The Blindboy Podcast - Poltergeist of a Builder

Episode Date: July 31, 2019

The battery in my faulty smoke alarm unexpectedly explodes mid podcast. Which leads to several tangents, culminating in me writing a song about it. And then talking about Nuclear material in Smoke alarms Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, welcome to podcast number 95, I believe, of the Blind Boy Podcast. I'm happy to say that this week I get to open with a piece of prose that was submitted by Hollywood actor Michael Fassbender. Michael Fassbender has sent in a short piece of... He called it a poem. I personally think it's more of a piece of prose or even a short essay. So before we begin, I'm going to read out Michael Fassbender's piece of prose, which doesn't have a title. Elon Musk flew me to Jupiter in his rocket. No one has seen this rocket yet. Only me and Elon have. We landed on a sea of gas

with an atmospheric pressure thousands of times greater than that on Earth. The sun was much larger than it was back home. Elon informed me that the temperature was 24,000 degrees Celsius. But that the reason neither of us were burned to a crisp. Or crushed by the atmosphere. Was because our friendship was so strong. He took out a needle. And I let him pierce my ear.

We both wore studded earrings. After six months of wearing a studded earring. You were allowed to put in a gold sleeper earring. But on Jupiter, six months is six years back home. But we didn't mind waiting. We were both wearing jarts, as electrical storms, unlike anything you have ever seen, loomed above. Elon remarked that these storms were like Dante's vision of hell. I said I didn't know what that meant. So we started talking about Snooker, and we wondered whether you could play Snooker on Jupiter.

With such extreme atmospheric pressure, Elon reckoned he could figure out a way to do it, and I believed him. Jarts are like shorts, but they are made out of denim. So it means jean shorts, but we just say jarts, which is a portamento of both words,

because we don't have time to say jean shorts. Because we're too busy having fun on jupiter so we just say jarts instead thank you very much michael fast bender uh that was fantastic that really that was quite touching and moving and thank you so much for listening to the podcast and for sending that in a few people have been remarking the last two or three podcasts about the sound of my fire fire alarm in the background i i you're gonna hear a beeping noise I think it's every 15 seconds or something, and it's been present in the podcast for the last three or four weeks, it's, I look, there it was, there, I'm not fully sure what the crack is, first off, as you know,

I'm up the fucking walls, so I think what it is, is, I think the house is is I think the house alarm is connected to the mains of the house right and the battery is going or is gone in the house alarm which means I have to go up and change the battery but the thing is if it's beeping that means

it's also connected to the mains of the house so I'm now cautious about going up and changing the battery on the fucking fire alarm because i'm like am i do i have to turn the electricity off in the gaff and i went online to check out and apparently i do have to turn off the electricity in the gaff to change this fucking battery in the house alarm and i i just i don't know nothing about fuse boxes it's a job i could do it's a job i could do but i just i don't have the like the hour or whatever it would take to google how to do it and then

successfully change the battery and not get fucking electrocuted coupled with the fact to be honest as well um i've got tinnitus so my my entire existence my life is one non-stop forever continual beep uh in my ears that's been there for for five years now at this point continual beep continual one-stop continual hiss hissing, high-pitched sound in my ear, so I don't really take any notice of the fire alarm, apologies to anyone who's sensitive to it, I don't know, let's imagine it as some type of mechanical bird, imagine, imagine I've just, type of mechanical bird imagine imagine i've just instead of having like a canary a real life canary that i've quite cruelly kept in a cage instead i have this magnificent canary made out of wires who doesn't have to suffer and gives out an intermittent beep every 15 seconds there he goes

so that's just until i'm i, I'm, until I have enough time to sort out this fucking fire alarm, I think we're gonna have to put up with it, there's nothing I can do, like, it's, it's in and out of a room, but the thing is, the nature of high-pitched sounds, when, the way sound travels, if a sound is incredibly high-pitched, there's nothing you can fucking do, that will, high- there's nothing you can fucking do that will high pitch sounds travel in the way that low pitch sounds don't that's why i don't know if you went to see a live band and everything is fucking guitars plugged in drums the whole lot and it's really loud the one instrument you'll get away with not plugging in is a tambourine

notice that the next time you go to a gig because it operates on a frequency that can cut through all others so we're going to have a little bit of intermittent beeping and it's grand we'll deal with it all right mechanical chirping board i don't have time to sort it out it's too small a job to merit calling out an electrician and i've got plenty of buddies who are electricians but it's like you don't ring up your friend who's an electrician and ask him a question to do with their profession you just don't because it's like it's like it's like if you've got a buddy who's a fucking doctor you're not gonna ring him up and say can i send you a photograph of the inside of my throat can you tell me can you tell me if i've got an and say can I send you a photograph of the inside of my throat can you tell me if I've got an infected throat

can I send you a photograph of the inside of my throat you're not going to do that to someone who's a doctor so I'm not ringing up one of my buddies who's an electrician and going how do I sort out this alarm because it's too small a job to call you out and give you the 70 quid so

I have bigger fish to fry as well lads i've much bigger things on my plate than um an intermittent rhythmic beeping of a fire alarm so there you go um for anyone wondering about my two solitary bees the solitary leaf cutter bees that I have living in a, in a bee hotel out my back garden, doing fantastically, doing brilliantly, I saw the, the cutest thing in the world last week, so, the bee hotel, if you can imagine the top of it, what, what the attic would be, we'll say, of it what the attic would be we'll say there's just loads of um sticks of bamboo so it's you know small little bamboo sticks um circumference of a penny we'll say and these little holes kind of like a honeycomb there's loads of little holes beside each other um that's what where the solitary bees are interested in going in and out of

and i go there if i look at it at like after sunset i can look into one of the holes and you see the little bee inside sleeping she sleeps inside there and i take a little squint in, no movement, fast asleep, but what's so fucking cute is right beside, we'll say, the chamber where she sleeps, that bamboo, exactly next door, is the one that's all stuffed up with the leaves that she's cut, but that's where her babies are. So this little bee sleeps right next door to her babies which i think is just so class do you know like it's it's like it's a bee hotel so each one of these little fucking bamboos is the room in a hotel and technically there's about 40 rooms and And her and her children are on the third floor. They're in room 301 and she's in room 302.

She could be up at the penthouse if she wanted to. You know, up on number 7. But she's not. She's sleeping next door to her little larvae. Which I find amazing. I just find it amazing. I'm not trying to project feelings on top of the bee I don't know what the crack is but I just find that kind of endearing and it gave me a little flutter in my heart it did it made me when I saw it made me more committed to

protecting them and minding them and making sure that those little bees get born okay quick quick update okay second fucking update right how do I explain this

did you just hear a popping noise just there okay let me explain what just happened there. A bit of podcast drama. So when I said there, quick update, what I'd done is I had paused the podcast and said to myself, do you know what?

Fuck it. I should not have the beeping sound of a smoke alarm interfering with the podcast because a couple of people said it was annoying them and then the fact that I was trying to rationalize it as this beeping bird I was going you know what it's actually annoying me and I'm kind of pissed off at myself that I'm too busy to deal with it so what happened was I stopped the podcast and turned off everything at the mains in the house to deal with the fucking smoke alarm I looked up online very quickly look what do I do the smoke alarm was in this weird

place at the top of the fucking stairs which meant me going on a little ladder and I would have had to reach over it's in a queer place basically it's at the top of the fucking stairs whoever put it there is an eejit it's at a queer place so I got up on a little step ladder pitch fucking dark because I turned off literally everything in the house because I don't I don't know nothing about fuse boxes so I turned off everything and I was using the torch on my phone because Because I'm recording this late. So I climbed on the step ladder to reach up towards the smoke alarm. And basically, it was a bit of a stretch.

And right underneath me at my knees is the fucking stairs. Now I'm alone in the gaff. It's just me. So I'm going, holy fuck. So I have to reach up to this smoke alarm in the dark my phone's on the ground with the light pointing up so I have to reach up

to this smoke alarm in the dark reach across over a stairs with like a 12 foot drop and try and insert a screwdriver in there and I'm not handy

I'm not fucking DIY handy and insert a screwdriver because that's what it said on the side of it it said insert a screwdriver and gently pull the thing but whatever fucking eejit has installed the smoking arm like I said it requires me to stand on a stepladder reach across and legitimately put myself at risk of falling 12 feet or down the stairs while I'm in the gaff on my own so I said feet or down the stairs while I'm in the gaff on my own so I said no fucking way not happening so I went to plan fucking b I got a hold of a Harley and I said fuck it the power's off I need

to sort out this fire alarm situation or the smoke alarm I'm not having a beeping whatever damage I do I'll just I'll pay for it it'll grand, so I had the light on the ground, and I took a clean swing at the smoke alarm, a good heavy, heavy fucking swing, and I knocked the smoke alarm out, off its fixture, and it was clean, it's fine, so the bit that's supposed to be stuck to the ceiling is still there but the bottom part that was making the noise with the battery is gone so i'm at i'm there top of the stairs swing the hurley knock it off the bottom part which includes the battery goes flying down the stairs okay so once that gets to the bottom of the stairs i'm like great problem solved i go and i turn the

lights back on and the piece that's left on the ground is still making that fucking beeping noise even though the battery the nine volt battery has broken free of it so there's obviously another battery and they're like those really tiny ones you put into a watch and that's still making the beeping sound so I got that bit and now that's upstairs under a series of jackets still beeping but not so much that you hear it but here's the mad dramatic part

I'm going to replay this bit for you when I said quick update I'm going to replay this right now and I want you to listen for the sound so here we go you heard this earlier um okay quick quick update did you fucking hear that banging sound so that was a replay here it is once again wait so that noise that cracking noise happened

about five minutes after I'd taken the smoke alarm down. I turned all the power back on. I'd gone back into the studio. I'd turned the computer back on. I'd set up all the equipment again and was ready to record the podcast to say to you, I've just removed the smoke alarm. I'm here on my own in the gaff. And then I hear that fucking bang own in the gaff and then I hear that fucking bang out in the hallway

so I immediately at that moment press fucking stop on the record button because I'm like okay there's now someone in the gaff what the fuck is that the two cats aren't allowed in so I go out into the fucking hallway ye heard that

and I heard it as well so I go out into the fucking hallway going what the fuck i heard it as well so i go out into the fucking hallway going what the fuck is this i go upstairs to find the harley in case it's a robber so now i'm walking around the gaff trying to see is there a person here because i'm the only fucking person here and i couldn't figure out what the fuck was that noise so then i looked down onto the ground and the nine volt so basically when i had lashed the uh smoke alarm off the ground the nine volt battery was on the ground outside the studio door and it exploded so that's what that sound was that was the sound of an exploding fucking battery which scared the living shit out of me

because I'm here on my own so what a dramatic what a bizarre and dramatic start to this week's fucking podcast this is up there with the time that Tomcat interrupted what are the odds

what are the odds of me saying there's the sound of a smoke alarm we're going to have to deal with it then saying no fuck it we shouldn't have to deal with it then turning the lights off baiting it with a Harley and the battery fucking exploding

well that's what happened I'm shook I'm shook after that it's a bit gas as well though it is kind of funny em do you know what I'm shook I'm shook after that it's a bit gas as well though it is kind of funny em do you know what yeah no I'm glad I'm glad to have

yeah I don't know like I don't know how I'd feel about recording the podcast having definitely not only heard the sound, a clear sound of a violent bang outside the door, and then also having recorded evidence of it.

Imagine I wasn't able to look on the ground and notice, oh, the battery has exploded. The top of it came off, basically. Whatever went on so imagine me not having found what the fuck that noise was

I don't think I'd have come back into this fucking studio and just said asher noises like that just happen when you're in the gaff on your own

I wouldn't like because I can and I wouldn't be able to say it to myself maybe I imagined the bang or it was outside because I can listen back to say it to myself. Maybe I imagined the bang. Or it was outside.

Because I can listen back to when it was recorded. And I'd go. I know by the acoustics of that bang. That it most definitely happened in the hallway outside. So I'm so glad. That. I could see that that was a fucking battery that did that. Because I'd be shitting it. I'd be shitting it I'd be shitting it

I don't have a lock for the fucking studio door like you know I'd have to go on a ghost ramble because I looked at all the windows all the doors so I'm like this is locked as fuck so there's no way there's a person or an animal in the gaff so I'm like. This is locked as fuck. So there's no way. There's. There's. A person. Or an animal in the gaff. So.

I think the anxiety part of myself. I'd have to start entertaining. Poltergeists. Where would my head have gone? Yeah. Yeah. I'd have probably gone irrational like that. Because the house.

The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The.

The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The.

The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The.

The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. house the part a person lived here before who died and from what i know the person in the gaff was like a builder and they built a lot of stuff in the house and they did a lot of really stupid things in the gaff they did like um tried to renovate the attic and there's a lot of stuff in the house that's done really badly a couple bit a bit of wiring that's done bad uh fixtures that are done bad tiles that are done really shit because the person who lived here like 10 years ago was a tradesman and i think they specialized in like one thing and I found this out from the neighbors they specialized in one thing but they used to have a go at everything so that's why the tiles

are shit or the odd fixture is shit and I'm guessing it's why the smoke alarm is in such a really really bad place whereby in order to change it like a normal human being, you have to risk falling to your death. So if I didn't find that battery and knowing my propensity towards anxious, irrational thoughts, I would probably be entertaining the idea that me aggressively knocking that smoke alarm with the Harley, I would say to myself that smoke alarm was put there in that awkward place by the man who used to live here 10 years ago who died and me taking a Harley to it has somehow awakened his spirit and now I've got a

fucking poltergeist on my hand because there would be no other rational way for me to explain why we all definitely heard a loud bang outside the door so thank fuck I found that little battery

and saw that there's a part of me now that wants to double check no, no no no I'm not going there I'm not going to be irrational I saw the battery on the ground and there was evidence of a little wet patch where whatever acid or something had come out of it

and I could see that it was visibly kind of distressed and burnt and then I took the battery and I fucked it out into the garden because I'm like you're not going to explode anymore but where else am I going to go yeah I fucked it out into the garden because I'm like, you're not going to explode anymore. But where else am I going to go? Yeah, I'd have to be an irrational, worried man now.

Because I don't, like I've said before, I will never allow a Wednesday go by where there's no podcast. Like, I'm just not doing it. Like, even if I got, do you know that really bad food poisoning where you can't move where it's almost a spiritual experience even if i got that i'd may i'd do something i'd put out a live podcast i'd maybe talk through how terrible my illness was so i don't think i'd cower in the studio terrified of a poltergeist. I'd have to talk you through it. And I'd have some very worried DMs in the morning going,

Blind Boy, I usually like the podcast. But the one you put out this morning where you were cowering with a Harley trying to convince us that your gaff was being haunted by a builder who lived there 10 years ago. I'm afraid I found that very irrational. And I just want to know how you're getting on, that'd be my day tomorrow, if I didn't find that fucking battery, so that's the best thing that has happened this evening,

is I'm not entertaining, that degree of fucking irrationality, because where else would I go, I'd have to go there, I would just simply have to, there's no other explanation, as to why we heard that, I didn't think those fucking batteries could explode at all, they're the square batteries, 9 volt batteries, you know the square ones, now I know they're fucking,

like the only batteries that I worry about exploding are batteries in vapes occasionally people who have vapes if they get a dodgy vape the battery can explode in their fucking pocket and a lot of people have gotten like third degree burns from vapes exploding in their pocket now this battery when it exploded it's there wasn't a smell or anything so it was just kind of like a pop that you heard it so it wasn't flames or fire or. So it was just kind of like a pop. That he heard it. So it wasn't flames or fire or anything. But there was a bit of a. A burny looking thing. So there was obviously some type of spark.

But em. Jeez wouldn't that be ironic. Wouldn't it be ironic if. I knocked the smoke alarm off. So therefore it doesn't work anymore. And then if that battery had exploded later and caused the fire wouldn't that be so ironic but luckily that didn't happen it's out in the garden now so no worries but like i know loads of people so yeah those nine volt batteries

like i think something like 80 people a year around the world die from licking those batteries because do you know the way sometimes when you're a kid now don't try this at home because literally look it up like 80 people die a year they're the batteries that when you're a kid

you lick the top of it or you get your friend to lick it because it gives you a little tingly shock and it's horrible but people do it don't lick those batteries em yep 80 people a year actually die from those I'm still fucking

weirded out and shook by that do you know what for the fucking crack just because this podcast has now been completely derailed into a conversation about a battery and a builder's poltergeist

I'm going to pause and that banging the popping sound that we recorded the popping of that 9 volt battery I'm going to sample that sound right play it on my keyboard and I'm going about the poltergeist using the popping sound as an instrument and I'll do it

in the style of Christy Moore because Christy Moore I know for a fact listens to this podcast because I did a Vicar Street gig and Christy actually showed up and he came backstage and we had a chat and he was the soundest man gone and I think I might have said it before what I found particularly endearing is like Christy Moore doesn't have to pay for gigs

he's Christy Moore Christy Moore can go to any fucking gig in Ireland and they'll be like it's Christy Moore come into the gig so when Christy came to my gig and he was backstage he made a pint of showing sticking the two tickets for my gig out of his top pocket to make a pint of

showing me that he'd actually paid for tickets and didn't get in as a freebie which I wouldn't have mind I'd be like christy come to my gig for free for fuck's sake you're more than welcome but i found that very endearing that he had the two fucking tickets sticking out of the pocket to let me know that he paid for the gig i found that lovely right so yeah so i'm gonna do a song about the builder's ghost and i'm gonna use the exploding battery sound i'm gonna sample that and that's gonna be the beat and i'll build

something around it and try and do it in the style of Christy Moore and I'm going to pause now, go off and make it and then come back to you so I'm now back after all the talk of Christy Moore I tried to write it in the style of Christy Moore and it's just, it wasn't what was coming to me

instead I made a song that sounds like more like Pref sprout like a like a a limerick version of prefab sprout so apologies to christy it's just do you know what i came across a synthesizer sound and when i started playing that synthesizer it reminded me of prefab sprout and then the melody went there and before i it, I was miles out of Christy territory. So, apologies, Christy, and Paddy McAloon from Prefab Sprout, if you listen, hears a song about a poltergeist

which uses an exploding battery as the percussion, and it's inspired by Prefab Sprout, I suppose. God bless The poltergeist of a builder is haunting my old house He lives inside the fireplace and he's married to a mouse He rattles in the chimneys, he tries to frighten me He tries to climb inside my mouth and pull out all my teeth

The poltergeist of a builder The poltergeist of a builder The poltergeist of a builder Who's married to the mouse They have twenty children And they're half ghost and they're half mouse They don't need to chew and gnaw Cause they can walk through walls

Their heads glow in the dark There's haunted cum inside their balls The poltergeist of a builder The poltergeist of a builder Have you ever seen a rodent whose feather is a ghost? If you give me 20 euro, I'll send one in the post And you'll make lots of friends because you own a mouse's ghost You'll make lots of friends Because you own a mouse's ghost

It's the poltergeist of a builder The poltergeist of a builder Builder's ghost, builder's ghost of a bill of glass bill of glass bill of glass it's a bill of glass bill of glass it's a bill of glass bill of glass

in a cell right so there you go hold on where's the fucking piano the background piano is gone now Right, so there you go. Hold on, where's the fucking piano? The background piano is gone now. Yeah, that was... That took me the bones of fucking 40 minutes. There's the piano.

That took me the bones of 40 minutes, so... I don't know will I be meeting the full one hour point of this podcast this week, this podcast has been derailed, it has been derailed, this was supposed to be, I was going to do, I was going to speak about mental health this week, I was going to do something,

possibly related to CBT, or something like that, but then, that incident with the fucking exploding battery was too nuts, and then, I don't know, it just hit me, I bet you I could make a fucking beat out of that banging noise, and, most importantly, I'm fucking, I'm dying to make tunes,

absolutely dying, because I, normally, what I would do, like we'll say six months ago, I'd do nearly two songs a week. Just sitting down and kind of nonsense, silly stuff like that. Just finding a nice sound, a nice synthesizer sound or a beat and writing lyrics about whatever the fuck comes into my head but then mostly trying to find what you're looking for is

a nice catchy melody so you could, the lyrics don't really matter when it comes to a demo, do you know what I mean? you just say anything you want that comes into your head but what you're mostly looking for is a nice catchy melody and then I would do something like

that send it across to mr chrome and if chrome listens to it and goes jesus that's catchy then we would uh rework lyrics or rework the production or do something and then after many many passes end up with a final song but yeah fuck it i miss doing music so much and because i've been so busy normally what i'd do is i'd have a couple of cans in it or a bit of baldy on a weekend and just take out my guitar and take out my fucking keyboard and have crack bit of musical flow if possible and see what happens

and 90% of the time it's not something you use but then 10% of the time it is you have to throw shit at a wall when it comes to music you have to throw shit

at a wall and it might work and it might not but even doing that that was an absolute fucking pleasure because I was able to

slot it into my podcast recording time to get that done and I'd already gone too far talking about the exploding batteries and the smoke alarm saga so quite an unexpected podcast turn for me are we going to do the fucking pause again i don't know what a fucking ocarina is it's somewhere so what i'm gonna do instead of an ocarina pause this week

i'll reintroduce that um the exploding battery noise so we'll have exploding rhythmic exploding battery noise is this week's Ocarina Pause. So if you hear an exploding battery, there may be an advert. There you go. Right, that was the exploding, rhythmic exploding. On April 5th, you must be very careful, Margaret. It's the girl. Witness the birth.

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Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at TorontoRock.com. battery pause so an advert might have gone in there the usual shit lads podcast is supported by the patreon page patreon.com forward slash the blind buy podcast if you enjoy the podcast if you listen

to it regularly and you're taking something from it you can buy me the equivalent of a cup of coffee or a pint once a month by going to the patreon page patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast and become a subscriber please do um it is the patreon that allows me to violently dislodge my smoke alarm with a harley and luckily i didn't fucking, luckily I didn't take the, I could have fucking knocked it out of the ceiling, then I would have had a plaster job,

so fuck that, but no it didn't, it was grand, I just, it's a, again, like I said, that smoke alarm is legitimately in the gaff, it said on it, what was it replace in 2013 so i think that smoke alarm went in there around 2004 or something like that i don't know um whenever this gaff had that builder living in it but it was definitely definitely himself because he owned the gaff and now it's like a rented gaff but that's the crack what will i talk about for the remaining time okay i'll tell you one thing about the smoke alarm so when the smoke alarm came off the ceiling and i was looking at it one thing I did see that I found quite alarming is there was that

nuclear sign was on the smoke alarm and the actual fucking like you'd see in Chernobyl nuclear material was on this smoke alarm and I don't know is that because that's an old smoke alarm is that on modern smoke alarms or just old ones?

But it reminded me of a story that I will tell you about a fella called the Nuclear Biscout. And it's the smoke alarm that's bringing me back to this story. So this is a true thing. It's a real thing that happened. And when the fuck did it happen it was it was the mid 90s in america in either chicago or detroit so there's this young fella called david han and he was 15 or 16 younger maybe. And he was a boy scout. And the thing with boy scouts in America is, I think they have different patches. So you earn all these boy scout patches.

There's like 200 or 300 of them. And you earn like, I don't know, if you are able to make a fire with a twig, you earn your fire patch. And if you're good at sewing, you earn a sewing patch. So fella who was a boy scout earned all his patches and one of the patches was like a nuclear patch now i was going what the fuck why did the boy scouts even have a nuclear patch so i think it was probably something that came out of the Cold War. And just some very, probably some very simple knowledge of what nuclear substances are. Or what, you know, nuclear physics is.

Very rudimentary nuclear knowledge would get you this Boy Scout nuclear patch. So anyway, David Hand got his Boy Scout nuclear patch when he was 12 or 13. got his Boy Scout nuclear patch when he was 12 or 13. And he became very, very fascinated with nuclear physics, right to the point of obsession as a teenager. Very, very obsessed. Now, as we all know, you know, from watching either Homer fucking Simpson or from watching Chernobyl,

and from even seeing, like, here's the mad thing, from watching like even somewhere like Iran trying to build functional reactors or to get nuclear material. Being a nuclear physicist is not easy, not at all. So this all so this david hannion flat starts to pretend that he's a science teacher and ended up sending letters to like the united states what was it it was some college that not the nuclear regulatory commission in america he starts sending them letters and pretending that he's a high school science teacher and learning what he can about nuclear physics from books and then anytime there's a hole in his knowledge he would contact this commission pretending to be a high school science teacher and ask the questions that he couldn't find through regular books and they would respond. So he ended up amassing this knowledge

and eventually he was, so he used to go down to his shed. He's literally a back garden normal shed with really shitty equipment like a fucking, a gas mask and rubber gloves, right? And he figured out through reading and through contacting this commission of the various nuclear materials that he would need to build a nuclear reactor we'll say okay so there was a few different fucking sources so that nuclear material exists in certain household places it's hard to find one of them is smoke detectors that's why i said when i when i

opened that smoke detector and i saw this nuclear symbol i'm like holy fuck you don't see one of them every bloody day in ireland but it made me remember this David Hanyun fella so he collected as many smoke alarms as he could and whatever tiny tiny amount of nuclear material is in the smoke alarm he collected enough of them that he

now had a load of nuclear material together in one from all these smoke alarms then he went certain clocks have a different type of nuclear material so he collected as many clocks as he could that had nuclear material i think i think for one situation so there was this awful tragedy in the 1950s in america okay americans weren't that responsible with nuclear material in the 50s and like the atomic age so there were these glow-in-the-dark children's clocks

okay so these clocks like a clock you'd have in your room at night time and then the hands on the clock would glow green in the dark but in the 1950s the reason these little clocks glowed green is because they were painted with actual radioactive paint and they didn't fully understand the health and safety so i can't i think they were called the nuclear girls or the nuclear women but these clocks children's clocks anyway were being, the hands were being painted by these young women who worked in a factory and they had tins of this nuclear paint

and they were painting the clocks to make them glow in the dark and I think a lot of them like died there was a huge they had no safety equipment they didn't seem to know that this nuclear material was bad. So there was this huge scandal where a lot of these girls died.

And then all of these clocks were taken off the market. So I think David Hahn, the nuclear boy scout, managed to get his hands on... And fair play to him because in 1995 there was no fucking eBay. He managed to get his hands on a lot of these clocks and to scrape the nuclear paint i think it was uranium from these clocks the other source of nuclear material was um was it gun sites certain gun sites used another type so he managed to find it all and then he used to take apart batteries for lead and I don't know the names of the chemicals but he found the household sources

for every piece of material that somebody would need to build a nuclear reactor so he set about doing it in his fucking shed and incredibly unsafe.

He starts fucking around and manages to build the bones of a functioning nuclear reactor in his shed. And what happened was, so if you've seen Chernobyl, you'll understand the absolute devastating effects of leaked nuclear material, how dangerous that can be to humans. So, especially America, who, like 1995, okay, that's after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but it's also close enough to the Soviet Union. So most places around America, they would have laboratories that would test the soil, air and water at all times for any possible spike in nuclear material. Because that could mean a nuclear attack. It could mean, you know, a power station is in meltdown. It could mean a nuclear attack it could mean you know a power station is in meltdown it could mean a dirty bomb it could mean an actual nuclear attack so this david hanfell is in his back garden shed with a ordinary gas mask on he's a fucking teenager and rubber gloves marigold gloves and this reactor he's after making

starts to emit like way way way more nuclear radiation than the area was used to so it sparks a fucking crisis and the fbi get involved so i think i think his ma ended up coming home from work and their entire neighborhood from miles around like crawling with fbi like the end of fucking et and it's full of people in hazmat suits and this young fella out his back garden caused a genuine nuclear environmental incident where the FBI had to fucking show up and they couldn't believe it obviously

they're like what the fuck some young fella's after building a nuclear reactor in his back garden I mean they they took it away

and they buried it and covered it in lead or whatever you do the mad thing about it is is that what's scary is that if this young fella can do it in his back garden he that means that like a terrorist organization with the right knowledge could similarly copy what he did and build enough nuclear material to make a dirty bomb a dirty bomb is it's not a nuclear bomb as in a big huge one that blows up and goes boom it's more like a normal

conventional bomb but when it explodes it spreads a shit ton of nuclear material into the atmosphere and could cause widespread radiation poisoning and like the c CIA's main job and like MI5 and Mossad their whole thing is trying to stop the likes of ISIS getting their hands on nuclear materials in case they'd make something like a dirty bomb and put it into

a New York subway or the London Underground it's a big thing to try and stop doing so this young fella yeah quite harmlessly that's the thing he wasn't malicious he didn't want to do anything bad he was just obviously incredibly gifted and very very obsessive and made this thing made this fucking functioning a kind of simple nuclear reactor in his shed i don't think he was arrested because he was so young. But he didn't... His ma died by suicide a year later.

I think he took that very badly. Because he was a teenager. But I saw a documentary about him. I think the documentary might be called The Nuclear Boy Scout well worth watching because I'm only pulling this out of the top of my head that was 95 I remember it was about 10 years later

mid 2000s he was caught again I think he was caught breaking into a school and robbing a shitload of fire alarms and the fbi because he did go on a watch list obviously because the thing is jeez he'd be a kidnapping target do you know if someone wanted to make wanted someone to make them nuclear materials what better man to kidnap than himself. So he would have been watched quite closely. So the FBI caught him about 10 years later.

Robbing fire alarms out of a school. So. I'm sorry Mr. Han. But what the fuck are you doing robbing fire alarms. Only messing around with some nuclear shit again. So that's most likely what he was doing. And he died. Two years ago I think. i remember i remember seeing it uh popping up on my twitter feed in the guardian or something yeah just a really

fucking sad end he ended up uh addicted to fentanyl or morphine or something there's that that that awful shit that destroys oxycontin maybe that shit that's destroying america at the moment these incredibly powerful opioids that she didn't kill prince prince had a fentanyl back patch which uh slowly fentanyl is like 100 times more powerful than um heroin and it's prescribed as a pain medication in America. That's the weird thing with America. Drugs like Oxycontin and Fentanyl. In Ireland.

They tend to only prescribe these things for people who are actually dying. You know. But in America. They'll just give them to somebody who's got a sore back. There's a kind of a conspiracy theory that they deliberately get veterans addicted to Oxycontin and fentanyl because there's such a huge rate of deaths as a result that on a large scale, it means that the US government and military doesn't have all these veterans that they have to be supporting

into old age that's a conspiracy theory but you never know they're evil fuckers so yeah he's a sad end

he's a sad end what are we 50 minutes I'm gonna call it 50 minutes this week which is quite short for my podcast I usually do an hour or a little bit more

but I spent a good deal there doing that song and I'll be back next week with I don't know a hot take or maybe a mental health podcast I'll have a think about it I'll see

I'm still stuck in the middle of the editing stages of my book so that's quite intense but that is coming to an end so looking forward to that

alright hope you enjoyed this week's podcast God bless have a a lovely time if you're haunted by a poltergeist in your house let me know God bless. Have a lovely time. If you're haunted by a poltergeist in your house, let me know. Maybe it's an exploding battery.

Maybe there's a fully rational explanation. Like we had this week for my poltergeist that's not a poltergeist at all. I did enjoy this episode. It was a real bizarre saga of events that I certainly didn't predict but it was good crack it's a toss up between this and the time I was interrupted by the tomcat in terms of episodes that

end up in a direction I was not aware of whatsoever right enjoy the bit of summer that's left be sound to yourself be sound to your neighbours keep an eye on yourselves have a bit of self compassion

be compassionate for other people what more can you do find something that gives you a sense of meaning in your day whatever that is anything that gives you a sense of meaning and your day whatever that that is anything that gives you a sense of meaning and a sense of purpose do that and you will drift towards happiness yart actually one thing before i go because i'll be murdered i almost bloody forgot this um i am doing the i'm doing the. I'm doing the. First ever.

Cork podcast festival. Which is. I don't know. Because I'm just pulling up the fucking email. It's the first ever. Park. Park. Codfest festival. Cork podcast festival.

So I'm doing. My own gig there obviously. It's between October 11th and the 13th I'm playing on the 13th of October in the Cork Opera House that's my gig right but not only am I gigging or not only am I doing a live podcast at the Cork Podcast Festival I'm also curating a few podcasts which means at the podcast festival there's going to be some podcasts on which i have chosen and they're kind of like blind by presents or something so the ones that are there so far tara flynn is going to be doing her taranaya podcast in the crawford art gallery collienis, who was on,

he's going to be doing live Crittershed podcast with Colette Kinsola. He's doing that in the Crawford Art Gallery as well. Conor Habib might be. I'm not sure if that's confirmed yet. Conor Habib might be doing his podcast. But they're going to be... Yeah.

And Brett the Hitman Hart is doing a podcast, but they're going to be, yeah, and, and, and Brett the Hitman Hart, is doing a podcast at it, I'm not curating, Brett the Hitman Hart's, podcast, but he, he's at the Cork Pod,

Podcast Festival, so, I don't know, how do you get tickets? I'm sure if you fucking, type it into Google, Cork Podcast Festival it'll give you

it'll give you everything you need to know right so just doing that so I don't get the head boxed off me by the two promoters

have a good one rock city you're the best fans in the league bar none tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation night on saturday april 13th when the toronto rock hosts the rochester nighthawks at first ontario center in hamilton at 7 30 p.. 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.