The Blindboy Podcast - Nazi Yoghurt Folklore

Episode Date: June 18, 2025

A hot take about the healing soil on a priests grave and probiotic yoghurt in an 11th century vision poem Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Some things just take too long. A meeting that could have been an email, someone explaining crypto, or switching mobile providers. Except with Fizz. Switching to Fizz is quick and easy. Mobile plans start at $17 a month. Certain conditions apply.

Details at fizz.ca. Dust up the husky trumpet, you rusty goblets. Welcome to the Blind By podcast. I'm delivering this podcast a day late. I usually deliver podcasts on Wednesdays, but for the first time ever this is coming out on a Thursday because I needed an extra 24 hours. So thank you everybody for your patience and understanding. I've just come back off a very intense tour of Scotland and England. I did 10 gigs in 13 days and the days off were used for travel. I got back to Ireland

last night. I'd say about 8 hours later than I'd scheduled. Just because shit happens. Flights, transport, all these little things added up and it added up to eight hours. So when I got to my studio, it was about one in the morning and I was like, fuck it, let's do it. Drink some coffee,

pull an all nighter, get the podcast out on a Wednesday. I've done that before. If you work in the creative industry and deadlines are part of your job, then you know that sometimes you're gonna have to do an all-nighter. That's the job, that's what happens. So I was ready to do it, and I tell you my decision around deciding not to, and just saying fuck it. I'm gonna ask ye to give me 24 hours. A skill that I've kind of fostered over the years and a piece of advice I'd give to any artist

is to develop a mindful emotional awareness around why you're saying no to things, okay? If you're an independent artist, every single offer that comes in, every single offer for work that comes in, every single offer for work that comes in, is a potential opportunity. I've written three best-selling books. That started with one email, one email from a curious publisher, like ten years ago.

One email came in and a publisher asked me, blind by have you ever thought about writing books? Would you like to have a chat? My gut reaction when I read that email ten years ago, gut reaction, no, turn down this offer. All my insecurity from school came right up. I don't have a leave insert, I'm stupid, I'm thick, I was terrible at school, I'm not smart enough to write books. The trauma of being an autistic kid in school rose up on me as an adult and

told me to say no, to say no to this opportunity. But feelings aren't facts. Feelings aren't facts no matter how real those feelings feel. And I mindfully, I had an emotional awareness around why I wanted to say no. I wanted to say no to that opportunity because I was scared and frightened and insecure. And I said, fuck that. What's the worst that can happen? The worst that can happen, you write a shit book.

So I said yes to that one little email, I said yes. And now 10 years later I've got three collections of short stories and they're on the curriculums of creative writing courses in college and I'm only saying that not to be cocky or anything but to prove my insecurity was wrong. I'm really glad I didn't listen to that insecure voice inside myself that wanted me to say no. I'm glad I didn't listen to fear and insecurity and instead I said yes. I was able to say yes because I consistently and mindfully work on emotional literacy. When I feel myself saying no, I ask myself why, and I analyze that emotion critically and calmly.

And I breathe. So last night when I got in late, and I'm like, I need to record this podcast, I wanna fucking put it out, and I wanna stick to... This goes out on Wednesday mornings. Drink some coffee, do an all nighter, we've done this before, this isn't a problem. But a voice came up inside me and said, no, no, put it off for 24 hours. And I mindfully sat with that part of myself that was saying no. And I critically analyzed it. And I searched it for fear and insecurity. Am I taking this podcast for granted? Do I just want to go

to bed instead? And am I taking this for granted? That wasn't it. Am I afraid of failing? No, that's not it. Am I having difficulty with the tolerating the frustration, the frustration of having to do hard work when I feel like I need a rest? That's not it. What came up was I've actually put the research into this week's podcast. I spent three days on tour, looking at my laptop between gigs, writing this podcast, coming up with hat takes. I was really excited about delivering this week's podcast. And I genuinely knew, if I fucking put an all nighter and try and do this podcast, I won't deliver the best results because I'll be too tired. It was 1am but I've been travelling since

7am so that's about 18 hours on my feet. I don't think I'd have been able to muster that adrenaline, the adrenaline to pull off an all-nighter after that. I'm saying no and asking for an extra 24 hours because it's in the interest of the work. I'll put out a better piece of work if I go to bed and go back into my studio after a night's sleep. This isn't insecurity, it's not fear. What's more important, meeting a strict deadline or putting out a podcast that I can stand over and that you can enjoy. So that's why this week's podcast is a day late and thank you all for being so patient.

And now here I am in my studio after having a sleep, ready to do a podcast, ready to deliver some delicious hot takes. Before I get into the theme of this week's podcast, I want to address some controversy. You might have noticed over the past few years, I don't do as many radio interviews, TV interviews, or fucking newspaper interviews. Since the pandemic, that stuff has become risky. It's not fun anymore. As the traditional media landscape kind of collapses, media sites, whether it's TV, radio, newspapers, they have to compete for attention on social media feeds.

Now this has always been the case, but since the pandemic and since TikTok has taken over, it's gotten worse. And this is all media. It's not tabloids. It's broadsheet newspapers. So what I mean is, I shy away from media interviews now because, let's just say, if I do an interview with a newspaper, I might sit down, have a wonderful chat with a journalist that I respect, have great crack, have a wonderful chat with a journalist that I respect, have great

crack, have a lovely interview, but then I have to think... Which of my words are they gonna take out of context and present as a thesis statement in the headline and then put the article behind a paywall? So how is this newspaper gonna make me look like a fucking dickhead? So that the headline stands out on social media and encourages angry people to comment. This is where we're at right now with the attention economy and with algorithms. Just a half an hour ago I saw an Instagram Reels video and it was a cook and she was cooking Mexican food. Excellent video. She clearly cared about cooking. She was deliberately mispronouncing the word fajita. She was calling it fajita and she

was doing this deliberately just so people would get really pissed off. Comment under her video, it's not pronounced fajita. And then all of those thousands of comments under her video saying you're pronouncing fajita wrong All of those comments are interactions and that means that her video will be seen in more feeds And that's probably why I saw it because someone who was following me commented under the video It's fucking fajita you stupid woman So that's where we're at in the algorithm. People are like, music too. There's a rapper called Machine Gun Kelly, MGK. I'm not a huge fan of Machine Gun Kelly, it's not my vibe, nothing against him. Go to his Instagram or TikTok and look at his most recent,

the clip of his most recent music video. The music video is called Cliche. It's just him singing and dancing at a car wash. Look at his bootcut jeans. He is wearing bootcut jeans. The camera focuses in on them at points and the bootcut jeans are literally, they're soaking up water. They're soaking up water and the entire bottom of his jeans are wet and it's creeping up to his shins. If you've been listening to this podcast for a long time, you'll know that this is a social phenomenon of capillary action on jeans, I've been following it for a long time, but MGK, Machine Gun Kelly, he has a music video where the bottom of his pants are wet, just for rage bait comments. That's why the bottom...

It's a fucking music video. In a music video where there's a budget, you don't allow the person's jeans to get wet. The costume department comes in and says, Whoa, the jeans are wet, we need new ones. No, no, no, no. In MGK's new video for the song Cliche, as it appears on TikTok and on Reels, the bottoms of his jeans are wet just so people would comment and point it out. The comments then push the video up in the algorithm and more people see it.

This technique is also being used as a tool of propaganda. Israel do this. Israel consistently publishes fake videos. There's too many to count, but one that I can think of is... I think it was like last year, Israel was being heavily criticized for attacking hospitals. And Israel claimed, this isn't a hospital, this is a Hamas control center. And then to back this claim up Israel releases video footage which is clearly fake, clearly fake. You can tell that the the arms cache that

they're shown here are the weapons we found in this hospital. You can tell that they're planted there. You can tell that the video is awkwardly edited in places. It's a clearly fake video. Israeli intelligence and intelligence agencies like Mossad, some of the best funded, most advanced intelligence agencies in the world. If they want to fake a video, they'll fucking fake a video and it'll be very difficult to spot that it's fake. So why would this incredibly advanced, why would these advanced intelligence agencies

release videos that anybody can tell, this is fake, this isn't real, you're faking it? Because that's the point, that's the point. It's the same as that woman on Instagram mispronouncing fajita within the rules of social media platforms, it's very difficult to resist the opportunity to type that comment and say, this is wrong, this is fake.

Your attention is a resource. Your critical thinking skills are a resource. Your capacity to comment under a video is a resource. Your capacity to critique a video is a resource. Your capacity to criticize genocide video is a resource. Your capacity to criticize genocide online is a resource. Your capacity to show solidarity with the people of Palestine online is a resource. Are you feeling overwhelmed by everything that's happening? Are you feeling like you just want to switch off your social media for a day because it's too much?

Yes, your resources have been depleted. If you comment under an Instagram video of clearly fake Israeli propaganda and you say this is fake, this is Israeli propaganda, then an Israeli bot comes in and challenges you. Now you're spending a half an hour arguing with a bot and then you're exhausted. That's the fucking point. That is the point. This is incredibly well funded information warfare. Clearly fake videos that everyone obsesses over in the comments and this need to be right to point out that it's fake, that wastes resources. It wastes resources and it wastes energy. Information warfare. During World War II, the US government would fund teams of artists to make tons of fake

tanks, fake tanks out of cardboard and they'd put them on beaches just for the Japanese to bomb. Why? To waste their bombs. Where did I hear that? In 2014 Edward Snowden and WikiLeaks leaked the actual training manuals that modern intelligence services were using for online information warfare and the first page on that slide is how the US used fake tanks in World War II for the Japanese

to bomb cardboard. And then the training manual goes on. I think it was GCHQ. I think it was British intelligence. But the training manual goes on to show this is how you do the equivalent online. Distract, create decoys, waste resources. Social media propaganda, such as a clearly fake video that Israel puts out, is the same thing. It's wasting our attention, our capacity to think critically.

It's a decoy, it's a distraction from thinking and talking about genocide. What I'm trying to do here is I'm trying to describe an ecosystem. The post-pandemic attention economy ecosystem as it exists on social media. And it's why I don't do a lot of media appearances anymore, because like I said, I'm going to sit down and do a wonderful interview with a lovely journalist and have great crack. And then that interview goes to the social media team of the newspaper, whose job is to get as many eyes on the article as possible. And then I have to worry worry which one of my words,

or which one of my sentences, will they take out of context and present as a thesis statement just to make people angry enough to comment so that post survives in the algorithm. That's where we're at. I'm aware that I've gone on a big tangent there, but... So anyway, look, I did an interview. I did an interview last week with Novara Media. Novara Media are... they're a left-leaning, genuinely independent online media group. They're funded by their readers. They're funded by their

readers. I like Novara Media because from where I'm standing we have an ecosystem where the vast majority of information is very well funded right-wing information. That's what's happening. And you're not seeing a lot of content challenging those narratives from the left because billionaires aren't funding the left. So I like Novara because they're funded by their own readers and they're competing in the algorithm but they're still, they have to compete in the algorithm. So I sat down and had a chat with Ash Sarkar for her podcast that's on Novara Media.

I was on Novara Media. I was on this podcast before. I like chatting with Ash, brilliant commentator, really fucking smart, I learn a lot from her, and she comes across as just, she's a kind person and she's good crack to chat with. So I went back on Ash's podcast and we spoke for about an hour completely fucking free form

about absolutely everything and anything and I had great crack and I think that full podcast it's gonna go out in about maybe two weeks or a week but here's what I want to address because there was a bit of controversy so Novara did put out a small clip of me and this clip contained a quote of words that I never said and I got quite a backlash and I want to address it. Ash asked me during this one hour podcast my opinions on the rise of far-right narratives in Ireland and also the riots that are happening in Ballymena right now. Now I deflected away from the Ballymena issue and spoke about the rise

of the far right in Ireland, mostly that the South. The rise of the far right in Ireland is a multifaceted ecosystem but the fertile soil in my opinion in the South is neoliberalism. Years of neoliberal policies create a sense of confusion and hopelessness that allows simple narratives like fascism to emerge, far-right narratives to emerge. If you want to hear me speak about that in detail, go back to a podcast I released about two months ago called Why Everything Feels So Chaotic Right Now. I covered neoliberalism, I think in two or three podcasts a few months back.

But anyway, look, Novara Media, they released a 40 second clip of me speaking about neoliberalism as fertile grounds for the far right, but they put on it the headline, blind by, Ballymena riots are happening because of neoliberalism. I would never say that. That's a terrible take. Anyone from the north of Ireland who saw that and who was disappointed in me, because I received a lot of messages, please know that I didn't say those words. I did not say those words. Someone put it up as a headline. I immediately brought it to Novara's attention. The videos were deleted.

They apologized to me. It wasn't done with malicious intent. It wasn't done deliberately to make me look bad. I mean, I reckon what happened, the thing is, when you've got, when you have independent media, which means a small team of people, and not a hugely funded thing,

when you've got genuine independent media, you've got human fallibility. I'm independent media, I'm delivering a podcast a day late. I'm a day late with the podcast. That's human fallibility. I'm not a radio station. I do every bit of this podcast myself, from research to recording to engineering, everything myself. If this was a radio station, the radio station would just get someone in to fill in for me, and

you wouldn't give a shit, you wouldn't know the difference. But no, this is independent media. Novara is also independent media. So what happened was, whoever put up that video and put that quote there, the Ballymena riots are in the nose. They want to put out a video that relates to it so that it does well in the algorithm. And I reckon the probably English person who misquoted me didn't understand the gravity of that misquote and how wrong it is. There's some sirens in the background there. Shit's kicking off in Limerick again, unfortunately. There's gang wars back that we haven't seen in about fucking 20 years.

There's been a lot of drive-by shootings and shit like that. I haven't seen that in about 20 years. So there's a lot of sirens. There's been two pretty serious drive-by shootings and also a petrol bombing in the past week in Limerick City. And Limerick City's small so when shit like that kicks off you're just going to get sirens all the time. So here's the thing, currently there are riots in Ballymena in the north of Ireland. These are racist pogroms being directed at immigrants happening within loyalist communities.

What you're seeing is a culture of settler colonialism, okay? I'm not qualified to speak about this because I'm from the Irish Free State. I'm a Free Stater. I'm from the 26 counties. I grew up with the privilege of the period known as the Troubles to be something I witnessed on television as a hyperreal spectacle. I have no lived experience of it. I'm a Free Stater whose grandad was in the IRA

and I have folk stories handed down to me from my dad about sectarian oppression that my granddad experienced in the 1920s. Listeners from the north of Ireland right now listening right now, listening right now, have got lived experience in their lifetime of sectarian violence, colonial oppression. So I want to make it clear to you, if an English media organization rang me up and said, blind boy will you come on and speak about the Balimino riots? I would flat-out say absolutely not. I will not speak about that. Please speak to someone from the north of Ireland. When I was on Novara Media and Ash's podcast we spoke about loads of different things. When the question about Ballymena came up I deflected it a bit to be more about the rise of far-right

narratives in the south which is something I can speak on. See here's what's happening in Ballymena. something I can speak on. See, here's what's happening in Ballymena. Last week, I believe someone was arrested for sexual assault in the community. This person happened to be an immigrant. The community is a loyalist Protestant community. A mob emerged and this mob began to attack all the immigrants in that community. Everybody in that community who was an immigrant, everybody who had brown skin, black skin, a pogrom, a pogrom emerged. Collective punishment based on racism, emboldened by a culture of settler colonialism.

That's not neoliberalism. That's a long, long history of settler colonial racism. The north of Ireland is colonised, colonised by Britain. Some people in the loyalist community have a history of pogroms against Catholics. Against Catholics and against Protestants too, who were sympathetic to Catholics. There's a history of pogroms, violence, intimidation, orange marches. You know, orange marches every 12th of July.

I've spoken to Protestant people up north. I know that there's Protestant people who grew up and orange marches were things in their community and for them it was like, the men are out go and wave your British flag and eat some tray bakes and it's all a lot of fun but the context and intent of an orange march it's an act of colonial aggression it's a celebration of a battle that was won several hundred years ago. It's a very deliberate attempt to intimidate the Catholic community, to let the Catholic community know who's in charge, who rules. It's accompanied by huge bonfire nights,

where effigies of Catholic people are burned on bonfires, where it says, kill all tigues, tigues being a slur for Catholics. And this is the ritualistic celebration of sectarian violence and orange marches, they carry the threat of pogroms. So an orange march where the orange men bang their drums and play their flutes and dress in their orange men clothes, that's the solemn face. It's the threat of violence. This is just a march, but if you step out of line there's going to be a pogrom, which means a mob of people are going to petrol bomb your house and kick you out of your community and the police and the British Army are going to stand by and they're

going to support us. They're going to support us in doing this. That is racist settler colonial violence. What's happening in Balamina right now with the riots is a continuation of that exact same settler colonial violence except now some new targets have been added. It's not just about the Catholics anymore, it's about brown people, black people, immigrants. Some more effigies have been added to the bonfire. And I need to say as well, obviously not everybody in these communities is a racist or even a loyalist. I saw an interview this morning with a woman from the community who was a Protestant. And what's happening is that people in the community are hanging British flags out of

their windows so that their houses do not become petrol bombed. It's a way of letting the mob know, I'm one of you. She said, I'm not hanging out a British flag out of my window. I'm not gonna put up a tribal effigy to guarantee my safety in my own community. And then she contextualized the sectarianism in the North as we have been fighting people from another community,

referring to Catholics, who've been suffering the same socioeconomic deprivation that we have, instead of focusing on the people in power, which was a way of transcending sectarianism by bringing class consciousness into it. Why do I know this shit? Just from reading things online, from speaking to people who live in those communities, from listening? I have no lived experience of that whatsoever. things online, from speaking to people who live in those communities, from listening. I have no lived experience of that whatsoever. I'm not sectarian. Okay, if you are a Protestant from the north or south of Ireland, I do not give a shit. You're a human being. You're

my sister, you're my brother. But I'm very much against racist pogroms. I'm very much against racist pogroms and solemn marches that carry the threat of a racist pogrom. I'm against that stuff. So if you're from the north of Ireland, I want you to understand I would never ever go on a media organisation and say the Ballymena riots are caused by neoliberalism. I did not say those words. I did not say those words. I would not say those words. Those are words designed for the clique economy and it fucking worked.

And the videos went very viral. And that statement, which I never said, is perfect at pissing off everybody. Everybody. It pisses off the racists and it pisses off the people who are clued in, because it's like, look at this fucking idiotic free state wanker, speaking out of turn, talking out of his arse about something he doesn't understand, and feeding into a cosy British narrative. I got a lot of pushback from this. I wouldn't- that's a very cosy narrative. That's a lovely little cosy narrative.

And what it does is... It's a cosy narrative that allows English people to feel comfortable. The north of Ireland has always been portrayed in English media as... The troubles. The Irish problem. The Irish question. Oh my god, isn't it awful? What's happening over there in Northern Ireland? Isn't it terrible?

All the violence. Oh my god, we can't control it. There's nothing we can do. Better put some British soldiers there to keep the peace. To say that the riots in Ballymena are caused by neoliberalism, it lets colonialism off the hook. It lets racism off the hook. Like the journalist Alison Morris

up in the Belfast Telegraph, she reported that some of the people involved in the mobs that are doing the pogroms in Balimina right now against immigrants, some of these people are members of the UDA, the Ulster Defence Defence Association. There's been long time, there's been collusion between the British government and Loyalist paramilitaries against the Catholic community. The British government has used sectarian conflict to justify British military presence in the north of Ireland. I've done loads of podcasts on this, but that the military reaction force in the 1970s, a covert British military organisation that would shoot people in Protestant and Catholic communities in plain clothes, just to stalk sectarian conflict to create chaos. The culture of violent pogroms against

Catholic communities in the north of Ireland, which goes back to the 1920s, they were enabled by and supported by the police in the North of Ireland and the British military. A very clear message from the top down. This is a colony of the British fucking empire and if you want to do pogroms against the colonized, if you wanna murder and kill and burn the colonized out of their houses, you have the full support of the state. Just don't tell anybody, but you have the full support of the state.

That's evidence-based, that's called history, okay? What that does is it emboldens, it emboldens a culture of pogroms. And that's what you're seeing now. It's settler colonialism. That's exactly it. It's settler colonial violence. That's what you're seeing. And if you're thinking, ah, the fucking, the north of Ireland was colonized nearly 600 years ago.

It was. And now 600 years later, you're seeing settler colonial violence. And what I mean there, 400 years ago, sorry, what I'm referring to is the plantation of Ulster. The very deliberate, beginning in 1606, the very deliberate colonisation of Ulster by the British Crown to ethnically cleanse the people living in Ulster and to replace them with Protestant people from the lowlands of Scotland to create a more a loyal colony. That's what I'm referring to. The architects of which, called the West

Country men, right, these were lads from mostly Devon. I'm talking about Josiah Bodley, William Parsons, Walter Raleigh, the architects of the plantations of Ireland. These same, they practiced, they practiced in Ireland. These same men were the ones who went down to colonise indigenous people in America, in the Caribbean. The same men. They practiced it in Ireland first. And if you're thinking, why the fuck are you talking about shit from 400 years ago Jesus Christ wouldn't it be great if it was history wouldn't that be great if it was something in the past? No colonialism is it's an intergenerational legacy that's upheld by systems of power. Working-class Catholics couldn't vote, couldn't vote in the north of Ireland up until 1972.

The innocent civilians who were massacred at the peaceful protest of Bloody Sunday, massacred by British soldiers. These were working class Catholics who were looking for the right to vote. And they were massacred. 1972. You know, David Bowie was releasing the album Ziggy Stardust. Bowie was making songs. It's not a long time ago.

You're talking about an apartheid state where civilians are shot dead in cold blood by British soldiers because they had the audacity to march peacefully for the vote and those soldiers still haven't been brought to justice. Those systems of power still reverberate today, not just in the north of Ireland. The other places that I mentioned there were the the West Country men colonized speak to some indigenous American people on their reservation and see how their community is getting on in 2025. That colonization has survived in culture and ritual and that's what you're seeing now. So any conversation about the riots in the north of Ireland right now in Ballymena that doesn't also Bring in colonization into that discussion. That's not an argument you should be listening to. I need to clear that up

I didn't want to speak about this this week. Um Again, it's it's not something I'd go into too deep about something that's happening right now Because like I said, I'm from the fucking Free State. I'm from Limerick. So to anyone who saw a fucking video clip of me, it went very viral, man. It was on TikTok, it was on Instagram, hundreds of thousands of views, okay? And there was big backlash. I would be disappointed in me too. So to anyone who saw a video where the headline said, blind by the Ballymena riots are caused by neoliberalism, I did not say those words. It was human error by somebody who didn't fully understand the gravity of misquoting me.

The videos were deleted, I received an apology, it was a genuine mistake, and I still support Novara Media because like I said, they're independent left leaning media in a sea of right wing media that's very well funded, very very well funded. And you have to give independent media that's run by a small team and that is funded by its own listeners or viewers, you have to cut a bit of slack there and allow for a margin of human error, because that's what happened here.

No one was trying to stitch me up or deliberately misrepresent me, and the full podcast I did with Ash Sarkar probably be out in about two weeks I'd say, or in a week. This week's podcast was supposed to be about yogurt. I've been fascinated by yogurt recently. I've been researching it deeply, going down many a yogurt rabbit hole, but I couldn't go straight into yogurt lore because I was placed in a position there where I had to defend myself and speak about the legacy of the Ulster plantation. I mentioned last week that I was experiencing the beginning stages of autistic burnout.

And what I've been doing to protect myself from autistic burnout is, number one, having an acute, mindful emotional awareness around tasks. Noticing the feeling of procrastination. What I mean is, when emails come in, when text messages come in, I answer them immediately. If I can, I answer them immediately. And if a little feeling comes up of procrastination, I'm gonna put this email off, I'm gonna put this text off. I don't do it.

I deal with the task immediately. This gives me a little feeling of accomplishment, and that feeling of accomplishment, it fuels me and it protects me from artistic burnout. What I'm trying to avoid is I don't want to answer this email. I don't want to answer this text message I don't want to pick that piece of rubbish off the ground. I don't want to do anything I want to zone out because I'm overwhelmed When I do that

Unanswered text messages, unanswered emails, unpicked up pieces of rubbish text messages, unanswered emails, unpicked up pieces of rubbish, spiral out of control, and then in a week's time I'm frozen. I've got real problems and I completely freeze. And many a time on this podcast I've spoken about my studio getting so messy that I can't even move and I don't know how to clean it. Complete paralysis of executive functioning, the capacity to execute tasks and complete them. That's artistic burnout. I'm trying to avoid that. So I know this feeling of procrastination and I deal with small tasks as they happen. That awareness is also, it's why I delivered the podcast a day late this week. I'm in that mindful space where I'm critically analysing my task initiation.

I was able to say to myself, no I'm not procrastinating this podcast. I actually don't think I'm going to be able to deliver it. And something that would really impact, something that might spiral me into burnout this week would be the feeling of shame, the feeling of shame and disappointment of delivering a podcast that I can't stand over. That would spiral nicely into artistic burnout and I'd find myself using some very self-shaming language. The other thing I do to protect myself from burnout, and this is really important is to spend time by myself with fucking noise canceling earphones on focusing on research. I

currently have an intense curiosity about yogurt by paying attention to that curiosity by following it by going down research rabbit holes that brings me real joy that brings me real joy and it recharges my social battery. But the issue I was having this week was, I want to learn everything about fucking yogurt. I want to learn about the history of yogurt. But I had this problem of, oh fuck, there's a video online where I look like a free state prick. But as you know, I love making connections where they seemingly don't exist, so I set myself the challenge of can I do a podcast about the history of yogurt and is it anyway connected to the Ulster plantations? I wonder what would happen if I set myself that challenge.

So that's what I want to do with this week's podcast. Before we do that, I think let's have a little ocarina pause because I want an uninterrupted hot take. I don't have an ocarina this week. What I do have, I have a little book, a copy of an essay called The Problem That Has No Name by Betty Friedan. It's a very interesting essay. I believe it was written in the 1950s. It's a piece of, it's second wave feminist literature, but what it's about is the sense of meaninglessness and hopelessness that housewives began to feel in America in the 1950s when their lives

became increasingly domesticated. And how this feeling of meaninglessness and emptiness that came about in suburban American housewives, how this was pathologized and medicalized to sell Valium or amphetamines. So I don't have an ocarina, so I'm gonna... Ironically, there's a pharmaceutical company next door to my office and yet they're banging doors and shouting. As... to my office and yet they're banging doors and shouting. As the economy shows signs of faltering, right, this is just something interesting, I'm on a very quiet floor in my office, as the economy starts to show signs of faltering in specific Trump's threats of tariffs, right,

because the pharmaceutical industry is big here in Ireland. As that happens, my office floor is actually becoming more chaotic and the pharmaceutical workers around me are becoming more stressed and they're banging more doors and doing a lot more shouting. In the past couple of months, it's just something I've noticed. So I'm going to hit myself into the head with this copy of The Problem That Has No Name by Betty Friedan. It's a very, very slim book, tiny little slim book. It's probably going to sting when I hit myself into the head with it. And actually,

I like this as a piece of performance art. And we let those pharmaceutical people on my floor just guess. They're going to hear them. They're in there having arguments and slamming doors, and they're just going to hear me hitting myself into the head with a piece of second wave feminist literature that itself critiques the emerging pharmaceutical industry and what intersects with capitalism. Some things just take too long. A meeting that could have been an email, someone explaining crypto, or switching mobile providers. Except with Fizz. Switching to Fizz is quick and easy. Mobile plans start at $17 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca. Not pleasant at all. That wasn't nice at all.

There was a sting on that. Wow. Little slim book. Fuck me. Alright, support for this podcast comes from you the listener via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast. This is a fully independent podcast. This is how I rent out my office. This is my full time job. This is how I earn a living. The podcast is supported by you the listener. So if this podcast brings you joy or mirth

or merriment or distraction, whatever has you listening to this podcast, please consider becoming a patron. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month, that's it. And if you can't afford that, don't worry about it, you can listen for free. You can listen for free, because the person who's paying is paying for you to listen for free. Everybody.com forward slash the Blind Boy podcast. Also, what this model does is not only can I tell advertisers to fuck off, like there are adverts on this podcast, but I'm not beholden to those advertisers in any way. None of them can come in here and tell me what to speak about. They can't tell me to be more popular,

to try and get more listeners. None of that shit. And then the other thing as well, that click economy, the click economy that I spoke about on this podcast, I'm not really beholden to that anymore either. I don't really have to compete for eyes and attention because all I want is can people support this podcast directly and then what I do is I put out a podcast that I'm genuinely passionate about and I'm not thinking about figures or whether it's popular or how many eyes are on it.

That's not my focus. My focus is can I make something that I would listen to if I wasn't me? So thank you to all my patrons. Thank you very much to all my patrons. And that's the reason too why, it's why I won't miss a week. It's why even if I'm on fucking tour I'm not taking a week off because I refuse to take this for granted. I don't really have many gigs to promote. I'm gonna take some time off from gigging now over the summer. There's one or two little festivals, two I believe. Gig-wise, I'm gigging in Derry in September and I'm also doing a gig in

Vicar Street in September. You know the crack at my Vicar Street gigs. Dublin, Vicar Street, quiet midweek gig. This gig's gonna be on a Tuesday the 23rd of September, right in Vicar Street. Please come along to that. They're always wonderful crack. And then my Derry gig, it's up in the Millennium Theatre, that's happening on the 19th of September. Thank you to everybody who came along to my UK tour. Well, sorry, my tour of England and Scotland. That was really fucking intense. I loved doing it. I loved coming to all the different cities and gigging for people who are showing up and listening to this podcast. I really adored it,

but I won't be doing another tour like that for, I'd say a year and a half. There was a lot more cities I didn't gig in. They wanted me to do twice that tour, to do nearly 23 dates. What I'm gonna do instead, I'll be doing another tour in about a year and a half, and I'll visit some different places, some different places in England, Scotland and Wales that I haven't been to before? And I'll announce those tickets short enough, but it's not going to be for a fucking year and a half, because I'm bushed.

Okay, why do I want to do a podcast about yogurt? I've become very interested in the gut microbiome recently. Since I spoke to Professor Ted Dinan from Cork who was an expert Who's an expert on the gut microbiome? If you want to hear that podcast, it's called the gut brain connection But Ted Dinan is a world-renowned expert who has dedicated his life to studying probiotics the gut biome and the human body and the relationship between gut health and mental health and all over bodily health.

So I've been eating a lot of fiber recently from fresh vegetables because that's a prebiotic and I've been making sure that I've been getting probiotics daily and that's coming from kombucha or coming from sauerkraut but also coming from kefir, from kefir and fermented yogurts. And what fascinates me about it is dairy products, yoghurt, soured yoghurt. Here's this product that we've had for thousands of years that humans have probably always known is hugely beneficial to our well-being and science is really only catching up now. I want to begin by speaking about a very strange graveyard up in Fermanagh. Fermanagh is just above Sligoats on the border. It's one of the six counties in the north of Ireland. And there's a graveyard in Formana, in a little village called Boho. There's a

Catholic church called the Sacred Heart Church and there's a graveyard attached to it. And there's one particular grave and it's weird-looking. It's dirty-looking. The soil around it is perpetually disturbed. And then when you get closer to the grave, there's notices on the grave that say, please only remove a small amount of soil from this grave, a teaspoon full, and the soil must be returned to this plot on the fourth day. The notification is it's like medical instructions. It says prayers to be said while using the blessed clay.

So this grave, this grave up in this church in Boho in County Formana, this Catholic fucking church, the soil in this grave is blessed, it's holy, right? And the instructions on the grave say, take the soil a teaspoon full, you have to return it to the grave in four days and while you have the soil, these are the prayers that you have to say while using the soil. Five Our Fathers, five Hail Mary's, five Glory be to the fathers and one Creed. And you have to say a prayer for the soul of the person whose grave it is, who's a priest. It's the grave of a priest from the 17th century called Father McGurr. And you have to say a prayer for the soul of all his deceased relatives and friends. And also you have to say a prayer for why you've taken,

borrowed the soil from his grave. So this grave in County Foramanna, in Boho, it's one of these rare little sites that we have left, where it's halfway between Catholic devotion and then an older, strange or Irish paganism. Something that seems more similar to magic. And it's taken very seriously and people visit this grave frequently and they take teaspoons of the blessed clay and they return it on the fourth day.

Return it to the grave. So that's why the grave looks so dirty and disturbed. So who's buried in this grave? Who was this priest, Father James McGarr? He existed in...he served as a priest in that parish in the year 1800, okay? But again in the context of colonization, the colonization of Ireland, from the 1690s up until the mid 1700s, the penal laws existed. So Irish Catholics, Catholics couldn't practise their religion. Catholicism was pretty much outlawed and priests were made illegal. So Irish Catholics, they didn't have churches to practice in.

So they reverted to a kind of a weird, a pre-Christian type of Catholicism. People started returning again to holy wells, to balan stones, to stone circles, sites that were holy long before Christianity. Irish Catholicism became kind of half pagan during the colonial penal laws because it was illegal. Priests would give mass on mass rocks, okay?

They'd do this secretly, hidden away on a mass rock which could have been an ancient stone, pre-christian stone. Priests also became teachers, priests were school masters. Education was outlawed for Catholics too so a lot of education occurred in what we call hedge schools, in secret schools where mythology stories, the Irish language were kept alive in secret, hidden away. And Father James McGarr, in 1800, he was a healing priest. So he was a priest, but he was said to have healing powers. He could heal people of illnesses.

So again, that's that mixture of pagan pre-Christian and Christian. So the stories say that Father McGarr used to heal people if they were fucking sick, right? And then he said, When I die, the clay that covers my body will be able to cure everything that I was able to cure while I was alive. So a tradition emerged where locals, everything from fucking sore throats to flesh wounds, people who were sick would take a teaspoon of soil from this priest's fucking grave and they'd use it to heal themselves and it's still happening. And you can go and visit the grave. Now, if you do go and visit it, especially if you're American,

please respect this. Don't take the soil. Just leave it be. If you want to visit it, just don't, because this is... It's an important site. And I don't give a fuck about Catholicism, but this is more than that. This is that strange, crazy Irish pagan folk Christianity.

Now the site where this church is, there's a cross there from the 6th century. And it's associated with an early Irish saint called St. Faber. So most likely this church was there in the 6th century. That's 100 years after Christianity arrives in Ireland. If it was there in the 6th century, most likely it was a pre-Christian site of pagan worship. So then you could be going back thousands of years. Here's my hunch. My hunch is that that site has been a place of medicinal cures for way longer than the 1800s.

We have this story of a priest who was a healer, but I reckon people were using the soil for a lot longer than that. Here's why this is interesting, right? This isn't just a story about healing soil. A local microbiologist called Jerry Quinn grew up in the area, and Jerry Quinn out of sheer curiosity figured, what if there's something to this? Why don't we test the soil? If people have been visiting, if people are taking this soil away and have been using it for cures for many years, why not test it for the laugh?

Lo and behold this grave is now a site of international importance. The area of Boho in Fermanagh, it has these limestone caves underneath. It's a very unique environment and it turns out the soil on this grave in Boho contains a never before seen bacteria called streptomyces and it's unique to this area because of the the limestone caves that are there. One of the biggest issues that the world is facing right now is

antibiotic resistant bacteria. That's a big problem. MRSA for instance is antibiotic resistance and experts around the world are very concerned about a pandemic, some disease that's resistant to antibiotics. So long story short, they tested the soil and it contains several incredibly unique strains of these streptomyces, which can produce antibiotics and it was found to kill the top three pathogens, right? Identified by the World Health Organization that are a major threat to human health.

So the folklore is correct. The folklore is telling a story that science is catching up on. Otterly bizarre tradition of take a teaspoon of soil from the grave, say a bunch of fucking Hail Marys, put the soil underneath your pillow, and then people reporting themselves cured and calling it a miracle. Science listened to the folklore, listened to the stories and now this fucking area in Fermanagh, the soil is being studied as something that could prevent the next giant pandemic, the next pandemic that's resistant to antibiotics and that's called ethnopharmacology. It's it's kind of it's almost an anti-colonial way to do science because modern science which stems from the Enlightenment is also a product of

colonialism. Under colonialism indigenous customs, folklore, systems of knowledge are rubbish and called savage in favour of evidence-based science. But now with ethnopharmacology you have scientific experts studying folk traditions, folk medicine, mythology, cures, magic. Studying these things, no matter how bizarre the ritual, might genuinely have value. Maybe the people and the stories that are thousands of years old, maybe there's something here, there's something there, even though it doesn't look scientific. And there you have it, this... people fucking digging up bits of soil from an old priest's grave

and putting it under their pillows and bringing it back after four days and sowing the rosary. This strange pagan Christian shit might prevent the next pandemic. I find that fascinating. Another example is I don't know if you're a kid and you had a little injury and then your ma made you a poultice, bit of bread soaked in milk and you put it on your cut if

there's no plasters. And most of us receive this as a kid as a bit of a joke but poultices were not just in Ireland, they were used in folk medicine. A piece of bread dipped in milk or whatever put on a wound. And you might think, oh it's a placebo, that's bullshit, what is bread gonna do? Penicillin, penicillin comes from bread mold, penicillium mold. Some people were making potesis from bread and putting them on wounds. Yeah, it's folk medicine, but they were probably also producing penicillin, and that was fighting the bacteria.

But what this all got me thinking about was, in 1908, there was a fella by the name of Eli Metchnikov. He was Ukrainian, and he won the Nobel Prize in 1908 for his pioneering work on immunology. But also what he did is he noticed that people from Bulgaria lived very very long lives because they consumed a lot of yogurt, particularly sour fermented yogurt. And this created a global craze for yogurt in the Western diet. Like when you go to the shop now and there's several types of yogurt available anywhere in the world. This all started with with this lecture that this fella gave about Bulgarian folk yogurt and people live in very long lives.

Yogurt went from being a folk food that was present in some cultures to being completely ubiquitous everyday item and this led to science understanding probiotics understanding that there are certain fermented foods that use lactic acid and that when these are consumed regularly they can help us to have a regularly, they can help us to have a really healthy range of bacteria in our guts and this results in overall health. And science of course has since proven this to be completely true. Just listen to the podcast I did a few

months back with Ted Dinan called The Gut-Brain Connection. So this is undisputed now. But again what you have there is this scientist looking to Bulgarian folk tradition where yogurt, the making of yogurt and sour yogurt was a huge part of the culture. And looking at this folk tradition and then going, maybe there's value there, maybe there's value in that. And that led me to start looking for Bulgarian folklore. to start looking for Bulgarian folklore. I was thinking if there's a long tradition of yogurt making and it's a huge part of Bulgarian folk culture then there has to then be folklore mythology stories relating to the making of yogurt but I couldn't find anything. Probably because just in English language

limitations when I go online to look up Bulgarian folklore a lot of it Probably because just in English language limitations. When I go online to look up Bulgarian folklore, a lot of it probably isn't translated into English, so I couldn't find any folklore, Bulgarian folklore, about the making of yogurts. But it has to exist. It has to exist because the tradition is too old. I managed to find one story. It wasn't a Bulgarian story, but

I found a story of Francis I of France, who was a king in the 1400s and he had incurable diarrhea, he had terrible stomach problems. And this is the 1400s and no medicine in France would work. And then finally his ally who was a sultan in Turkey where they did have a yogurt tradition. This sultan sent a lot of yogurt to the king of France and this sorted out his incurable diarrhea. So most likely what happened is it improved his gut biome. It gave him a healthier gut and healthier gut bacteria because he was consuming fermented yogurt. But then I started thinking, fucking hell, I know that Ireland, like pre-Christian Ireland, we had an entire economy based solely around cattle. Cattle was a massive deal, which meant that dairy was a big deal.

People were drinking milk. Like for instance, we've got bog butter. Bog butter is butter that was placed in bogs like 2,000 years ago to be preserved and now we dig it up now. So we know from archaeology that dairy products were a large part of the Irish diet going back a few thousand years. So there has to have been yogurt, there has to have been probiotic, fermented yogurt drinks, things like kefir, it has to have existed in Irish culture. But we were colonized for 800 years. And when you're colonised for 800

years, you lose a lot. You lose food culture, you lose stories, and then the famine comes along in the 1800s. You lose half the fucking population. But there's one particular piece of literature. This is from the 11th century, okay? Written down in the 11th century by monks, meaning it could be older, okay? And it's a genre known as an ashling. I love the name ashling. I know it's a common Irish name, but I think it's my favorite Irish name. Ashling means dream or vision, but it's also, an Aisling is an ancient form of Irish storytelling. It's vision literature, it's dream literature. Aisling literature, of which there's

loads, it usually tells a story of a character who has a fantastic dream and in this fantastic dream things are revealed to them. And there's one Aisling from the 1100s called the Aisling Mac Conglín which means the vision poem of the son of Conglín and it speaks a lot about the Irish diet and the Irish food, pre-Colonization. Here's my hot take. I think, I can read this 11th century poem and I think this 11th century poem, this vision literature, I think it's actually about probiotics.

I think it's about the benefit of fermented milk, fermented yogurt and the health of the human body. I think this is about the gut biome. I haven't heard anyone else read the poem in this way. So I'm very excited about this. So here's the story. Here's the story of the Aisling Macken-Glin, this dream vision poem that was written down in the 1100s. But if it was written down, it means it could be orally, it could be oral culture and you can't tell how old that is. So there's this poet right, there's this poet called Aenier, Macon Glynne, son of Glynne and he lives up in Armagh, Armagh again up north in the Six Counties. But this poet who lives and works in a monastery because the monks were poets

you know he lives and works in a monastery and he's like i want to go traveling around ireland i don't like being stuck in this monastery i want to travel around ireland and i want to go to a different monastery now monasteries in early christian Ireland, like first off this fella, Aini or Mac Conglín, right? He's not poor, okay? If in early Christian Ireland you're a poet, you're living and working in a monastery, you're the son of Conglín,

you might be the son of a king related to someone royal in Ireland, and if you have the power to travel from one monastery to another and want to stay there and expect hospitality you were probably posh. I covered this in the documentary I made about monasteries last year. Monasteries in early Christian Ireland they kind of acted as five-star hotels for the very rich. You could travel between monasteries, there was no towns, you could travel and stay in a monastery and be fed there and get lots of food and stay as long as you liked if you were related to a powerful king. So this fella, Aenier, the

poet, he goes, fuck that, I'm sick of Armaa. I want to go down to the bottom of Ireland, I want to go down to Cork and I want to stay there in a monastery when I'm in Cork. I want to go down to Cork and I want to stay there in a monastery when I'm in Cork. So when he travels to Cork and arrives at a monastery, he knocks on the door and he goes, what's the craic? I'm Aini or Mackon Glynn. I'm a poet and a writer from up north and I'm here for some hospitality. I'm here. I'm gonna chill out here in Cork in your monastery and I'm here for hospitality. Give me some food and give me some drink Now the monks in the monastery, they're supposed to do this for him. They're supposed to give him hospitality

But they don't for whatever reason Tight fuckers down in Cork, they don't give him hospitality They say fuck you you prick from Aramaic Who the fuck are you thinking you can come down here to Cork and demand food? You're getting nothing, fuck you. And he says, unto doom I would not eat unless famine befell them, the Oat'n ration of Cork. So whatever shitty bit of oats they gave him in Cork, he's like, this is disgusting, I'm not eating this, I'm used to much better, up in Armaa, in the monastery up there. And because he's a poet, he begins to write a poem.

He starts writing a poem about how shit the food is in Cork. He's like a TikTok food reviewer. He's writing a poem, the food down here in the monastery in Cork is fucking shit. You don't know what food is. You don't know what hospitality is. Ye selfish Cork pricks. But then the monks in Cork in the monastery are like, who the fuck do you think you are

writing satirical verses about us? Who the fuck do you think you are, you northern cunt? So they kick the shit out of an heir, and they tie him up in chains and beat him unconscious. And then while the poet is unconscious in the dungeon of this cork monastery, and he's starving as well, he's starving because they fed him fuck all, he's beaten to a pulp and he's starving and he has his vision, he has his ashling and his vision is of a land of food. And he says the fort we reached was beautiful with works of custard thick beyond the lock,

new butter was the bridge in front, the rubble dike was wheat and white, bacon the palisade. Stately, pleasantly it sat, a compact house and strong, and then I went in, and the door was made of dry meat, and the threshold was bare bread, cheese cards the side, smooth pillars of old cheese and sappy bacon, fine beams of mellow cream, white rafters, real cards. And then he describes a well, a magical well of bubbling sour milk. Báinne Clavar. Báinanya Clavar is our clavar. It's milk. It's thick and sour milk. And in this vision poem, in this Ashling, this well of sour bubbling thick milk is very important.

It's a life-giving substance in his dream, in his Ashling, his vision. But then while he's having this vision, this vision of a land of cream and bubbling milk, a spirit comes along in the dream and tells him about King Cahal of Munster. And King Cahal of Munster has a terrible affliction. There's a demon living in his throat and what this demon does to him is anytime King Cahal tries to eat food, the demon in his throat eats the food too. So he has this insatiable appetite but nothing will stay down. A demon is eating it. So in Eormach and Glyn he learns in his vision that he now has a mission.

And the mission is he has to travel to King Cahal of Munster and try and free him from this demon that lives in his throat. So when he arrives in the king's court, he meets the king and he says, I'm a poet, I'm from up north, alright? I had a vision and the vision told me I'm to come here and I'm to free the demon that lives in your throat. And then the king goes, please do, I'm fucked, I'm fucked. I can't keep anything down. This thing lives in my throat.

Anytime I try to eat food, it eats food for me. So the first thing that Inair does is he dangles some meat over the throat of the king, right? And the demon sticks its head up a bit. Now that to me suggests that the king might have worms, because that's a folk kind of remedy. It doesn't work, but it's a folk remedy for...if someone has a tapeworm or a worm or a parasite in their body, people used to dangle food in front of the person's mouth in the hope that the worm would come out and be enticed by the food and then you pull the worm out. So that to me suggests

that the demon that's in the king's throat, they're referring to a parasite as some description. Because it's eaten all the king's food, you see, when the king is trying to eat. So back in the King of Monsters court, this fella, Enear, Mac and Glynn, that's not working. So what the poet does is he goes, you know what? I'm going to tell you the vision that I had in detail. Right. I had this vision in the monastery in Cork where I visited a land of eternal fucking food and cream and cheese and milk. And I am going to describe in the most beautiful words, everything I saw.

in the most beautiful words, everything I saw. So he begins reciting his poem about the land of milk and cream and cheese. Finally he gets to the bit about the well, the life-giving well of sour bubbling Bona Clavar. And when that happens the demon that lives in the king's throat can't fucking resist. The demon's living in the throat going, you fucking prick, this sounds delicious. What you're describing sounds amazing. I gotta jump out of his throat now and try and see if I can eat these things that you're describing because I can't see it from in here. So suddenly, the demon pops out of the king's throat and leaves his body and he's tricked.

The demons out of the king's body now and goes you fucking prick. What are you talking about all this food for? Why are you talking about all this delicious cream and bubbling milk? Why are you talking about this stuff? And it's not here you fucking bastard. The demon is angry now. And then the poet starts reciting the Gospels that the demon and then the demon fucks off. That's the bit that tells me that the story is older than the 11th century. Because remember, a Christian monk had to write it down. But Irish Christian monks preserved all our oral folklore and mythology and they'd throw little bits of Christ in there. They'd throw little bits of Christ in there to clean up the stories, but

It's an unnecessary addition. The demon came out and he frightened them off with the gospels. No, there's no fucking gospels because this story is older than Christianity. That story, that story to me, that's about the benefit of probiotics. That's telling me that Irish people a thousand years ago had their own several types of fermented yogurt, fermented drink, and they understood that this was good for the gut biome. This was good for health. The king has some type of gastrointestinal disorder, whether it be worms,

parasites, like a healthy gut biome. If you are eating fermented foods, like parasites aren't really a thing we have to worry about anymore, but if you have a healthy gut biome, that's not a fertile environment for worms and parasites. Your own healthy bacteria will kill them. So this to me, it's an anti, it's an ashling, it's vision literature, but it's describing the Báin na Clábor, the bubbling fermented milk, the life-giving bubbling fermented milk, the description of that is what banishes the demon from the king's throat. That to me, that's medicinal knowledge, that's medicinal folk knowledge, that's medicinal folk knowledge that's speaking about the benefit of probiotic fermented yogurt and how it will help gastrointestinal problems.

And in a time before writing, you'd hold onto that knowledge with a really good fucking story and that's a really good story. That's a story from the 1100s. And it's still entertaining today. Like I was reading that and I'm like, what happened next? What happened next? That there is the real reason that I needed to give myself 24 hours for this podcast.

Because I've looked online, I think I'm the only person who has interpreted that poem in that way. And I was very excited to get that hot take, really, really excited. And I wanted to make sure I delivered it to you properly, to deliver it properly, and not thinking about my fucking bed.

So that's the reason I left this podcast for an extra day. Now I told you I wanted to, I want to do something about yogurts and see is there a connection with the Ulster plantation? Well strangely fucking enough there is right? So that, that Báine Clábor, this thick, curdled, bubbling sour milk, this ancient Irish food stuff, I went looking for that, seeing what happened to it, right? Effectively what it is, it's a type of buttermilk that was eaten, it was a type of buttermilk that came from raw milk. It would have been highly probiotic with tons of beneficial bacteria in it. It was tangy and sour, naturally fermenting and it was part of the Irish diet right up until the famine. Before the potato famine, Irish people used to eat a lot of fucking potatoes every day and they would

mix the potatoes with buttermilk, with this stuff, this báin na cláibhár, they'd mix it with that. And before the potato famine, when Irish people were doing well eating just potatoes, because you have to remember the Brits are exporting all the food, alright, so potatoes were growing really well, they were simple to grow, people were eating a couple of kilograms of potatoes a day, mixing it with this buttermilk substance. Before the famine, the Irish were known for being incredibly healthy and tall, because you can live on a diet of just potatoes. Potatoes are a whole food, they've got protein, carbohydrates, and you're mixing it with this probiotic buttermilk.

That's quite a nutritious diet for the 1700s. And then the famine happens and this Bona Clavar disappears. But then in the south of America around Appalachia, a new substance shows up called Bonnie Clabber. Bonnie Clabber. And what you start to see at first first is so racist minstrel shows in America I've done podcasts before about the minstrel tradition in America I won't call it a tradition flat-out fucking racist where African-American people were portrayed in stereotypes on stage for entertainment in America people used to put on blackface.

In the earliest minstrel shows it wasn't just black people that had the piss taken out of them in minstrel shows. In the really early ones, late 1700s, it was also Irish people. There was characters known as the stage Irish. Irish people are emigrating to America right from about the 1830s onwards. Irish people are emigrating to America, escaping famine. Loads, hundreds of thousands a year, okay? And the Irish arrive in America and we're not liked. We're really at the bottom of society and we were seen as disease carriers. We were subject to racism, okay? And in the earliest blackface minstrel shows they weren't just taking the piss out of black people,

they were also taking the piss out of Irish people. They were stage Irish characters. characters. African-American people were portrayed as eating watermelon. Irish people were portrayed as eating bonnie clapper and potatoes. My source for this is it's an academic journal article about called the development of a stock character, the stage Irishman. So the 1800s stereotype of Irish people in these minstrel shows in the early 1800s was they were called Bridget or Paddy, they were stupid, they were drunk all the time, and when they ate food, the food that they ate were potatoes and bonnie clabber. So then I'm going, what the fuck is bonnie clabber? What the fuck is bonnie clabber? Well... So... What the fuck is Bonnie Clabber? Well... So, the Protestant settlers in the north of Ireland

that came over with the Ulster plantation Ulster Scots, people from the lowland areas of Scotland who were Protestants who as part of the British colonial project were to replace and ethnically cleanse the Irish people that were living in the north of Ireland. I began this podcast by speaking about the riots that are happening up north at the moment and that colonial tradition. So those people's ancestors, the Ulster Scots, a lot of them also went over to the southern

states of America before the Irish Catholics. If you hear of anyone over there referring to themselves as Scotch Irish, like a lot of American presidents, it's a huge amount, I think that's like 18 American presidents can trace their ancestry to Antrim in the north of Ireland. They were Scotch Irish. Ulster Scots planters, the grandchildren of them, who were part of the colonial project in the north of Ireland and then said, fuck it, there's another colony over there in America and they're kicking out all the indigenous people, let's go over there. A lot of them found their way to Appalachia, Virginia. Not all of them were wealthy, some of them were poor. There's a whole separate podcast that I don't have

time for today about Ulster Scots and Lowland Scottish immigration to the South of America and the foundation of the Ku Klux Klan. I'll do that in a different podcast, because that's a big one. But anyway, the Ulster Scots in Appalachia had this new milk substance that they called bonnie clabber. Bonnie clabber. Which is quite clearly, it's a lowland Scots person who doesn't speak the Irish language. Hearing the word bonnie, milk, hearing bonnie,

and instead saying bonnie, bonnie is a Scots English word that means beautiful. So they hear bonnie clavar or clabar and they go bonnie clabber, bonnie clabber. So we're to assume that Ulster Scots planters learned about this Scott's planters learned about this fermented raw milk substance from the people living in Ireland and that's cultural appropriation. That's I'm not calling these people out there welcome to the fucking fermented milk but I'm just saying that that there is that is literal that is a definition of cultural appropriation that that is that that's a colonizer taking a food stuff that or a culture or a story or anything that that belongs to the culture that they're colonizing then taking it changing the name of it

anglicizing it and then making it their own. So the Ulster Scots brought Bonnie Clabber to Appalachia and it was used in baking. It's raw milk buttermilk. It was used in baking in the absence of yeast. And then Bonnie Clabber, the Ulster Scotch, appropriated Bona Clavar in Appalachia. It ends up becoming what we now call baking powder. And if you live in America now, there's a brand of baking powder, right, that's called

Clabber Girl. And you can literally trace Clabber Girl baking powder, which is a popular baking powder in America, you can trace that to Ulster Scott's people in the plantation of Ulster who heard the phrase Bonia Clobar wrong and made it Bonnie Clabber. So that's that's my hot take this week and that's that's up your shit. That helps me with burnout. That's fucking mad. I said to myself I want to do a podcast on yogurt. As a challenge, I wonder can I find a connection between this and Ulster Scots.

I wonder can I do that, just for the crack. And through deep research and pattern recognition and just this... Almost this sixth sense, I've spoken about that before and a lot of autistic people speak about that, that they feel that they can see into the fucking future sometimes. I know that's ridiculous, I know that's absolutely ridiculous. But sometimes if I get that little tingle, if I get that little tingle, I had no evidence whatsoever, I knew I wanted to do a yogurt podcast, and then that business happened where I had to speak about the protests in Ballymena and

Just this little tingle came to me that said Ulster Protestants and yogurt Ulster Protestants and yogurt. There's something there. There's something there Look for it search for it and I just became obsessed and researched and researched and researched and the pattern emerged and that's a fairly strong collection there. That's a pretty strong connection. I managed to read an 11th century Irish poem. I think it's a fairly plausible theory that it might be about an ancient type of probiotic yogurt

called Báinne Clabar, and then it turns out that becomes Bonnie Clapper. So I loved that, I really enjoyed that. And the bizarre thing is Bonnie Clabber is making a comeback. Raw milk is racist now. So most milk that we drink is pasteurized. It's been heated to remove a huge amount of pathogens, okay? Now in Ireland you can still buy raw milk. I don't know enough about it. Some people say it's unsafe.

Raw milk cheeses, especially if people are pregnant. I believe it does carry a higher risk of food poisoning. But over the last year, raw milk has become politicised, especially in America, with people who are right-wing, conservative. Now firstly, racists, white supremacists love milk. So here's the thing.

The capacity to digest lactose, so to digest lactose into adulthood, which is the enzyme lactase that we have in our bodies, that is a genetic trait that evolved in traditionally people whose home was northern Europe. So some East Asian people, indigenous American people, and some African populations, right, are lactose intolerant. Because cows and cattle maybe wasn't present where they were living, you tend to see a higher amount of lactose intolerance. So racists, white suprematists performatively drink milk to show off their racial purity.

That's bullshit. Race is bullshit. Racism is real, but race, that's a social construct. All humans are the exact same. But racists, American racists in particular, would performatively drink milk to show how tolerant they are of lactose and they particularly like raw milk. Milk that isn't pasteurized straight from the cow. And they digest this to show, look how white I am. Look how northern European my genetics are.

Look at all this raw milk that I can drink. So in 2025, raw milk is politicised for that reason and also dairy isn't great for the climate. OK, meat isn't great for the climate. Racists believe that there's a global conspiracy, right? A global conspiracy to make us stop eating milk, to stop eating meat. That they want to start eating insects. And this is a form of global control and particularly, you've heard the term, soy buy online. Racists believe that soy milk is a conspiracy to reduce testosterone in men, right, that if you drink soy that this this increases your estrogen levels and that soy is soy is a way to make men less masculine so that we can be conquered by Soy is a way to make men less masculine so that we can be conquered by...

I think either interdimensional shape-shifting lizards are Jewish people. So that's a big conspiracy. That's a big conspiracy amongst racists. They're trying to take our meat away, they're trying to take our dairy away, and they're trying to push soy milk on us to reduce our testosterone and conquer us. So, to drink raw milk straight from the cow means that you are genetically pure white Northern European and you're masculine. You refuse this soy milk. You want to keep your testosterone and what's also making a comeback is Bonnie Clabber. Buttermilk that's made from raw milk. The racists, the conservative tradwives, they're making Bonnie Clabber again from raw milk. So it's a very strange thing, it's a very strange thing. I adored making that podcast. I loved all that research. I loved those hot takes. I would

love, I would love someone who knows more than me to give me feedback on my theory about that 11th century Aisling. That it might actually be a probiotic vision. I loved making that. I loved doing that. I could not have done that last night with no sleep. I'd have made a big fucking bollocks of that. I'd have left out loads of details. I wouldn't have been able to form the argument that I formed. I wouldn't have had fun with it. I'd have put it out half-arsed and I'd have really regretted it and I'd have felt like a piece of shit. I only get one shot at a good hot take and nothing pisses me off more than putting out a podcast episode with a hot take and then the episode is out and then like a day later

something jumps at me. Some glaring thing that I could have included in the episode jumps at me and I go, oh fuck, I wish I had that in there. So that's why this podcast was late. I wanted to do that properly and I wanted to enjoy it and I wanted to make it something that you would enjoy. All right?

What am I gonna do now? I need to fucking rest. I really need to rest my brain. I've been working non-stop for... for two weeks. I've been speaking to people. I need silence. I need silence and I need to not think for maybe two days.

What I really want to do is... There's a video game that I play called Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, which is an early medieval video game and I just want to walk around the forests and forage for mushrooms. It's a peaceful game. That's what I want to do. I want to do that and I want to think about fucking nothing and recharge my battery. I'll be back next week. I don't know what I'll be back with. In the meantime, the starlings have returned to the Bardshit district in Limerick. The centre of Limerick does smell like Bardshit again. A welcome smell. So I'll catch you next week. In the meantime, rub a dog genuflect to a swan. Drink or eat some fermented dairy products for the

benefit of your god-help. Dog bless. Some things just take too long. A meeting that could have been an email, someone explaining crypto, or switching mobile providers. Accept with Fizz. Switching to Fizz is quick and easy. Mobile plans start at $17 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca. you you you. you Thank you.