The Blindboy Podcast - Reflections on the experience of being called a Prick by several thousand people on the internet

Episode Date: August 26, 2026

Searching for compassion within the terror of uncertainty  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tickled the chin of the wistful bin-man, you pin-pricked Vincent's. Chris in his infant in his name. Welcome to the Blind Boy podcast. We are joined this week by the very polite cacophony of multiple raindrops on a tin roof. And I'm a cheerful boy when that happens. I quite enjoy the rain on the roof now. Instead of it presenting as a barrier to recording the podcast,

I stick two microphones up to the ceiling and record the beautiful sound of that rain. Anyway, you're very welcome to this week's podcast. If you're a brand new listener, go back to an earlier episode. Some people even begin from the start, even though we're nearly at nine years of podcast now. But fuck it, what else you're going to be doing? Get away from the Dome Scroll, go for a walk, listen to some earlier episodes, familiarize yourself with the lore of this podcast. And if you're a regular listener, you know the crack.

I'd like to do some reflections on this week's podcast. I've been on the receiving end of quite a lot of anger and vitriol this week because of things I said during a radio interview. So there's around a million people listening to this. And most of my listeners are outside of Ireland. Australia or over in England Scotland, Canada America, the English-speaking

countries are the big ones and over in those countries I'm not really well known if you listen to my podcast you know who I am but that's it you can't go to your neighbour and go I was listening to Blindbuy your neighbour in Canada or Australia

is going to go who the fuck is that in Ireland it's a bit different here I'm I hate saying the word celebrity because I'm not. I would be like a Z-list public figure. Most households in Ireland will know who I am. It's about it. They'll know who I am. Oh yeah, plastic bag, limerick. He, mental health, is it? He has depression. Is it, is it, is it, is it, the fellow with the bag in his head. And then you have a smaller amount of people who, who listen to my podcast and read my

books and they know the crack. The other thing, I'm not, liked in Ireland. I'm seen as kind of annoying, like a really annoying attention seeker. Now the reason for that is, is the gulf that exists, the incongruence that exists between, we'll say independent media and then corporate media. Most people in Ireland only encounter me when I'm on the radio and newspaper or the television, which is quite rare, maybe once. a year. Part of the reason I'm seen as an eyeing is I'm doing myself no favours with the plastic bag. None whatsoever. Irish corporate media have always had difficulty defining what the fuck I am. Because, see, I look like a clown. I look like a comedian. But then when I talk, the things that

I speak about, I speak about serious things. And I'm not particularly funny. The dichotomy of that infuriates some people like makes them viscerally fucking angry especially older people above the age of maybe 55 they're just like take that fucking plastic bag off your head

it's an insult it's like an insult to them I think they feel like when I speak about serious things with a plastic bag on my head they feel as if I'm mocking something serious because I look like a fucking clown. I've been appearing as a public figure

in corporate media in Ireland for 16 years. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how many times I explain it. I'm continually trying to say it as honestly as possible. It's just privacy. I'm autistic. I just, I need a real quiet private life

because I'm autistic. That's it. The only thing I'm really interested in, like all I give a fuck about, is writing and creating. That's it. That is why I do this. Writing and creating and then putting work out.

But if put work out, you then have to promote it. You have to promote it. And then this other thing where I'm a public figure, I actually don't give a fuck about that at all. I have no interest in it, but I have to do it. And that pisses people off because it's a neurotypical thing. This was explained to be by my psychologist when I was being diagnosed. as autistic. The desire to be well known, to be recognized, to be a public figure, to

be quote unquote famous. That desire in the neurotypical world, it's up there winning the lottery. People feel that if they were to become well known, that it would like solve all their problems and they'd be happy. So if you reject it and say no thanks, some people experience that as, well, this person can't be trusted. What's their game? What are they hiding? Whereas autistic people were not as sensitive to hierarchies or wanting to be part of a hierarchy. And our, we're more driven by intrinsic things like our curiosity.

We will pursue fucking interests and talk about them to the point that it will result in losing friends and social exclusion. We can be perceived as quite fucking annoying. a general dislike. Now it's not pleasant. I'm a human being, I'm insecure. I like it when people like me and I don't like it when people don't like me. But also, I'm not mean. I don't say bad things about people. I don't peddle hate. I tried to speak intelligently and compassionately and to be responsible with my words. So because of that, when I get negativity online, I kind of go, well I'm not doing anything wrong.

I'm not harming anybody. And also I remind myself, you know what, if I wasn't me, I might think I'm a bit of a prick as well. I'm a writer. I write books, I write this podcast, I have this play coming out, I write TV. But for a huge sway to the population in Ireland,

they haven't a fucking clue about any of that. As far as they're concerned, I'm just this anion prick who does nothing other than wear a plastic bag in my head. and then appear in a newspaper or on the radio once a year with an opinion. To the point there's some people with full-blown conspiracies that I'm like, because it's so bizarre that it's like,

who is this fucking prick who shows up once a year in the newspaper with an opinion about something? He must be like a government stooge or some type of puppet. There is no explanation as to why this fella is still around. this is sinister. So that's like a consistent pattern that happens once a year. And it's so, I then actively try to avoid appearing on corporate media unless I have to. So it happened again this week. So first off I'm using the phrase corporate media.

What I'm referring to there is radio, television, newspapers. That's the best word, the best term I have for that infrastructure. I don't want to say mainstream media, I don't want to say legacy media because those are loaded terms that are used by people who have far right beliefs. And when you hear a person, like Donald Trump or Elon Musk, when you hear them say mainstream media or legacy media, they're saying that to create preemptive distrust of journalism. Because journalism is a cornerstone of democracy. Journalism is as important as universal suffrage. And in a functioning democracy, journalists have the complete freedom and safety

to investigate power, provide citizens with trustworthy, reliable information, expose wrongdoings, and create public accountability. So it's in the interest of billionaires who aren't paying taxes. who are polluting the earth, who are making life difficult for the rest of us. It's in their interest to create preemptive distrust of journalism.

Just this year, 26, Trump and the Pentagon restricted reporters' abilities to freely walk around the White House without a chaperone. That didn't exist beforehand. Pete Hague said this was last year, he required Pentagon journalists to agree to restrictions concerning any information. about defense, unprecedented. And because of that now, like the US public doesn't have reliable information about how many US soldiers have died

in the Iran conflict so far and how many civilian deaths there's been. And then there used to be the Independent White House Correspondence Association, which chose what journalists were in the press pool

that got to ask the administration questions directly. Trump, like, that over in 2025, first president ever do it and say, no, I'm picking the journalists that get to ask me questions. Replace them with, um, quote unquote, citizen journalists who are mostly just influencers that are loyal to Trump. And then today, The Intercept would be fairly serious journalists. They broke the, the Edward Snowden stuff in 2013. They broke a story today proven that the White House has a list of journalists to disregard. So America isn't

operating as a democracy right now under the current administration. So yeah, I don't say mainstream media or legacy media because those terms are dog whistles that exist to create preemptive distrust of journalism and I support journalists and journalism and I try to financially support journalists and journalism. But I'm hugely critical of the business model of corporate media because it can behave in incredibly unhelpful ways at times. So last week I had to do contractually obligated press appearances in corporate media because I'm putting a play out. The Abbey Theatre are adapting some of my short stories making it into a play called Animals. It's coming out next month. So they're like Blind by will you do two interviews?

One long radio interview and one print interview. So I said, of course I will. Now, I'd love to speak about the play. I want to speak about my writing and the piece of art that I'm going to put out in the National Theatre. That's a perfectly acceptable reason

to be doing interviews. Here is an artist speaking about their art. Fucking brilliant. What I didn't bring into my awareness and I fucking should have because I'm doing this a long enough time. Right now the month of August, in Ireland and in the UK, it's referred to in the media industry right now as slow news season or sometimes silly season because the government are on holidays.

So corporate news media has less stuff to report on. So what happens during August is you'll often see a moral panic. A moral panic will emerge that's receiving a huge amount of coverage. Like he can have very serious stories and serious incidents which are fully deserving of attention. But then there becomes an effort to create more commentary around that story to create even more issues to speak about. And then the lines between responsible reporting information that's useful to the public. The lines blur a bit and they're still using the initial incident as a springboard. But now the media coverage it's become entertainment, entertainment and content.

And that happens in August. We saw that in the UK this month. A professor of sociology in the University of Cambridge, Jason Arde. He was accused of plagiarism on the 5th of August. The story broke. Then it keeps going on days and days. And then you're wondering, is this really as big a news story as they're making it out to be?

A professor accused of plagiarism? This seems, it's gone on about seven days now. Some of the coverage felt racist. He was diagnosed autistic, his autism was being called into question. The story becomes completely inescapable, hundreds and hundreds of articles. And we're left with a kind of a gut feeling going, Jesus, this seems really important. Fucking hell, they're talking about this a lot.

What's going on here? And there appeared to be a very sinister and deliberate campaign with a kind of an anti, a very racist feeling, anti-diversity vibe to it, but also very much amplified by the fact that it's fucking August, that it was slow news season, so this became amplified. And then unfortunately, Jason Ardey took his own life on August 14th, a deeply sad situation. And then the media, discourse shifted to corporate,

media looking at itself and wondering whether it had blood in its hands. The vilification and the pylon that sections of the UK media did on that man and then exacerbated on social media how those headlines were presented

on the likes of X. Headlines deliberately designed to encourage vitriol and high arousal emotions in the comments section for engagement. When the media it tips over into that.

It's, at that moment it's a form of entertainment. It's entertainment posing as journalism. Entertainment doesn't have to be pleasurable. Entertainment is excitement. Gossip is entertainment. Hearing something bad about someone else and enjoying someone else's misery, unfortunately, is a form of entertainment.

Disgust. can be entertainment. Vilifying an entire group of people can be entertainment. Feeling anxiety and fear about something in the nose cycle that's really worrying you and then consistently needing to go back and check on it all the time. Because the act of checking provides you with a little moment of certainty. That's entertainment. Very profitable fucking entertainment.

It's rarely helpful. Remember the RTE Rintubbery payment scandal two years ago? Big thing in Ireland. Important news story. Yes, an important news story. Because our national broadcaster, which we pay for with our TV license, serious questions were being asked about where those funds were going and whether those funds were being paid in an honest and fair way.

So fuck yes, a news story. Worthy of journalism, worthy of investigation. But it happened in August. So you're left feeling. You're left with this memory of this being the biggest, biggest, most important story of the year. The reality is there was important coverage. That was information we needed to know. We needed transparency.

But there was also a shitload of completely disproportionate coverage, which was actually just entertainment posing as journalism during slow news month. So I found myself in the middle of this in the past week. I went down to RT Radio 1 for a long interview with. Brendan O'Connor to speak about my play, to show up as an artist speaking about art. I like doing that. I've great chats at Brendan O'Connor and Brendan O'Connor he dips in and out of the podcast, he knows the crack with me, he understands what I'm up to, and the interviews a half an hour long so it's much more like a podcast appearance

than those really quick radio interviews where everything is reduced to a sound bite. So I speak about my writing, art, the play, collaborating with so many unbelievably talented people to make the play for about 20 minutes. And then I get a bit of a curveball question at the end about the biggest story in Irish media this month, which is about a horrendous tragedy and a crime that occurred called the M9 Crash. So if you're outside of Ireland, on the 16th of August, early hours of the morning, I think it was, but 3 a.m. Five teenage joy riders were deliberately, recklessly driving down the motorway

on the wrong way. Then they collided head on with another car full of innocent people. The innocent people, three women, three adult women and a seven-year-old child luckily did not die but they're in critical condition

in hospital. Something I'm viscerally experiencing as pain is that the mother is in critical condition in one hospital and the seven-year-old, her seven-year-old son is in critical condition in another hospital. So there's a little seven-year-old who needs his mammy while he tries to navigate physical and emotional pain that he doesn't have the intellectual maturity to deal with. But at seven years of age, he does have the emotional and imagination and cognitive capacity

to worry about his mammy. And then you have a mother who needs to be there for her little seven-year-old boy who's in critical condition and she can't get there because she's in critical condition too. And that's something that's really been punching me

in the gut all week. And then the other car, full of five teenage joyriders, going down the wrong way of the road, they all died, they're all dead. They were aged 17, 17, 15,

17 and 18. So one legal adult and four children. So that's been the biggest story in Ireland all week. It's all anyone's speaking about. There's a huge amount of public anger and fear

and sadness. And I found it very challenging to be able to sit with my emotions around it because... So this one is... The public emotion around this is fear. It's fear. And the fear is

that could be somebody I love on their way to the airport and that could happen that could be me on the way to the airport and that could happen and my loved ones lose me

now we're not seeing an outpouring of fear what we're seeing is an outpouring of anger so the anger is popping in to protect us from the fear and that protective anger is manifesting online as a vicious dehumanization. The online comments

were celebrating the deaths of children. Children who were criminals who did something despicable, something incredibly wrong, something which in my gut

is attempted murder. Even though legally in Ireland driving down the wrong I don't think it's considered attempted murder. It's only considered attempted murder in Ireland, you can prove that they were driving down the wrong way to kill someone. But in my gut, same thing with drunk driving and why anyone I, the few small people I knew

who even attempted fucking drunk driving when I was younger, in my fucking 20s, you'd have idiotic lads. Back in the days when nightclubs existed and 20-year-olds could afford cars, you would have lads who'd have four pints in the fucking nightclub and the same. side, sure fuck it, my car's outside I'm gonna drive home. And how quick I'd be to remind them. It's not about you, you selfish fucking prick. You think you're being cavalier with your own life. You're taking the risk for your life, that's what you think.

No, you're not, it's not about you. It's but the innocent people on the fucking road. You're making a decision about someone else's fucking life. So don't even think about it. And if you do, I'm ringing the guards. Which is, that is the only response to anyone who's thinking of drink driving. But anyway, all week online in Ireland, it was socially acceptable to celebrate the deaths of children to vilify and dehumanise the travelling community. One of the teenagers had an Eastern European name so it became socially acceptable to vilify immigrants.

People's fear had moustachised into dehumanising authoritarian savagery. And there were thousands of these comments about the joyriders. And I'm not going there because that's wrong. And also, that anger is protecting me from fear. And the emotionally literate, adult thing for me to do is to sit with the dread and terror and fear and the what if. What if that was my kids? What if I was in that situation? What if? My God, this is not only terrifying, but the terror is exacerbated by the fact that I can't control this.

And now the media, now the media is talking about this as being a TikTok trend. So now I'm extra fucking terrified. And then anger steps in as those little fucking scumbags deserve to die. Kill them all. They're all the same, aren't they? Every single one of them. It's a problem on society. It's a stain on society.

know who they are, don't we? They should all be thrown into jail. They should all be shot in the streets. Like the amount of people I saw talking about, a bullet to the head of the next one, find their brothers, find their cousins. Rhetoric of violent dehumanizing vigilanteism. And that is anger that protects us from fear. As adults, we have to sit with that fear. You bring it back to the fear. And you got that anger there actually isn't useful. That violent desire that I have to hurt someone. We don't know, an imagined enemy. That violent desire there, that's actually not doing anything of any use to my emotional

processing whatsoever. In fact, it's taking me away from sitting with this fear here that I have. And if I can sit with this fear and this uncertainty, we can all do that as adults. Then we've got cool heads in a crisis, don't we? Now conversation moves from useless reactionary violence to useful, responsive solutions that look at the structures in society that leads to children who want to rob fucking cars and engage in what we'd call performative criminality. So I was on the radio to talk about my play and I get asked a question about that. crash. I was taken off guard, but the answer I gave, along the lines of what I'd just spoken about, what I said

was, that's a terrible tragedy that's happened. And I said what they did was criminal, deeply wrong, despicable, and, not but, but and, they're also children. And I know from developmental psychology, someone who's 15, 16, 17 years of old, years of age, the brain isn't developed. Impulse control is not where an adult's impulse control is, much less developed risk assessment, greater susceptibility to peer pressure, and then you throw on top of that. Developmental trauma, poverty, the trauma of poverty, and also the need for fucking, a very dysfunctional, deeply dysfunctional need for identity and self-esteem through

acts of performative badness. As an adult who has engaged in the introspection of sitting with my own fucking uncomfortable emotions, I'm capable of holding behaviour fully accountable alongside at the same time, seeing the reality that these were children shaped by development and circumstances beyond their choosing. That's the gist of the answer that I gave. And then And also I finished the interview, because I felt a bit uncomfortable being asked this. I wanted to be responsible, so I finished the interview by asking the host, you know, you should really, you should speak to someone like Dr. Sharon Lambert down in UCC. I've had Sharon on the podcast multiple times.

Sharon is an expert in trauma-informed responses to criminality, to young kids, to children who grow up with the trauma of poverty or abuse and how that can manifest. She's been on my podcast speaking about young boys from marginalised backgrounds and criminality. She's who needs to be on the radio speaking about this. I haven't heard her on the radio all week. I don't think anyone's asked her. Those are the type of responsible voices that we need to be hearing from around something like this. It wasn't my RTE interview that caused the problem.

Not one person who actually listened. to my interview, came to me with a problem. What happened was the fucking Irish Independent, a separate news media outlet, picked some of my words and ran with it as a headline out of context. The headline was something like, I know what they did was wrong, but they were children. Now I'm paraphrasing myself there.

The headline was my actual words that I spoke. They didn't misquote me, but it was framed. It was an out of context headline. behind a paywalled article. So if you clicked on it, you're not going to be able to read the context unless you're subscribed. It looked as if

here's this fucking prick with the plastic bag on his head again. Here's this fucking asshole who we haven't heard from in a year and he rang up the independent to tell them this and he's trying to self-promote from the tragedy and misery

and that framing right there That's silly season. I became a fall guy for silly season. And if I wasn't me and I came across that, I would consider, I'd be like that's deeply offensive. Mr. Z-List plastic bag, here he is looking for fucking attention wading in off the misery of a family.

So I was harangued for about three days straight. The most hated person in Ireland for about two days. and it's so difficult to call out the independent on it because they didn't misquote me. Yes, I said it. It's about how it was framed and that's very difficult to call out. Like here's the thing.

Doing a radio interview about my play and then at the end of it, being asked, being asked, blind by, what are your thoughts on what's happening right now with this crash? Fuck it, I'd rather speak about my art to be honest. But I'm, you know, now that I'm on the spot, But here's some fairly inoffensive adult thoughts on the situation. So that there, that's acceptable.

A little bit strange. Let's just speak about the art. But that's acceptable. It's not irresponsible. However, going to a newspaper out of the fucking blue to give them my opinions on this crash unprompted as a headline, unacceptable, tone deaf, borderline. sociopathic, lacking in empathy, lacking in compassion, very strange and quite selfish and incredibly irresponsible. And when I say like at the start of the podcast I was in, you know, I'm quite

disliked in Ireland. It's because of that shit. This is not the first time that corporate media has done that type of thing. That was the impact. That was the framing. That is how it appeared. the emotional impact of that particular framing that the independent chose. And then the consequence was a week end of relentless, abusive comments in my direction. You know, I'm struggling to think of the context of whoever made that decision in the Irish Independent to do that. I have to just assume that the person just went, oh, did blind boys say that in the radio? Fucking brilliant, excellent. This will piss people off.

Brilliant. This is going to piss people off. We get a lot of clicks from this. Post it. And in that moment, that's not journalism, that's content. That's entertainment. It contributes to the very fucking distrust. That's harm in journalism.

It played into the hands of the far right. However, they did know what they were doing was wrong because they only posted it on X. They didn't post it on Instagram. Because if they'd have posted that caption and headline on fucking Instagram, I would have called them out in the comment. I'd have called them out and a lot of other people would have called them out too. Instead they posted it to X.

It was latched onto by people with far right beliefs. I started receiving threats. Just really vicious, vicious anger. And the thing is too, why? Because I had the temerity. I had the temerity to burst their bubble. I had the temerity to call those kids who did something despicable and criminal. I had the temerity to remind people that.

people that they're children. And the other thing about it too is because of the nature of X, it posits everything as turn and response combat. So there's no room for nuance whatsoever. It's not possible to have two conflicting opinions at the same time. So if you say anything that affords humanity to the joyriders, then that must mean I support their actions. And the position that I took, I am capable of both vilifying their behaviour while simultaneously not wanting to celebrate the deaths of children. That's mental health there. That's emotional literacy.

That's compassion. That requires work. The work of sitting with the uncomfortable emotion, the fear, the uncertainty and the I can't control something terrible. Very frightening to think that that threat is out there. When your loved ones or you are doing something as innocent as going to the airport to enjoy a holiday and that might happen, that's terrifying. Life is pain. Life contains suffering. Life contains unavoidable pain and suffering. Life contains uncertainty. Anger and rage will step in to protect us from that and provide is with the illusion of certainty.

I feel frightened, I feel vulnerable, I feel small, I feel powerless. Who did it? You, you have to die. And everyone like you, you have to die. Your class of people. Your race of people. You must die. And that's what far right messaging,

fascism, the manosphere, feeds off that. One thing the media always loves to ask me, they think that I'm able to reach young men, that I'm some mental health, fucking speaker for young men. I'm not. They don't listen to me. They want to listen to

Jordan Peterson or Andrew Tate who's given them anger instead. This constructed version, this performance of masculinity that's sold by what we call the Manosphere. They're promoting immaturity. They're promoting an emotional

immaturity where young men don't get to sit with their feelings of fear, anxiety, uncertainty, insecurity, jealousy, all of these real shame, all of these deeply uncomfortable emotions. A Manusphere influences steps in and says, you don't have to feel them. Here's some rage for you. Here's some anger for you.

Here's some bullying for you. Here's some blame. Here's some manipulation. Here's an entire suite of dysfunctional, secondary emotions that will offer you the temporary illusion of certainty. nothing will get processed and that rage will leave you isolated and lonely and it will

you'll do some shit that you regret the patience, love compassion that you need so you can be confident and calm and calculated and thoughtful under pressure

the shit that you would call being an alpha male which is bullocks what's sold to us as alpha male it's being an adult It's being an emotionally mature adult regardless of gender. That stuff only becomes available to you when you accept, learn to accept the parts of yourself that you're frightened of. You can't become a secure adult without sitting with the feeling of, actually, I'm insecure. Actually, I'm looking at all these other lads around me and I'm continually comparing myself to him.

And I'm jealous of that fella, but I feel better than that fella over there. And I really want that fella's approval. I really, I want the approval of everybody. I want everyone to tell me that I'm worth something. You need to be able to sit with that and say it out loud and accept it. Accept that as part of yourself. And not judge it. And not experience shame around it.

And then eventually you move towards a place of emotional maturity where it's like, I accept myself. I have worth just because I exist. And this business of, he's better than me and I think I'm better than him, that doesn't exist at all, that's bullshit. We all have the exact same worth just because we're human beings. Those teenage boys, those dead children

who were engaged in despicable criminality and putting other people's lives at risk, they were all born into the world as beautiful, perfect little babies. who wanted nothing but laughter and joy and love and safety. And at some point pain stepped in and shame and anger stepped in and their sense of self-worth became so low that they turned into the type of young people who find status, identity and worth by identifying with being the baddest,

being the maddest fucker, the maddest cunt, who'll rob cars, who'll do anything, who doesn't give a shit. If the guards are chasing them, doesn't give a fuck because that's how bad they are and they want to show you. And that's not excusing their behaviour in any way, but only by thinking about it in that way. In thinking about it in that compassionate way and viewing the systems underneath, can you move towards a society where the next fucking kid who's at risk maybe isn't at risk? But if you don't acknowledge your fear and you go straight to rage and punishment and vigilanteism, it just further stigmatises and fight.

fucking vilifies and marginalises an entire group of people who online commenters like to call scumbags. I'm going to have an ocarina pause now because it's 37 minutes in. You know, we don't need the ocarina when we have the rain. Let's just let that rain do its thing there. And you'll hear a very loud and highly offensive advert for some bullshit. All right, support for this podcast comes from you,

the listener, via the Patreon page. Patreon.com. over slash the blind by podcast. If this podcast brings you Marthe, merriment, distraction, whatever the fuck has you listen to this podcast,

please consider supporting it directly. This is my full-time job, it's how I earn a living. It's how I pay my bills, it's how I rent out my office, that's how I purchase my equipment. So I have the time and space to show up each week

and write and deliver a podcast. If you met me in real life, would you buy me a pint or a cup of coffee? Well, you can do it digitally. Because that's all I'm looking for, at the price of a pint or a cup of coffee, once a month, that's it. But you know what? If you can't afford it, or you just don't want to pay, that's absolutely fine. No problem at all, just listen for free.

Listen to the podcast for free. Because the person who is paying is paying for you to listen for free. Everybody gets the exact same podcast, regardless of whether you pay or not. I get to earn a living. Sure fuck it, what more could we want? This is an independent podcast. I'm not beholden to the whims of advertisers. No advertiser can instruct me on the content in any way.

I'm not under pressure for a podcast episode to be popular or not popular. I just want to make sure I show up each week and that I'm authentic and passionate and curious and delivering a piece of work that provides me with a feeling of meaning when I make it. We're nearly 10 years at this. I wouldn't change a thing. Patreon.com forward slash

the Blind by podcast. Upcoming gigs. I'm at electric picnic this Saturday. I should probably know the fucking time of the gig, shouldn't I? It's the Saturday. It's the Saturday at Electric Picnic. I'm in the theatre stage at Mindfield. It's going to be in the afternoon.

So that's the bit. Look, if you're at Electric Picnic, there'll probably be something that'll tell you what time my gig is on. I don't have the details right now, but fuck it, you'll figure it out. If you are coming down, come down early and get a seat. because there's only going to be so many seats at this. And also, to keep out the pricks. There's a high danger of pricks at festival gigs.

Right, then I'm in Sligo in November at the Hawkswell Theatre. When is that? I think that's the 19th November. My Australia tour, April, 27, that's setting out very rapidly. Part is sold out, Brisbane is sold out. Sydney Opera House. We're down to the last 100 tickets. It's going to be sold out soon.

Auckland, Melbourne. Go to my website at the Blindby Podcast.com. for tickets there. And then England's Scotland and Wales this October. Brighton, Cardiff,

Coventry, Bristol, Guildford, London sold out, Glasgow, as good as sold out, Glasgow sold out, Gateshead and Nottingham. You get those tickets

at Fain.org. UK forward slash blindby. It's really difficult speaking about the issues in this week's podcast. What's difficult is the online the world of social media

has exacerbated or black and white thinking at no point ever. Did I try and make excuses for or explain away the severity and savagery of the act of

driving a car the wrong way down a motorway? I'm just a all so deeply uncomfortable with so many people celebrating the deaths of children, even though their behaviour was despicable, or their families, the guards needing to show up the funerals, because they were afraid of people harassing the funerals of children. I don't like a society where there's young people doing performative violence and robbing cars and putting people's lives at risks. I don't like that society. I also don't like a society. I also don't like a society

or to become socially acceptable to celebrate the deaths of kids and then dehumanize and call for the murder of giant swathes of the population. But there's people who are so flooded with rage and anger that they think I know support the actions of those young people. And the only thing that will make them happy is if I join them in celebrating death

and calling for the murder of more people who looked like them and talk like them and act like them. The mother of one of the children who was in the car did an interview on the newspaper during the week and I read it. She described how her son was autistic, how he was incredibly easily led, how he had severe disturbances and disruptions to his early childhood, how something just changed when he got to be about 15

and she could no longer control him. There was photographs of him from only a couple of years ago where he's a doubt, tiny little child. And then I saw a video on Twitter of him being physically bullied, bullied, getting the head kicked off him by other lads and seeing that he was very, very clearly autistic. And it's still so difficult. Some of the other kids were, they were involved with Tosla, which means that they were children who were identified as being severely at risk. And as much as we fucking despise and hate the things that they did and their behavior,

unless we're allowing that context, that type of context in, you're not going to prevent future victims. Like politicians and Tussla now have to be asked these really fucking hard, difficult questions around how did that happen? What interventions could have happened and they didn't? They didn't happen. Why didn't they happen? What can we do to make sure that doesn't have? happen again. What can we learn from this tragedy, this misery, this terrible situation?

That's where my fucking head is at when I'm thinking about this whole thing. Solution focused, proactive. What do you get with rage? You get blame, reactive, a collective tantrum. I knew lads like that growing up. Limerick's a very small city and I was fortunate enough. I grew up in a house with two parents who had a job. parents owned their house. I always had just enough. Never ever had to worry about food, never had to worry about heating, clothes, all of my essential needs provided for. Most importantly, I had love. I had love in my family home. So I had a family home that felt safe, not just physical safety, but the safety to express emotions. I mean that's what's what

safety means if you're a fucking parent providing a safe environment for little kids it's not just I'm protecting kids from physical danger it's no providing an emotionally regulated environment where little kids are allowed to be angry be sad be scared be jealous throw tantrums cry and do do all that without the safety of judgment, punishment or physical abuse. But then when I'd go to school, I was marginalised in school because of my autism. I was mistreated, written off, giving up on, thrown into the worst classes. And at a young age, I always found myself around other children who were being marginalized for other reasons.

Poverty. or they were acting out because of shit at home. Because of that, I know quite a few people who are either in jail for very severe crimes or are dead, have been murdered. And one lad in particular, who was a good friend of mine

when we were about five or six years of age, just two little fucking kids. I used to get along fantastically with each other. He's still in jail. He's still in jail. still in jail and he went to jail when we were about 20 for extreme violence. Limerick feud gang stuff. When we were four or five years of age, he used to come into school smelling like dogs.

Because his parents would make him sleep out in the back garden. They wouldn't let him into the fucking house for whatever reason. I'm talking four or five, six years of age in the winter. So he'd be out his back garden and his blankets were his dogs. And he'd arrive into school smelling like dogs. And that's how little his parents cared about him. And one time we were walking home from school together. And a van pulled up and it was his uncle.

And his uncle just handed him a backpack. And we kept walking on home. And I never thought anything of it. And now, of course, years later. His uncle was giving him a backpack full of drugs to transport it from one area to the other. even if he was caught, he didn't, like, he was six, so like he's not getting arrested. And he knew not to tell me what was in that bag at such a young age. Now I liked this fella because he was fucking bald and I was bald and we both loved a bit of

mischief. Nothing bad. Just having crack, misbehaving, messing, riding each other up, making fun of the teacher. I never, ever experienced meanness from him, badness, hurtness. heard him speaking badly about someone else, never saw him fighting, violence, wanting to hurt anyone. He just wasn't scared of getting in trouble and I wasn't scared of getting in trouble either. Mischief, but I always felt safe. This guy wasn't going to be mean to me or pick on me.

He was my friend. There was goodness there. There was goodness in him and that's why he was my friend and I liked his company. And then when we got to about maybe nine, I just had to stop hanging around with him because he started sniffing glue. He would buy these things, this is probably fucking early 90s limerick.

He would buy these things called Lucas, which was a drug dealer in his neighborhood, would have a big tub of tile glue and would put a spoon of tile glue into an old bottle of Lucasaid and sell it to little children for 10p or whatever the fuck it was. And one day he called to my house,

we were about nine, with one of these Luca bottles, stinking of glue. I didn't even know what it was. And he was kind of half asleep. And he had a friend with him who I'd never met. And the friend, the friend was scary.

He was nine years of age as well. But when he introduced me to his friend for the first time, I remember the friend like sizing me up. And that made, I remember the feeling in my belly, the feeling of fear. of if I go outside with them, I think that friend is going to try and fight me just for whatever reason.

He was one of those little children who just his thing was fighting, his thing was violence. I just know, I can't, I don't know what the fuck this is, but this isn't safe. And I know, I know in that moment I wasn't going to be friends with him. I couldn't pursue friendship with him because something had flipped that. I didn't understand it but this was not my world and then the next time I saw him he was on television it was at the height of the the really bad Limerick gang violence

of the early 2000s and he was being named in an extremely violent gang murder national media moral panic it would have been at a time where the gang violence in Limerick was so bad that the government were talking about having the army on the streets.

And we hadn't seen him in, I'd say, 15 years. And when he came on the TV, my magistrate started crying. Because she was older, even though he was like 19 or 20. To her, he was still the little five-year-old that used to sit at the dinner table, who she would feed. And all she remembered was the smell of dogs off him. Because she knew that he was sleeping with dogs. because that's what his parents made him do.

I was about 20 when that happened but that sticks with me because of the extreme violence and torture of the murder that he committed was so shocking to the nation. My ma just saw the little child she just saw all the

the pain and neglect and abuse that was happening to a tiny child and then she told me which she'd never told me before. When me and him were about six, because we were good friends, we'd gotten into some stupid trouble in school, in baby school.

It was nuns, Catholic school, so it was all run by nuns. We were teaching other kids' carcasses or something stupid like that, and we both got into huge trouble, and our parents were called down. His parents never. came down. My ma came down. And the nun said to my ma about that little yunfala, about a five-year-old,

we all know how he's going to turn out, don't we? As opposed to intervening in, we know how he's sleeping at night time. So that's a tiny child that was failed. And I grew up with several yonfillas like that. And I didn't grow up hard. I grew up with everything. I needed, lots of love in a secure house, I never got in trouble with police, nothing fucking serious. And I also would have been the type of person that if I had gotten in trouble with police, I wouldn't have gotten in any serious trouble because they'd have said he comes from a good family.

My thing was I would always find myself in the classes with disadvantaged kids or in the social groups with disadvantaged kids. because we were all terrible at schoolwork. I couldn't concentrate because of being autistic. They couldn't concentrate because of what they were dealing with at home. And when we were tiny kids, it was grand, but as soon as anything resembling teenage years kicks in, that's when I would like stop hanging around with those lads

because they were getting involved in serious fucking shit. I remember 10, 11 years of age, some of them start to start to, robbing parses, robbing parses off all ladies and I'm like, I'm out. I have a feeling in the pit of my belly, that could be my man, I'm out. Things started getting like scary. About 10, 11 things start getting scary and then you bump into him when I'm 15, 16, around the roads and you'd say hello, but our worlds are so fucking different now that I'm experiencing them as scary as frightening.

And just by sheer coincidence I had, Thinking about another lad I knew growing up who, he was murdered when he was about 18. Someone I would have been friends with when I was maybe six or seven. I got a phone call during the week and it was someone from Limerick City Council who'd managed to get my phone number. And I'm going, what the fuck are Limerick City Council ringing me for? I'm like, is this about the Bardshit District? It was the council saying, there's an Australian TV crew or after coming to Limerick and they're looking for you. They came to us hoping that we'd be able to contact you. So it was Australian a TV documentary.

I don't want to give details away in case I'm talking about a project that isn't released. But because of Sydney Opera House and the podcast, they'd flown to Ireland and wanted to talk to me. So I went down to the old Limerick City Council building to do a quick interview with them. And while I was there, there was a couple of City Council people around listening to. to the interview. And I'm going on a bird shit district rent, doing the full history of the Starlings in Limerick City, explaining about how they're eating food from all over Limerick and then depositing the nitrogen in this one street, talking about how I've viewed the flock of starlings, not as a flock of birds, but as a novel, because that the bird's behavior can tell me about

the history of the land, and explaining about how that was inspired by Indigenous history of ways of looking at the land and telling stories. But anyway, the whole time I'm doing it, there's one member of Limerick City Council and he's really, really fucking listening to me and he's fascinating. Because I start talking about what I would like to see on this street in Limerick City

is to install these bio-sweils, these artificial wetlands that will absorb the shit of the starlings and make it bio-available in the soil. That's the nature-based solution for this street. And there was this one Limerick City Council fella who's not a counsellor, but it's like a professional urban designer. And then he gets talking to me and he says,

did you know we actually installed a bioswale in Limerick City like around the corner? Do you want to come and see it? And I'm like, fuck off. You've installed a bioswale in Limerick? He's like, yeah, a huge one. Now a bioswale is, like I said, it's an artificial wetland. It's a way to naturally stop flooding from rainwater. It doesn't look like anything special from a distance, but when you get up close to it and you look at the way it's laid out and the rocks and the pebbles and you understand that it has multiple layers and it's designed to use nature to naturally filter dirty water.

So we walk around the corner and we go to Island Road just outside the gates of St Mary's National School where you also have the old medieval walls of Limerick. And a month ago they installed a bioswale and a biodiversity garden full of wildflower, this really beautiful long strip of grass, wildflower, then these gorgeous, almost Japanese garden bridges that are going to fill up with rainwater from the road. But most importantly, this bioswale, it's the entrance to a primary school. So all the little kids that want to get to school, they have to walk through this special path in the nature garden every single morning. Now the thing is, this area, the estates around it, they would have traditionally be considered disadvantaged estates where the kids growing up in that estate don't have the same opportunities as other kids and are aware at a young age that they're considered to come from an estate that have. has a bad name and the bioswale was put at the entrance of their school. Not just, like here's the thing, I know that road and I know the entrance to that school and I know the lines of kids

that tiny little kids five, six, seven years of age that walk to that school and it's on the side of a very busy road and rain puddles collect on that road, large rain puddles and those kids get splashed by cars walking on the way to school. And now, first off, they can't get splashed because there's a bioswale that's literally designed to take those puddles off the road and use an artificial wetland to clean the fucking rainwater and fertilise the wildflower. The reason the garden was put there, and it's this fucking really, really expensive, like the best, it's, it's, currently I think it's the best the meanity in Limerick City. I'm blown away by it. They put it at the door of that school

so that the kids at the youngest age would grow up walking through their own absolutely fucking brilliant nature garden before they go into school and develop a sense of worth and self-esteem about who they are and where they're from. And the bios whale has got all these signs explaining about what the wildflowers are, explaining the purpose of the bioswale, why it's a nature-based solution in an urban environment, and also that it's the coolest part of this fucking bioswale. It's just on the ancient medieval wall of Limerick, right? Which is 1200 years old. It's built on the old castle moat, the old moat of Limerick Castle, like early medieval shit. And I reckon because that was a moat as effectively a pond, it's

Because that was an old pond, there might be an ancient seed bank of pond bacteria and pond plants that might awaken now that they've built this bioswale that has a little Japanese water garden type thing over it. It's called the Foss, F-O-S-A-C. It's down on Island Road. And I know it's just a little strip of garden that doesn't look too remarkable unless you're in it. But I was so encouraged that it was built not just for fucking nature and biodiversity, but to be thinking about the self-esteem of tiny children and what it might do for their early sense of identity and confidence and worth to have the coolest entrance to their little school in the whole city out of any other school. And I was so fucking excited by it. The next day I went down with my own two little kids and instantly they were just transported into this fantasy fairy world. The whole bioswale has these tiny little rocks and things for the kids to jump on and a path

to follow and it entranced them with nature and it's only there two months and it was abundant with like five or six different types of butterflies and the There was, I saw leaf cutter bees, wasps, everything, all of these insects and this little urban artificial wetland play garden at the entrance of a fucking school. That's maybe only 40 feet long. But while I was there watching my own two, the whole time right across the road is a spot where one of my friends when I was a little child where he was murdered. When we were about 18, literally just right across the road, completely innocent, got into conflict with the wrong person. And that area had quite a bad name maybe 20 years ago. But it made me feel very positive to see that tiny, tiny intervention for the self-esteem of tiny children. And the impact that that might have on their sense of identity and worth going forward.

and I'm not for a second suggesting that installing bioswales is going to solve deep structural problems in society but it's a step up from children that I knew who had to sleep with fucking dogs

out their back garden that's all I have time for this week I don't know what to call this podcast it wasn't a hot take it wasn't a phone call it was reflections I don't think I'm trying to give any answers or explain anything.

Just offering things up that might make you think. And if you want to see that bioswale, if you're living in Limerick City, it's on the island road at the entrance of St. Mary's School and it's absolutely gorgeous. And don't bring your dog there to do a shit.

It's a bioswale rain garden. It's just a beautiful place if you want to see wildflowers and butterflies. And I can't wait to see it when it floods, when it gets full of fucking. rain because it'll be like a Japanese garden with a temporary pond and little beams to walk on. Oh and there's bat friendly lights. There's special lights that aren't offensive to the eyes of bats.

And then when you're standing in the bioswed and you look right across the road at one of the shops, there's a giant beautiful mural of a bat painted on the gable end of a house. And it's just really gorgeous what they've done down there. Alright, dog bless, wink at a swan, genia fleck to a worm, squeak at a beagle.