture which was oral, which meant there was no writing. So we created loads and loads of really interesting stories about every tree and every mountain and every lake and every river. Because the more interesting and engaging and enjoyable and entertaining the story, the easier it is to retain information about your landscape and your natural environment. I don't view indigenous mythology as history anymore or interesting stories anymore. Humans are animals. We are animals.

But we are unique to other animals because we have culture. What is culture? Very simple. Put 10 monkeys in a cage and the door of this cage is a lock with a very simple puzzle. Monkey number 1 goes to the door of the cage, plays with the puzzle, figures it out, leaves the cage. Monkey number 2 does the exact same thing. Plays with the puzzle, figures it out and leaves. Same with monkey number three, same with monkey number four and so on until all monkeys have left. But it takes ages because each monkey has to figure out the puzzle themselves. Put ten humans in a cage. One human goes to the lock, figures out the puzzle

and then tells everyone else how to do it and everyone leaves. That's culture. The capacity to use language within a population to communicate ideas. Only humans can do that. We are the only animal that can do that. I think that mythology and folklore is nature's way of keeping the human animal in balance with the ecosystem in which we exist. So to give you an example, let's take it back to Yellowstone National Park. Why didn't the indigenous Native American tribes in that area cause the wolf to be extinct? Why was it only Europeans that did it when they arrived in the area, when they colonized? So Yellowstone is absolutely huge. As I mentioned, it goes across three states. And within this area, there would

have been many separate indigenous cultures, many separate groups or tribes of people within that area. So these are people that are indigenous to that land. They've lived there for hundreds of thousands of years. I'm going to one for example the crow nation the crow nation are a native american people from the area that we now call montana where a part of yellowstone national park is and these people the crow nation they have mythology they have beliefs about themselves about the land about creation which take the form of stories no different to Irish mythology just different people different part of the world different landscape so I'm gonna take one story from Crow nation mythology called old man coyote now I've

checked my sources for this. I've researched it. So I hope I can do it justice. And if you are an indigenous American person listening to this and I don't do it justice I apologise. Give me a shout on Instagram and let me know.

So Old Man Coyote is an origin myth. It's a story of how the world and the landscape was created. But it's from the Crow Nation, which are an indigenous people that are present in Yellowstone National Park. So they have a figure called Old Man Coyote.

In some stories, it's not a coyote, but it's a wolf. But wolves and coyotes, they're both apex predators in this habitat and they're very closely related they're large canines that are at the top of the food chain and again what i love about this story is the slight similarities it has to the creation myth in the bible from the perspective of comparative mythology people living in the land that we now call America who have absolutely no contact with the people living in the Middle East who wrote the Bible and yet their origin myth of how the world was created

has similarities in particular the flood myth the great flood and this is either something that was passed down hundreds of thousands of years from when we all came from Africa or it might be as Carl Jung would say evidence of a collective human unconscious mind

but anyway here's the story of Old Man Coyote a story from the area of Yellowstone so in the beginning the whole earth was just covered in water completely flooded and Old Man Coyote who's like this coyote or a wolf, he lives up in the sky with loads of other animals that are all like supernatural beings.

One day this coyote, this wolf, decides, I'm going to create land. The whole world is full of water, but I'm going to create some land here for beings to inhabit so the coyote old man coyote who lives in the sky he went down to one of the creatures who lived in the water

because the earth was covered in water he went down to a beaver and said here Mr. Beaver can you swim down to the bottom of the ocean there and bring up loads of mud, just bring up loads of mud and create land. So the beaver said, alright Mr. Coyote, I'm going to do that. So then the coyote got the mud that the beaver gave him

and put it onto the back of a turtle. And then when it went on the back of the turtle, the mud grew and it created the earth it created the continents all the land on earth for beings to live on and then the coyote came down from the sky and he walked the earth and he formed mountains and rivers and forests and plains and then the coyote or the wolf would create loads of different animals and plants and he created humans and he created seasons and then when the coyote when old man coyote created humans he taught humans the skills to hunt and survive and to fish and to make tools and to establish culture

so what you have there is the crow nation's origin story and it's quite similar to the bible you've got this big giant flood and you've got god creating the heaven and the earth in seven days quite a similar story except with the crow nation there's no god it's a coyote or a wolf that lives in the sky who asks other animals and cooperates with them to create nature as we know it today so here's my point that's mythology that's the mythology of the people indigenous to areas of yellowstone national park that's the stories real interesting enjoyable stories that they have created about their environment about the land now i don't know how old those stories are what i do know is that people have lived in yellowstone national park in america for they reckon 11 000 years but isn't it fucking mad isn't it a mad coincidence that the story of Old Man Coyote, or the wolf, the apex predator in Yellowstone,

is the animal that's so important that it creates everything from the plants to the trees to the other animals to the river to the fish. to the other animals, to the river, to the fish. That the origin story that's thousands of years old is near identical to what the scientists in Yellowstone figured out in the 1990s. That when the scientists in Yellowstone had a look at the landscape, they realised fuck it, we're after getting rid of the wolf.

And when you take the wolf away, the keystone species, everything else collapses until you're left with nothing and the fish die in the river. How is it that mythology and science are arriving at the same conclusions? Because I reckon mythology is far, far more important

than we give it credit to be. Mythology is the stories that humans create about our lived environment so that we can coexist with the biodiversity there and not cause collapse. And what that ends up looking like is I'm not going to kill all those wolves. Why? Why would you kill all those wolves?

These are sacred animals. Have you not heard the story of Old Man Coyote? By giving meaning to the landscape. And this isn't just the Crow Nation. This is indigenous mythology all around the world. This is Irish mythology too. Stories and beliefs about mountains and trees and animals cause humans to fear and respect nature so that we don't exploit it and we work with it instead. Except when it comes to colonisation.

What's causing climate change and the collapse of biodiversity is is capitalism and colonization. That's what has caused this. Empire expansion and greed. The British Empire, the Spanish Empire, the American Empire, the current empire of neoliberal capitalism, of the global north, of which you and I benefit from, that extracts resources and wealth from the global north of which you and I benefit from that extracts resources and wealth from the global south. That's what's causing climate collapse.

And when one culture colonises another, it's not just as simple as we're sending our people here and we're going to take shit over through physical violence. It's not just physical violence it's the ideological violence of removing the indigenous cultures language and mythology this happened in Ireland too the very the cornerstone of the ideology of colonization to colonize the word that the colonizer often used was to civilize to spread and create civilization and to civilize from the perspective of the british empire or the portuguese or the spanish to civilize meant to make people not savage and when when the british'll say first began to colonise Ireland in the 12th century

what did they do? they wrote this huge book called Topographia Hibernica which was supposed to be a map of Ireland they made us look savage by writing about our relationship with animals they said that the king of Limerick fucked his own horse and then chopped the horse up and ate it in a soup of horse that he'd just fucked.

And then he ate that and he became king of Limerick. They said that a priest was married to a goat. Any culture where the indigenous people had a belief system or a mythology that was very closely related to nature or animals, was deemed pagan, savage and in need of civilizing. And really what was the purpose of this? These people who live in this area have a belief system that's very entwined with nature. Because their belief system is very entwined with nature and animals and the landscape, because of this, they have respect for the landscape and they tend not to exploit it.

Well, we're colonisers. What we want to do is exploit this landscape for every bit of natural resources it has. We want to clear the forests so that there's grazing land for cows. We want to dig into mountains for copper and tin and gold. We want to take all of the wood to build ships. We want to use all the land to grow crops that we will export. We want to use all the rivers and every lake to take out as much fish as possible for us to eat. We want to come into this country and we want to take out as much fish as possible for us to eat. We want to come into this country and we want to take everything this country has

to benefit our greed and make us powerful. That's empire. That's what colonization is and it's what it does. It also underpins capitalism. And that's what's created the climate collapse right now. That's what's created the climate collapse and the biodiversity collapse. And this is why I think mythology is more important than ever. This is why I think it's so important for us

to learn the mythology of our land so that we can once again start to respect and fear it. Up until the 1600s in Ireland, it was illegal. so that we can once again start to respect and fear it. Up until the 1600s in Ireland, it was illegal. It was illegal to kill white butterflies. Why was it illegal to kill white butterflies up until the 1600s in Ireland? Because within the folklore and mythology of Ireland, white butterflies contained the soul of a dead child.

Butterflies in general were considered to contain the souls of people. When someone died, a loved one, and if you were visited by a little slow fluttering butterfly and this butterfly landed on you or came near you, that was someone who had died that you loved coming back to visit you and to let you know that they were okay. And if it was a white butterfly, that was the soul of a child who had recently died in a population where there was high infant mortality. So you didn't fucking kill butterflies. You didn't fuck with butterflies.

You didn't kill them. It was illegal. But butterflies are pollinators. Butterflies are very very important animals to nature and to crops and to biodiversity, they're very important, bees

are incredibly important bees are dying bees are collapsing the world over in Ireland you didn't fuck with bees no one fucked with bees, why didn't you fuck with bees because within Irish mythology bees

were kept by the goddess Bridget and the goddess Bridget she lived in the other world which is the parallel dimension within Irish mythology and Bridget lived in the other world and she kept beehives and her bees were interdimensional creatures from another dimension and they would pass into our world through the

morning mist through the miasma and then her interdimensional otherworldly bees would fertilize all our fruits and our plants and that's where fruit came from so you didn't fuck with bees why would you kill a bee you want to fuck with that you want to kill want to bridge its bees from the other world are you for real and here's the thing a lot of stuff in mythology science tends to agree with it's a bad idea to kill wolves it's's a bad idea to kill wolves. It's a really bad idea to kill all the wolves and make them extinct. Now that's present

in Crow Nation mythology in fucking in Yellowstone. It's a bad idea to kill all the wolves. Science says the exact same thing. In Irish mythology it's a pretty bad idea to be killing all the butterflies. This is going to bring you bad luck.

It's a bad idea in Irish mythology. Science says that too. It's a bad idea to kill the butterflies. Same with the fucking bees. Science and mythology agree. Don't kill all the bees. Bad shit will happen. So science, evidence based science

and then mythology which is storytelling that humans create from the landscape going back thousands of years, these two things agree in harmony about how we should live with nature what doesn't agree with it? Greed

capitalism, colonisation that's the only ideology that says actually no fuck bees What doesn't agree with it? Greed, capitalism, colonization. That's the only ideology that says, actually no, fuck bees, fuck them. Like the bees are all dying because of a pesticide that was made by a giant corporation. I think their name was Monsanto, this huge corporation. They invented a pesticide that was made from nicotine in order to grow crops more

efficiently, to grow more crops than we need and then that killed all the bees because capitalism says fuck bees, I care about greed and profit. In Yellowstone National Park when European colonisers came to Yellowstone and became the first white Americans and they were colonisers with the ideology of manifest destiny, frontierism. You are here by the grace of the Christian God to take whatever the fuck you want. This is a vast land and it's there for you and fuck any animal or any person that gets in your way. Manifest destiny. Take over the frontier. Give into greed. Don't listen to the indigenous people who say that the wolf created the earth and is someone to be respected. Fuck them. Fuck them. They're savages. Fuck them and fuck the wolf.

Kill every wolf you see. All that matters is how big of a sheep herd that you can have. Introduce these sheep that don't belong here and let them graze the fuck out of the land and kill every wolf you see. Both mythology and science agree that's a really bad idea. That's a terrible idea. That'll create climate

collapse and biodiversity collapse. Terrible idea. Respect the wolf. Fear the wolf. Work with the wolf. So it's that type of shit that has me thinking about mythology quite a lot recently it's more than just stories i truly truly believe that mythology comes from nature that mythology is unique to the human brain and our capacity for language and that mythology exists to keep the human animal in line with biodiversity so that we don't collapse systems so the reason i'm talking about this stuff is last week's podcast i spoke i spoke a little bit about

the mental health impacts of the pandemic just from my own lived experience of it and I said that this week I would speak about some philosophies or tools that I'm using to maintain my mental health that I'd share some of these with ye

and when I mentioned that I was fucking some of these with ye and when I mentioned that I was fucking inundated with messages people going please please speak about this just speak about mental health tools so I am going to do that after the ocarina pause but I want to

mix kind of mental health tools with biodiversity so first let's have our little ocarina pause don't have an ocarina kind of mental health tools with biodiversity. So first let's have our little ocarina pause. Don't have an ocarina, but I do have a little glass bottle that I'm going to blow into the top of while you hear an advert for something. On April 5th, you must be very careful, Margaret. To be continued... 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 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's sunrisechallenge.ca For a dog-friendly noise that won't be pissing off any dogs. Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast. This podcast is supported by you, the listener, via the Patreon page. This is a listener funded podcast.

This podcast is my full time job. This is what I do for a living. I write this podcast, I research it. I'm only able to produce this podcast to the standard that I'm happy with when it is my full time job I don't think I'd be doing it every single week if it wasn't but if you enjoy this podcast

if you get solace from it entertainment distraction whatever please consider becoming a patron alright all I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month.

That's it. But if you can't afford that, don't worry about it. You can listen for free. Because the person who is paying, is paying for you to listen for free. Everybody gets a podcast, and I get to earn a living.

It's a lovely community model based on soundness. And also, it keeps us independent. By keeping this podcast listener funded, i'm not beholden to advertisers advertisers can't steer my content in any direction i get to turn up each week and speak about what i'm passionate about and i don't have to think about how many listeners i'm gonna get i don't have to think about making the podcast really, really popular so it gets lots and lots of listens. These things don't concern me. What concerns me

is creating the most authentic piece of work and the listener-funded model allows that. Upcoming gigs. We've got Drahada on the 1st of April. Drahada's going to be crack now. Drahada, I'm really looking forward to Drogheda. Sold more tickets, and then also I've got a cracking guest

who I can't wait to talk to. And then at the end of April, I'm in Toronto and Vancouver. One of those is sold out, and one of them has a few tickets left. I think it's Toronto has a few tickets left, is it? I'm not sure, but Toronto and Vancouver at the end of the month. And if you're wondering, what's he doing talking about climate change and then flying over to Canada?

I'm aware of this. I'm aware of the hypocrisy of that. Last time I gigged in Canada was 2019 but I do offset the carbon footprint of my gigs and my flights so what I'd like to talk about this week are some philosophies that I use to underpin a kind of a underpin emotional resilience

I'm going to speak about them in no particular order or in no hierarchy something I enjoy doing is pursuing interests that provide me with meaning and are consistent with my values

so for instance there my love of Irish mythology my pursuit and love of learning everything I can about Irish mythology not only is it interesting and fun my pursuit and love of learning everything I can about Irish mythology. Not only is it interesting and fun and enjoyable but it allows me to achieve a sense of meaning a sense of understanding of the world, reality and my place in it and it gives me a sense of purpose

and it also really truly helps me to connect with who I am. It gives me a solid sense of self. It feeds my self-esteem. What doesn't do that? Arguing with strangers on the internet. Now I don't do that. I don't argue with strangers on the internet. Now it's always there as a temptation because people are mean to me on the internet quite a bit but if I give in to that and I expend energy on arguing with a stranger online, allowing myself to get angry, allowing myself to take their words personally, what that does is it causes me to be disconnected with who I am. Calling a man called Niall from Mullingar a stupid prick on Twitter

does not align with my values. That's not what I want to do with my life. I don't learn anything about myself. I don't achieve a higher sense of meaning. It causes a sense of detachment and frustration. So I don't do it. But learning about Irishish mythology exploring my curiosity the wholesomeness of that activity that aligns with my values i grow from that

i achieve a sense of meaning it allows me to understand myself and the world and my place in it but this is true for all of us every one of us as humans should have something that aligns with our core values and feels right we're not doing it to impress anyone we're not doing it to influence how other people perceive us something that we do that we're truly passionate about that affords us a sense of meaning if you're struggling to find out what that thing could be for you i would recommend taking a look at what you can do for biodiversity because it's so simple and so rewarding and you can actually see results you can observe results and I'm saying this

deliberately because of the time of year we're entering spring now so I have a very small back garden of a small patch of grass out my back garden which is about five foot long and what I did two years ago is I decided when my little patch of grass out the back garden that's going to be a meadow now that's going to be an actual meadow and I live in a housing estate in Limerick City so I went online and I bought myself

native Irish wildflower seeds and I went to my patch of grass which I don't cut and I scattered the native Irish wildflower seeds and I watched them grow and that was two years ago and now they're going to come back up in a few weeks and they're going to be stronger than ever and there's going to be more of them and planting these native Irish wildflower seeds it transformed my back garden and showed me things I didn't think were possible and gave me an incredible sense of hope so two years on I have

seen insects out my back garden that I didn't even know existed I have this six foot patch of grass with these Irish wildflowers growing out. And they're gorgeous, beautiful flowers. Blues and yellows. There's like 16 different fucking flowers. And they're all native. Like a native Irish meadow. I've got weird looking triangular spiders.

I have these spiders with webs between certain flowers. Sometimes I can hear crickets. I've got grasshoppers in my back garden. Big fucking bastards. Grasshoppers that are like an inch long that I have never seen in my life growing up in a city. I've got giant grasshoppers up my back garden.

I saw a lizard last year. A native Irish tiny little brown lizard out my back garden. I saw a lizard last year. A native Irish tiny little brown lizard out my back garden because I'd put a six foot fucking meadow on the bit of patch of grass that I had. Because meadows are disappearing. A meadow is a natural feature in the Irish landscape. It's just a flat plain of grass with shit tons of flowers. And now I have a tiny meadow of my own. And the insects spoke to each other and told each other and came to my garden. And I stare at them and I give them names and I write little stories about them in my head.

And I engage with this tiny meadow with a childlike curiosity I can't wait for these fucking flowers to come up in a couple of weeks because I know they're coming back because that's what nature does and I'm gonna watch them all summer and I'll go right up close and look at the tips and the tops of the flowers and the blades of grass and find the insects that I've never seen and know that I as a human have made a choice and a decision to plant wildflowers and because of this I have a direct visible evidence-based impact on the biodiversity of my fucking local area where would those grasshoppers be if it wasn't for my tiny little meadow where would they be would they be alive and then at night time

there's bats because the bats are flying around my tiny little meadow because of whatever insects are there because of the other insects that are there it It's an ecosystem. It's a six foot fucking ecosystem. And all I did was plant some native Irish wildflower and not mow the grass. That was it. Nature did its thing. And that there legitimately improves my emotional well-being. That right there, that's enough.

I have purpose. I have purpose. I have meaning. And my actions are having a positive impact on the environment around me. And seeing the power of nature to do its thing. Once you just give it a shot. Seeing that gives me a feeling and sense of hope and positivity. So that's something that I would ask you to do. If you're thinking about, right, what one thing could I do this week

to improve my emotional resilience, my sense of well-being since all that shit with the fucking pandemic. If the news headlines are getting you down, what one small thing can you do? It's the start of spring. How about trying to improve. The biodiversity in your area. And it's so simple.

If you're lucky enough to have a spot of grass. Just don't. Don't cut it. Just don't cut it all summer. That's the bare minimum. Don't cut it. Just don't cut it all summer. That's the bare minimum. Don't cut it. Even better, plant some native Irish wildflower. Now here's the thing with wildflower.

A lot of the bigger fucking supermarkets and hardware stores, like B&Q, they'd be selling boxes of wildflower. It has to be native Irish wildflower. Sometimes those selling boxes of wildflower it has to be native irish wildflower sometimes those generic boxes of wildflower are like from fucking poland or somewhere and they're not native i'm going to give a little plug this is an advertisement but it's not a paid advertisement there's a website called wildflower.ie and it's a dude who's been selling Irish native wildflower meadow flowers he's been doing it for years and these are legit so wildflower.ie buy a bag of wildflower

off him I think it's only a tenner or something you get a full bag of seeds and just scatter them plant them do whatever you do but let them be wild in whatever space you have even a fucking window box if you don't have grass and trust me when that native Irish wildflower grows the insects are begging for it the insects that are native to this land that you will never have seen before they'll tell each other and they will come to your tiny little meadow and they'll live there

what do you do if what if you just live in an apartment you don't have any space at all you've no outdoor space so you can't avail of this here's what you can do look up how to make seed bombs buy your native Irish wildflower and then make seed bombs buy your native Irish

wildflower and then make seed bombs, they're dead easy it's you get a bit of compost and then you get modelling clay you mix the two of those together with native Irish seeds and you make these balls

about the size of a golf ball and what a seed bomb is consider it like a little ball of soil that's dried out with wildflower seeds in it and you throw it and wherever you throw it wildflower will grow so if you live in a city like Cork or Limerick or Dublin where you have a lot of derelict buildings. And landlords are hoarding all the fucking buildings. And you're angry with the environment around you. You're angry with how much fucking buildings are boarded up.

Or how many fucking shopping centres from the Celtic Tiger. Never got fucking built. And now it's just a vacant landscape of concrete. Then get one of these native Irish wildflower seed bombs that you made and just throw it throw it onto the roof of a vacant house throw it into a vacant lot throw it throw these all over your city you're not breaking any law there's no crime throw a ball of irish wildflower into a horrible concrete abandoned industrial estate and a meadow will grow create that story that's an anti-colonial act imagine being the person in your town or city

who's personally responsible for throwing little Irish wildflower seed bombs on all the vacant property. And in a year's time, these flowers, native flowers that haven't been seen in the area in maybe 100 years, they just start sprouting everywhere. You could personally be responsible for bringing biodiversity and insect life back to your fucking city. That's possible. You can do that. The bees and the butterflies and the dragonflies. And then another That's possible. You can do that. The bees and the butterflies and the dragonflies. And then another really big act that you can do. Try and create a little pond. If you have the space to create a little pond, do it. Because ponds, marshes and wetlands, they're disappearing. Go onto YouTube and look up how to make a small pond for biodiversity.

Now you could build a big pond if you have that type of space. Or you could do something as simple as build a pond that's one foot long. Out of a plastic container that you shove into the ground. And you cover with soil. And then if you can make it to a local pond that's near you. Take some of the plants out of that pond and put them into your pond so that they aerate the water or go online and look for native Irish aquatic wildflowers and put those in your pond now you have an ecosystem you've got

a pond that's one foot big you have plants inside it that are generating oxygen in the water and nature will do its thing dragonflies will appear birds birds who wash themselves in lakes frog spawn will attach to their feathers or the fucking eggs of fish will attach their feathers and then they'll come and wash in your pond and all of a sudden there's frogs there and you don't even know where the fuck they came from the impact that you could have on the biodiversity of your area if you were responsible for a couple of frogs having a place to live

and again if you don't have that space if you're working in a company and your company are doing these team building exercise shit right and they're going what will we do will we go to a quasar centre or will we go to a quasar center or will we go bowling suggest to your workplace that the next team building exercise that you do is to plant a

wildflower meadow or find out what groups are operating in your area that are digging ponds for biodiversity contact the ir Irish Herpetological Society. They might put you in contact with a local group that are digging ponds. And if you've no space and you can't do any of that, contact your local county council or city council. Make sure that they're not fucking mowing roundabouts. Make sure that this summer, whatever roundabout is in your area put pressure on your local council to say don't mow that roundabout make it into a meadow just leave it be and maybe

you go down and fuck a lot of a lot of native irish wildflower seeds on your local roundabout do it safely don't get hit by a car the point i'm making is this i truly believe that each of us on an individual level can do these small things responsibly for biodiversity where your mental health your emotional resilience your sense of self your sense of purpose the feeling you have about yourself when you go to bed at night time. Your sense of hope. Your sense of wonder. Your sense of curiosity. All these magnificent parts of being human. You can spark these things off. By being the reason that grasshoppers and butterflies and dragonflies and bees and solitary wasps and beetles.

If you're the reason that all these things return that you've done this and then you're lucky enough to witness it to witness insects you've never seen that's a huge simple inexpensive thing that you can do for yourself and for the environment and for your community and i'm not saying that like recycling and shit is bad keep recycling keep doing what you can to fight climate change but a lot of stuff with climate change we know well that it's the large corporations that have to get their shit together and we have to be cautious of narratives that push it back on the individual but when it comes to biodiversity when it comes to planting a little meadow you start something right there that very quickly leaves your hands it gets out

of your hands real quickly and nature takes over like my back garden has nothing to do with me anymore it's a meadow i don't have to do shit I don't have to fertilize it it's out of my hands it has it's grown bigger than me it's going to come back this year more powerful nature has taken over now I just planted the seeds but I'm sure the seeds that I've planted have pollinated into flowers and drifted along somewhere else. And now my neighbours have wildflowers and they don't even know about it. So from all that, from a mental health and emotional resilience perspective, you get something that gives you a sense of purpose. You get to take ownership of emotions that you might have around climate anxiety.

If you feel particularly small and you feel like you can't have an impact, seeing your own little tiny meadow produce grasshoppers or seeing a frog thriving in a tiny pond that you made, there's a sustenance in there. Also, because you're working with the force of nature it's very difficult to fail at this

nature's doing the work but nature is suffering and you're helping it's brilliant for mindfulness if you have your own little meadow of Irish wildflower which you're curious about

because you want to see what insects are there any evening I go out to those flowers of Irish wildflower which you're curious about because you want to see what insects are there. Any evening I go out to those flowers to search for insects I'm focused only on that task and that task only and that task is driven by a curiosity, a very mindful curiosity that connects me with nature and who I am and in that moment I'm not And in that moment, I'm not worrying about the past, I'm not worrying about the future, I'm just looking for a grasshopper. Building a pond or planting a few wildflowers

is also a wonderful exercise in delayed gratification. Something that can provide me with a fair deal of anxiety sometimes is the fact that our culture doesn't want us to wait for anything anymore and especially with the way phones are today like with iPhones there's no such thing as delayed gratification whatever the fuck I want I get it right now if I want to hear a song, I get it right now. A book, a video. If I want to contact someone on the other side of the world, everything happens right now. And it's really convenient, but it also leaves me with a sense of impatience that isn't helpful. Having to wait for nature to do its thing, waiting for the flowers to come up, waiting for the flowers to come up waiting for the frogs to

visit your pond sitting with that discomfort the discomfort of delaying your gratification that's a tenet of emotional maturity a maturity that i find i can lose sometimes with the digital world that i live in i can lose that emotional maturity real quickly when everything I want is at my fingertips whenever the fuck I want I had a list of other mental health tips that I don't really have time to get into now because it's coming near the end of the podcast but I'm happy with that journey that we took there. There was a nice few hot takes. And I suppose what that was for as well is... Sometimes when I speak about... I've spoken about the importance of meaning before.

The importance of doing something that gives you a sense of personal meaning. Because that will bring you closer to your true sense of self. And when you have a true solid sense of self, you have high self-esteem and greater emotional resilience now i'm fortunate because i'm creative i have loads of different pursuits that i enjoy that give me a sense of personal meaning in particular my love of art what gives me real personal meaning is writing i fucking adore writing and that gives me a sense of this is who I am this is why I'm alive this is my place on this earth that's why art and

creativity is so important to me but a lot of people write into this podcast and they say I don't have anything that gives me personal meaning. I don't know. I don't have a hobby. I'm not into sports. I'm not into art. I don't know what my thing is. I've tried baking. I've tried hiking. I don't have any talents, which is fair enough. Everybody's different. I can't count. And last week I left the house with two different shoes on. But if you're struggling to find a sense of purpose or meaning or something to be passionate about. But very simple acts of improving the biodiversity of your local area. Understanding that some small thing you did could save hundreds of thousands of insects and give them a home. hundreds of thousands of insects and give them a home and knowing the massive importance that that act is having in an environment of biodiversity collapse and then if you're

lucky enough having a small little space for you have your own personal wild zoo to be mindful around anyone can do that and it's's fascinating. And it's infectious. And you'll want to do more of it. And you don't need budget or skill or talent. You just need a few pieces of the correct information. The main one being native Irish wildflower. Has to be native Irish wildflower. And like I said if you can't be arsed doing that. Just stop mowing your lawn.

Stop mowing your lawn. Leave it grow wild. And spiders and beetles and insects, they'll find it. And they'll have a lovely, cool, damp home for the summer to thrive. And also, if you do have a little bit of a garden, and you're thinking about getting those fucking, do you know the plastic grass? That's getting very popular right now. That's awful for biodiversity that's so bad for

biodiversity, turn it into a little meadow with a little pond make the wildlife look beautiful alright that's all we have time for this week kiss a swan, headbutt a duck I'll see you next week. Rock City, you're the best fans in the league, bar tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation night on saturday april 13th when the toronto rock hosts the rochester nighthawks at first

ontario center in hamilton at 7 30 p.m you can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game, and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com. Thank you. Thank you.