The Blindboy Podcast - Speaking to a Psychiatrist who was arrested on a flotilla while delivering humanitarian aid during a Jen O Cyde

Episode Date: May 20, 2026

Dr Veronica O’Keane is Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at Trinity College Dublin. Her work focuses on psychiatry, neuroscience, and the relationship between brain function and mental illness. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mention the 10-legged hen, you endless Brendan's. Welcome to the Blind By podcast. If this is your first episode, consider going back to an earlier podcast. And if you're a regular listener, you know the crack. This is a pre-recorded podcast because I don't know if you can tell from my voice, but I'm under the weather this week. I'm sick. I have a chest infection. So I recorded this last Saturday because I don't know if you can tell from my voice, but I'm under the weather this week.

Saturday because I can just tell. I know that I won't have a voice tomorrow and it is unlikely that I'll be able to do a full hot take. But what I will be doing, I have a live podcast, a fucking banger of a live podcast that I intended to keep in the vaults and release it maybe next month or the month after. But I'm going to release it this week because it's relevant. I had a chat with an absolutely fascinating person. I had this chat two weeks ago at Wellfest. Dr. Veronica O'Keene, who's a retired psychiatrist, Emeritus from Trinity College.

She's not just a psychiatrist. Her work intersected with neuroscience. But on top of that, she's an activist, a very serious activist for social justice. She was a massive professional voice for women's reproductive rights during the referendum. And last year she was on board the flotilla that tried to deliver aid, humanitarian aid, to the people of Gaza that were experiencing a genocide. I never used that word lightly. I always point out when I say the word genocide.

Amnesty International have called it a genocide. The United Nations Human Rights Council have called what's happening to the people of Palestine, a genocide. Dr. Veronica O'Keene was detained and arrested by Israeli forces. Illegally. Who am I to call it illegal? Well, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories

stated that the seizure violated international law because the ship was in international waters and it was carrying civilian aid. So I got to speak with Veronica about her experience being arrested, being on the flotilla. And we also spoke about her work as a psychiatrist. I'm going to give a small content warning because for anyone who has dealt with psychosis

or psychotic periods, we speak about psychosis at the beginning of this podcast. We also speak about the psychology of people who fall into conspiracy beliefs, people who fall into extreme political rhetoric. And we speak about the use of psychedelics in healing people. And what I love about these chats is that I'm chatting with an expert. I'm chatting with a psychiatrist who has worked neuroscience. So I hope you enjoy this chat. Sorry I couldn't speak for longer, but as you can tell,

my voice is fucked. So here's Dr. Veronica O'Keene. And also just as an aside, the sound quality in this is, it's very good, but it was recorded at a festival. So if you do hear background noises, that's what that is. But I've put in a lot of effort and a lot of editing to remove any background noises. How would you define psychiatry? Oh, we're going to talk about psychiatry. Okay. Is that okay? Of course, yeah.

Well, I think the way medics define psychiatry is possibly different to the way other people see psychiatry. I did psychiatry because I was interested in two things. Firstly, how the brain worked. And secondly, I wanted to treat people with mental illness. So I guess psychiatrists are people who I think, you know, they specialize in treating severe end of mental health. And I think a lot of people that we treat, you know, maybe a lot of people aren't familiar with severe mental illness.

But it's a very special profession. I'm now retired. I did it for nearly 40 years and I loved it. I loved the patients. I love the work. There's nothing better for me than getting somebody who's really ill,

really psychotic and making them better. I loved it. You did a book on the study of memory and how does how does memory function in a person who's experienced in psychosis?

Yeah, it's very, very curious because we think about psychotic experiences as false experiences. But of course, they are not false to the person who's experiencing them. So I could be sitting here hearing voices. Now, I'm not hearing voices in my head. In psychosis, you hear the voices outside of you,

So it sounds like you or like me. And that's real for me. So that goes into my memory. So while everybody else is remembering what people are commonly, together, commonly experiencing and commonly hearing, the person with psychosis is laying down a completely different set of memories. And a person I spoke to before was that, Do you know Pat Bracken,

Bracken? I do know Pat, yeah. And Pat, yes, so Pat used to be, was he the head of psychiatry, Ireland? Was that it? He was a clinical director.

Yeah. In West Cork, I think. Something that Pat said to me that stayed with me forever is he was speaking about people who hear voices specifically, and he was saying that in different cultures,

if you exist in a culture of where hearing voices isn't demon, that the experience can be, it's not as negative as if it's in a culture of where it's medicalized. What do you think about a statement like that? I think there's a truth in that, but it's the people who are experiencing the voices

who come to us, because the voices in, say, for example, schizophrenia, which is 1% of the population, which is quite a high percentage. of the population suffer from this severe form of psychosis. And those people who, and the commonest form of that is paranoid psychosis. And the people who suffer from that, they experience very nasty voices in general.

So the voices would be telling them that they're perhaps a paedophile and calling them, you know, very, very, very unpleasant terms. So it's a torment. So I think if the voices are benign, of course, there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, people are allowed to behave in an eccentric way. Like, how would you feel about what you just mentioned there specifically, we'll say benign voices and then maybe people who have religious experiences? Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Like, is that, what I'm supposed I'm trying to ask it is, you know, I asked you, the first question I asked was about psychiatry and people who are, you know,

really in need of treatment or in extreme distress. Yeah. But does it happen that you have people who are still hearing voices and they're living lives with meaning? It's not impacting them so much that they would need to see someone who's a psychiatrist. And does that exist in Ireland? Well, absolutely, because we used to think that people either had psychosis or they didn't have psychosis, but,

And in a sense, we all have a propensity to becoming psychotic in the same way that we do towards becoming anxious. What? Yeah. What, what, what, what would be underlying, what would be the commonality there for that? Well, psychotic experiences, there is a scale now that looks at soft psychotic experiences, like hearing voices that are maybe we call them benign. And studies have been done in children and following them up into adulthood. And most people who hear voices when their children develop normally and perhaps they're a little bit eccentric. But then a very small percentage of them go on to develop severe illness.

So it's a vulnerability rather than a prediction of adult illness. Yeah. I mean, I suppose what I'm fascinated by and what I'm trying to probe at is, I'm always fascinated by how culture and society would define what is healthy and what is unhealthy. Yeah. I'm diagnosed autistic, okay? Yeah. And I made a documentary during the year looking at Ireland in the 5th century, the monastic system.

And the argument that I was making is that monasteries in the 5th century were brilliant for autistic people. Because autistic people definitely existed. But it's like, here's this building where you get to wear the same clothes every single day because you're a monk. You get to study. You get to look, illuminated manuscripts all day long. You have lots of routine, routine-based life, and then a huge amount of solitude. And these are all, I would call them, artistic accommodation. And I then look at that society and say, Jesus, that seems like a no-o-affirmative society.

Or even people who might be dyslexic. something I always think about with dyslexia is, do you know the way you'd see a pub and a pub might be called the dog and duck or the king's head? That tradition comes from a time when not everybody could read. So if not everybody in the population could read, it's like, what pub are you going to? The one with the painting of the dog and duck.

Do you know what I mean? But then when the industrial revolution comes along, the capacity to read becomes democratized. And then everybody's able to be. to read, but then we start to equate the capacity to read with intelligence. And now all of a sudden you have these people that are dyslexic. I'm dyslexic, I can't read, therefore I am stupid. We're two, three hundred years before that, they just went about their lives, going,

I don't know if I'm dyslexic, I'm just going to the painting of the dog and duck. You know what I mean? And what I'm probing at is, when you have a culture, we'll say, where religious experiences are shaman, shamanism, or, you know, this person can hear voices. This person is gifted. This person is receiving something valuable from nature or from God. And then that person is then embraced by the community as opposed to, I mean, life is not easy for people who are experiencing psychosis. Society does not work for these people, you know. How do we get towards a society that works for the 1% of the population that

experience psychosis because you don't I don't hear a lot of psychotic representation. I feel very deeply

and strongly about this I think you know in a way eating disorders depression anxiety

you know atypical brains you know that has had there's a lot of awareness about those

divergences now and indeed about illnesses you know at the more severe end of it but psychosis has not really been brought out in any sort of way. And I don't think we understand paranoia very well, as demonstrated.

Paranoia? Yeah. Is that separate to psychosis? No, not really. Not really. It's people who are extremely paranoid, like on the very far right, you know, very deep conspiracy theorists. Like, you know, I heard your interview with Naomi Klein.

Yeah. And I think she really touched in it to a large extent, but she just isn't a neuroscientist, so she didn't make that connection. Yeah. But really those kind of extreme paranoid beliefs are people who flip very easy into psychosis. And it's been shown that extreme far right people or extreme far left people, people with very extremist views are hyperreligious. religiosity, those sort of people are more prone to flip into psychotic experiences. How do we define? So you were on the Gaza flotilla, right? So I'd say I could find a couple of people who would call you far left. Do you know what I mean? No, I did obviously not me. But you know what I'm

saying? Yeah. Yeah. How do we decide? That's how I see myself. Yeah. When you're speaking there about, you know, there's people with a high level of paranoia, how do you define when this is, when someone's political beliefs or something they believe in is stepping into territory where it's like this may present mental health difficulties? Yeah. Well, I think

characterologically, for want of a better word, or personality-wise, we're all more or less prone to become paranoid in certain situations, to feel threatened. And that could be because of the way you're brought up. Yeah. because you've always been threatened.

And of course, people who have been, you know, emotionally deprived or cognitively deprived or who've had, you know, very poor parenting, they're more prone to be at odds with the world and to experience it in a paranoid way. Does this mean when they were little children, they didn't get to experience a feeling of safety? Correct, yeah. So they never develop a sense of self that is... safe in the world. Oh, so your intrinsic self-worth is not,

I am okay to feel safe in myself, even if things around me are unsafe. That's correct. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's it. You see, it's not just upbringing our environment. It's also genetic.

Like, you could get a paranoid gene from one of your parents. I wanted to get on to that with you, because you're not just psychiatry. It's the intersection of psychiatry and neuroscience. Yeah. Yeah. So you can't look, I mean, you have to look at things in an organic way. We're organic beings, our brains are organic.

So various things, obviously, the brain is part of the body, and the body is part of the brain. They're inseparable. But developmental issues grow your brain. I mean, when people say, oh, your brain changes when you go into, you know, since computers have been around. But of course your brain changes. Your brain changes because you're exposed to nature.

your brain changes because you're exposed to love or hate or violence. Our brains are organic. They're like our muscles. They grow and they develop. And I suppose my book was very much about memory and how your experiences grow your brain. And are you speaking there about neuroplasticity? Yeah. Yeah.

Well, our brains are plastic, essentially. That's because I recently spoke to, I had a neuroscientist on the podcast called Dr. Michael Keane. and Michael he read one of my books and was like this story is mad I want to scan this man's brain so he gave me a thing

called an EEG scan lovely which it like what does an EEG scan do well it looks at the electricity in your brain as it were in conjunction with the

thoughts you're having and the function that's happening under the surface of the brain. So it gives you a reading of what's happening in your brain at the moment. Like a little snapshot. Snapshot, yeah. So when he did that, he found some interesting stuff, but also he's,

my brain activity looked like a person who was quite stressed. Yeah. And I was quite stressed because I have a very busy job and I have two little toddlers, which means later on tonight, I'm going to be playing around with human shit. as part of my normal life that's just going to happen before I go to bed but the stress of little kids

you know when they're under the age of four so it's mad so my brain was stressed but I loved receiving this piece of information I loved seeing it in the scan because I'm like I'm going to try and change this

so what I did was I gave myself 15 minutes a day with meditation like a non-negotiable like I've been meditating for years but a non-negotiable 15 minutes a day And then the other thing I did is I cycle in and out of work.

So I said, this cycling, that is going to be a mindful experience. So when I cycle to and fro work, I am doing nothing but cycling. And it's 15 minutes. And my job is to notice, I don't know, I'm going from cobblestones to tarmac. And to feel that in my body and check in with it and notice it. Notice the wind. Do I smell rain, the birds? And when my mind is trying to do, let's.

worry about what might happen or worry about what has happened in the past, I would calmly go, no, no, no, bring it back to the vibrations on your hands on the bicycle. So I was doing that every day for about three weeks, and something beautiful happened on the third week. I was cycling home, and the sunlight, it was about March, just hit a particularly beautiful thing. And I noticed this, about when I noticed it, I was over-corps. come with a feeling of bliss and safety and love. And I believe that's called a glimmer. And it was, I suppose, my nervous system just going,

it's grand, everything's okay. You are now safe enough to appreciate and actually experience the wonder and beauty of nature that's all around you. Whereas I could have gone past that sunset before and I'm worrying about tomorrow and I ignore it. But it was lovely. I'd gone to the gym for my head

I had done the 15 minutes of mindfulness exercises as if as if I decided I'm going to get big biceps so I'm going to do a little of curls every day instead I did the mindfulness and ended up seeing a result in the form of a glimmer

and it was not only powerful it was ah it was grace when you do something and then you actually notice and see a result it sticks with you as fucking hell, isn't that brilliant? Yeah.

But what's going on there in my brain for that to happen? Well, I think what you've described is something that happens to me when I swim. Go ahead. When I swim, for the first three minutes, it's, this is bloody freezing. Yeah. You know, and that's all I can think of. Breathe, think about your breathing, think about your breathing. I stop after maybe 50 strokes.

and I get my breath again and then I go off and the heat I suppose I equilibrate with the temperature in the water in some way or other and then if I can stay in for long enough if I have more than five minutes

I'm suddenly out of my out of my body to some extent and I think that's what you know it's like the beginning of a transcendental experience it's when and you can see this on scans because I've done work in the area of psilocybin,

in the treatment of depression. And what happens in transcendental experiences is that your brain kind of shuts off from your body a little bit and goes into the external world. So you're actually shutting down pathways that are coming up and you're opening up pathways that are out there. And you are actually, I think that, you know, small moments like what you're,

you've described or what I get when I'm swimming are sort of natural forms of induced transcendence. There might be little sparks of it or glimmers is, I think, the word you used. It was only about a second and I was afterwards, I was left with a sadness of, oh my God, I want that again. Yes. Well, that always happens after something beautiful happens. You feel sad because the moment is actually gone. So, but, but yeah, I think that we can get into.

to many glimmers of transcendence through noticing the world around us, consciously doing it like you do it. I do it when I'm swimming. Is it about nervous system safety? Is that like what? I think it's about, I understand what you're saying about your body and being aware of your body, but in a way you're cutting out the noise.

The noise being... The noise being the anxiety, the rubbish. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. The rubbish that we all live with every day and am I going to be late for this?

You know, what you're talking about, you know, often, you know, in my working life I was often meant to be in two places at one time and so many people looking for you and you know, you've just got to cut that noise out.

Just going to have a brief ocarina pause now. Because I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to, want to interrupt the flow of Veronica's story when she begins speaking about her experience being detained in Israel. So we'll do the Ocarina pause now and you'll hear a couple of adverts for something. That was the Ocarina pause and support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page. patreon.com forward slash the blindby podcast. If this podcast brings you

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slash the blind by podcast. Upcoming gigs on the 18th of June I'm in Berlin. That's sold out. On the 19th of June I'm also in Berlin. There's a few tickets left for that. Very small amount of tickets that's in the Babylon Theatre. Then on to July. I'm in Sheffield at the Crossed Wires Festival, okay? On Sunday the 5th of July, over in Sheffield in Sheffield City Hall. Please suggest some guests for that gig. I'd love to know who you'd like me to talk to while I'm in Sheffield. And then in October, my big tour of England, Scotland and Wales.

Starting off there on the 18th of October, I'm going to be in Brighton. Then Cardiff. Coventry, Bristol, Guildford, London at the Barbican, I think that's sold out. Glasgow, nearly sold out, possibly sold out. Gateshead and Nottingham. Back to the chat with Dr. Veronica O'Kane. Also, she released a book in 2021 about memory,

and the name of that book is The Rag and Bone Shop, if you want to pick up a copy. I think, whatever helps you put that noise out. I love that you're calling it rubbish, because something I was thinking about recently is if I look at the pain that I've experienced in my life, right?

So much of what I've experienced has been very painful has not been something that's actually happening to me. It has been worrying about what might happen. You know? And when things happen, when the thing that I'm worrying about does happen, I fucking cope.

Yeah. But I, what I often think of is like, Yeah. Avoidable. Life is suffering. To exist means to suffer. You're going to get rejected. You're going to have disappointment.

You're going to have your heartbroken. Someone close to you is going to die. We cannot avoid these things. That's part of the tapestry of human existence. But I find that we spend a lot of time trying to avoid these things happening. And it's the trying to avoid them or prepare for them, for me anyway, that brings me a lot of anguish and pain and distress. And it's like if I'm going to be.

for a walk in the woods, and I brush off a nettle, we'll say. That is unavoidable pain. If you go into the fucking wood, you're going to brush off a nettle and it's going to hurt you, right? If I then decide, oh, fuck, I got stung by a nettle, to scratch it, and then I keep scratching it for a couple of days, and then it goes septic. Now, I have chosen to create a lot more pain for myself because of how I reacted to that initial unavoidable pain, and now I've created a fuckload of avoidable pain that is much greater. than the initial nettles thing, you know what I mean? Yeah.

And that's the rubbish. Yeah. And I love that you're calling it rubbish because, I mean, how many, do you know what I'm talking about, don't she? Worrying about what might not, what has happened before or what might happen again. It's bullshit. A lot of fucking harsh shit. The amount of time I spent on that, you know?

No, it's a very profound point, I think, that, you know, you are going to get strung by a nettle in life. That's it. Yeah. We are all going to be stung by nettles in the forest of life. And yeah, you've got to not scratch it. Well, something I have to say there, just to take it back to what you were saying earlier about when you were speaking about the paranoia. And the reason that I am, when I get stung by the nettle of life, and I have the, I can put the effort in

to not scratch it. It's because I'm able to feel safe in myself. I believe that I'm a good person who's worthy of love. And I don't, I genuinely believe it because I received love at a young age. Yeah. So taking it back to, because I am fascinated when you said people who might spiral into very far right beliefs. Yeah. That there's a lack of internal self-safety or self-worth.

Yeah, there does seem to me I didn't get into the emotions of it But obviously The far right beliefs Are You know very much associated with emotions of hate And fear And fear

But more hate, I think And where's the hate coming from? I, you know, yeah It's a bit of a circular argument is it coming from fear or are people just wired differently? It's very, I don't have the answer to that, but I do know that people who are paranoid and who experience paranoia,

experience an awful lot more negative emotions than people who are not paranoid. So I think an awareness of paranoia is important, and I think therefore an awareness of psychosis, is important in terms of understanding the world. For example, when I was in Israel, I was really shocked by the people there. They don't look at each other the way you and I are looking at each other.

They don't talk. They shout. What? They shout at each other. They're unpleasant. They're, you know, very aggressive. As in that is the culture. Yeah, it's a very nasty, unpleasant culture.

what we were exposed to. A lot of bullying, a lot of paranoia. But you were also taken prisoner. Yes. So like, but you know what I mean? That's true. But like you didn't get to walk into the middle of the, you know what? I mean, I'm trying to understand you were subjected to horrible shit.

Yes, but I also met a lot of Israeli people who had disavowed their citizenship. Okay. And I heard stories like... Oh, they were telling you. Okay. Yeah, little boys going to birthday parties. And the icing on the cake was machine guns. Fucking hell, okay.

You know, it's a culture that they're born to be highly defensive, highly paranoid. Their stance, their belief system is based on the fact that they are a besieged people. Yeah. And so there is this... communal mentality of we are under siege and we need to fight back. When I heard you interviewing Naomi Klein, if any of you haven't heard it, it's actually a brilliant interview. I really enjoyed it.

But she's talking about psychosis quite a lot. Wow, but she's not naming it. She's not naming it. But that is as close to mass psychosis as I've seen. It's a bit like the German people during the Second World War. and everyone said, how could that happen? And then the people that they persecuted have somehow or other,

they learned their techniques from Hitler's Germany and now they're, you know, they're perpetrators now. So it's almost unbelievable, but it's true. I was chatting to Gabar Matte there a couple of months back trying to tease that out of Gabar, you know, because that's his thing, you know. the parallel that I'd also see is it's just I'm cautious

I'm not from that culture and I don't understand it but I am fucking Irish if you like we've got a history of persecution we've got a history of racism against us everything then you look at the conduct of Irish people in America so Irish Americans

they became the police there's a huge history of like pogroms that were started by Irish people over there you had the fucking the New York draft riots of the 1860s where Irish people

who would have been living in the slums of Manhattan lynched their African American neighbors because the Irish thought that that was the reason the Irish were being drafted for the Civil War

so we we did that too you're kind of going how the fuck are you look what the Brits did to you back home what are you doing over here and there's a wonderful

wonderful book by a fella called Noel Ignatio it's called How the Irish became white. Yeah. And it's about when Irish people went to America in the 1840s, they discovered the American system of whiteness and found their place within it through acts of brutality against mostly African American people.

And by doing that then, they gained status by the British and Dutch people who were above them. Yeah. You know, it's just that really, it's the fucked up trauma of hierarchical society. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's a very good point. And the Irish in turn were persecuted by the British and by the people who had colonised America,

who persecuted the people, the indigenous population and almost wiped them out. So, you know, the only way we're going to get to the bottom of all this is by understanding paranoia, defensiveness and all those negative emotions and, you know, making ourselves conscious. How do we start defining the paranoia? I know you're the first person I've heard to start naming that word as a thing. And I think it's so useful. How do we know? Okay, during COVID, when I'd nothing to do, I started hitting bongs quite frequently.

And I got paranoid, you know? After about three weeks of it, I started to, I, got very particular about how many times I was touching my door handle before I left the gaff and said, what the fuck is that about? I don't do that normally. And then looked at the amount of the bongs I was doing and said, there might be a correlation there. So I laid off. But that's paranoid there. All of a sudden, like, I don't feel comfortable enough to leave my gaff. And it wasn't, it wasn't like an obsessive compulsive thing because I'm not that way. It's like, what the fuck is this? So what if the door is? Who cares? No one's going to come in and rob the place. But I

couldn't do it. And that I went, oh, this is paranoia here now. Yeah. I mean, how do we identify it? How does a healthy person identify it? It's a very good question, but I think that the best indicator of mental health, good mental health, as you know, is social connectivity. So the more connected you are and the more connected you feel to other people, the better your mental health is going to be essentially. And COVID, of course, was a fantastic experiment for isolating people. And if you are going to get, lose your sense of connectivity. I think a lot of people became, you know,

they fell into conspiracy theories flourished during COVID because people are lost an uncle to that. We did though. I mean, look at the conspiracy theories that developed about COVID itself. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, I disagree kind of with the way the whole thing was managed. but that's another conversation. But I think social isolation is very, very damaging for human beings

and can lead to experiences of paranoia. And I think the thing to do is to be able to recognize that in you and in other people. Like the children who go around murdering people. Yeah. You know, they are children who are essentially socially isolated and paranoid. How do we have compassion for these people? Because that's what it's going to do. Like it's going to need us.

Because the thing is it's, it's, I've even stopped. I try and, I try to not use the word far right. Unless someone is straight out, I'm a fucking Nazi. Yeah. When it's like your uncle is drifting, expressing some fucking opinions that are really wrong. Yeah. What I find more useful is to go, I notice you're expressing some far right opinions as opposed to straight later. Yeah.

Yeah. Because as soon as you go, you're far right, then they go back into the Facebook group where they find identity within it and group identity. Whereas I notice your behaviour. I notice you are expressing some opinions that are. It's a little bit more compassionate. I totally agree. I think it's important to attack the idea rather than the person. And yeah, telling somebody, I'm using it as a descriptive term, by the way.

But, you know, saying, yeah, I completely agree with that. It's a tough one. It's a tough one. But I do think that people who have paranoid beliefs are fundamentally isolated. And they're fundamentally not connected to people. And those children who murder school children, the lone shooters. Okay. Yeah.

I think those children are, you know, I think they're, you know, Lionel Schreiber's book, we need to talk about Kevin is a brilliant, brilliant expose of all that, of a child who grows up and who really is not loved. Yeah. And they, you know, they don't connect to people then. And they develop a paranoid view of the world. And, you know, it's a lack of love. It's a lack of connectivity.

How do you feel... So here's the thing, right? We are also now living in a society, which is increasingly validates feelings of paranoia. I've got a phone that listens to me all the time. Artificial intelligence is fucking mad. I can have a chat with my freezer if I want. Do you know what I mean?

But like, do you know what I mean? We're living in a society that if you have paranoid beliefs now, you can quite easily find it confirmed. Like, do you remember Pokemon Go? That was great crack, wasn't it? What the, do you see what they're up to now? you don't remember Pokemon Go, no?

It was this video game on the phone about 10 years ago and it became really viral and people would walk around here or walk around the city and a little Pokemon, a little animal would appear. But if you,

now it has emerged, it was funded by the CIA as a way to get data, to get maps. It turned everybody into a mobile camera scanning it. Yeah.

And now that data is being used to train mostly being used to train delivery robots, robots that deliver food, but also it's been used to train robots that are going to kill people. And that came from... I said it on a podcast in 2016, because I went looking at the funding of the company. It came from a company called Incutel,

which is the venture firm, venture capital arm of the CIA. But I looked paranoid at the time. And now it's like, all right, that video game is, or even something like, you ever go into a website and it says, please sign in, can you identify the buses in this picture? Do you know what that's actually doing?

No. Training artificial intelligence, driverless cars. That's what it is. So we are collectively becoming the human brains that train that. And then before that, it used to be, here's a series of letters. Can you make out what it is? Yeah.

We were collectively digitising the archives of the New York Times, the Washington Post. They had put all their old stuff online, and we had digitized it for them, you know. Yeah. But that is, that's almost psychotic thinking. It's match it. That in terms of patterns.

That's having insight into capitalism. Yeah. Well, capitalism is a bit paranoid if they're doing crack. Well, they, you know, I don't give my information away. I'm not paranoid, but I don't give my information away. My information is worth something. Mm-hmm. You know, if I have to have an app and if they have to have the information,

I will give it. Otherwise, no one. No one gets it. And I've always had that belief. There's a, yeah, I mean, they will do everything. And artificial intelligence is I see it as something very positive. If I see it as work we don't have to do, and the same way that I see a calculator as work we don't have to do, why use up all our brain power for this kind of menial cognitive work when you can release it for creative work? Like, we want everybody to be creative. You know, use your brains for nice things. So I think it's the way it's being misappropriated by capitalism and abused by capitalism. That's the problem. It's not the artificial intelligence. That's a good point, actually.

I have to check the time, right? But I have the rudest watch in the world which it opens with kinetic energy. So the only way for me to look at the time is to go like this. So I just needed to tell you before, Ander, it's I look like a prick. You know what I mean?

Sorry for the children here for saying the word prick. Are you comfortable speaking about your experience on the Gaz of Flotilla? Is that okay? Yeah, yeah. Tell us the crack. I'm autistic. Leave me off. Well, it was the best of times and it was the worst of times.

I was very frustrated, as I'm sure most people here are and were. but for the first year you know I made myself watch the news I held at the TV I covered my face with my hands I went to marches I spoke I did everything I could do

you know became a full-time job in a way once I retired and you know I as the months went by as the years have gone by now we've realised that our governments are not on the side of the people.

No. So I did it partly for myself because I needed to do as much as I could to express my outrage and as much as I could to intervene to change their situation. So there was an opportunity to go in the flotilla, a medical flotilla,

to bring potential aid to the people of Gaza and I was thrilled to be able to go on it and I felt I was bringing a voice from Ireland and I think you know people here were very distressed. I felt the government we gave the government our mandate was we want to oppose what Israel is doing Gaza. We want to oppose the genocide. So it was good for me and it was good for me to make like-minded people and we had such crack. It was like it was one of the most positive experiences of my life being on that boat with a hundred, almost 100 medics and journalists. And it was fantastic. The sense of meaning and of determination and of resolve. You know, we were determined. We were going to get as far as we could.

And yes, there was an element of danger to it. Yeah, did you feel at what point, like you're talking about Western highly qualified medics, that's a high position of, we'll say, international privilege in that situation. Yeah. Did you feel protected or did you know what was going to happen? I felt protected, yes, by that, as we all do.

Yeah. You know, I suppose the more, solid, your position is in society, the more comfortable you feel and more confident you feel, yes. So I did, but at the same time, I was also at a point where accidents happen. Yeah. And if you're on a flotil to gas and you know you're going to be intercepted and imprisoned in Israeli jail, well, you know accidents are more likely to happen. Accidents.

And well, didn't the fucking one of the boats go on fire because they'd fired fireworks or flailers? at it or something. That's right. And I mean, a lot of people, I knew the IOF were going to be droning us the whole way. So when people were freaked out about that, I was like, well, it's totally there. You could see that you were being followed. You could look at the sky. Yeah. Yeah. So there was a drone watch every night. And we were quite well prepared, but nothing quite prepares you for, you know, the descent of the helicopters. And, uh, you see when they're coming down and they've laid with armaments, it's

like a Hollywood movie and it's like this is it's America. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is it's not Israel. It's like the whole it is America. Israel's an outpost of America.

And it's, it's you know, it's just there guarding the Middle East. And yeah, it's a military outpost. So you see that and you see the, I mean, I don't use words like evil. So, but it's very dark. It was very dark being in Israeli jail. And it wasn't just the discomfort and the dirt and the abuse verbally and physically. It was the people. It was just the

people where they were dehumanized. Jesus Christ. Yeah, it was, it was, it was very shocking. Experiencing it first hand really mattered to me. There's a difference between reading something and experiencing it this early. Did you have your psychiatrist's hat on? Well, I manipulated as well as I could. I did get under the skin of one of the screws.

Were you been interrogated or? No, they were, it was a, it was a, very interesting. We all took different positions of defence and offence against the abuse we were experiencing and some of the sailor women were very strong.

Yeah, yeah. He was good as they got. And some of the women were very verbal and some were quite physical. That, I was more... Do you mean, were women, are you saying that the women IOWF officers were physically hurting women, prisoners? Totally.

So that's what they got the women to do it. And was there a reason why they were doing it? Or was it just sheer intimidation for the sake? Oh, intimidation. I mean, they were trained in tactics of intimidation. We were woken up every hour during the night. And they'd come into the cell and they'd make us all stand up. A lot of women began, I mean, this was a particularly nasty aspect of it.

A lot of the women began menstruating from stress and they were denied sanitary products. And we sort of had to ask for basic, hygienic, like toilet roll. You know, they, it was very dirty and unpleasant. And I found that, like we all find it difficult. We're very used to cleanliness here. We don't know, we don't know how accustomed we are to it. And so it's at every single level that they can deprive you. levels that you wouldn't have an awareness of.

Did you, did any part of you start, what, what is the point of that? I mean, like I said, you are now back home in a safe country with a microphone able to tell everybody about this and party is going, why would you do that? That's bad press. And maybe that's the point. Don't come here. Don't try and do this flotilla shit again because it's going to get worse. Like, intimidation, knowing that you're, you.

you're going to go back to your to Ireland and say look at what they did. Yeah. And sometimes they say about Israel is that they flaunt for the sake of it. Look at what we can fucking do. Try and stop us. Trump will let us do whatever we want. Yeah, but I could see the cracks, blind boy. Well, go on.

Tell us about the cracks. I could see them. I mean, they don't want to make eye contact with you. So what do you do, you just keep looking and not looking in hate, not looking, just looking in puzzlement, just wondering what's going on, as one would. Wow.

Like, I don't understand this, so I'm looking at it. And you can see the cracks. I mean, everyone is human. Yeah. Everyone wants to be loved. Yeah. Ultimately, we all want to be accepted. Yeah.

So I think that society is going to crack. I think it's going to implode in itself. You know, the people in Israel, they don't want conscription anymore. They're running out of people and, you know, I think there's going to be a generational shift. I don't think it's sustainable.

Were the soldiers that were, the prison officers, young people or older people? Well, it's interesting because the elite soldiers who came down treated us the best, even though they had machine guns. Yeah. They pointed them at us,

but they didn't scream. they did scream actually but it was in the lower, as we went down to the lower echelons and the prison guards were clearly not as well educated, they didn't speak English and they were

they were the most unpleasant to us because I think they'd less confidence and they probably, it's a very stratified society, it's a very racist society and there was a different in skin color as you went down.

Yeah, the... And, you know, it's really repulsive to us the idea of institutionalized racism. And that is what that society is. Because Palestinians, like, they can pick out an Arab man from a Jewish man. To most of us, if you saw 10 of them in a row all dressed the same, we wouldn't be able to do it, but they can do it.

And the Arab men, they treated the worst. the next worst were the Arab women Black women Black men Black women and so on and so forth so if you're if you've got skin like I have

and our sort of colouring you know you were treated the best and then also you have to reflect that your country would probably stand up for you more it's not just their racism it's that the system itself is racist so the lives of the white

people have more value generate more headlines if something terrible was to happen. So it's racism all around, not just the Israelis, but the whole system itself. Totally. I mean, you know, we were very upset at the way our Arab comrades were treated. It was really difficult to watch. And also, there was a young man, and it really got to me, actually, because we'd become, we'd quite a few good conversations on the boat, and he was Israeli. He had renounced his citizenship. and he was quite a small man and they

they really mishandled him I saw him being pulled by his hair because they knew that he was an expat or whatever you'd call it yeah and they knew who we all were when we got off the boat but they go way out there

your dad and everything and fucking knew your names and all this crack absolutely yeah bastards but that's just snakey isn't it I know

I know yeah the mind games that they're playing there Oh, yeah. And they hated, you know, they had a particular hatred of Germans because they see Germans as having persecuted them. Yeah. So I was standing beside a lovely German doctor that was, you know, that I'd become friends with. And one of them jumped up from behind his desk and spat, I hate fucking Germans into her face. And I don't know how she stood. She managed to hold her ground.

I staggered backwards. I was so shook by, you know, the suddenness of his leap. You know, so everything is stratified. You're a German woman. You know, I hate you more. You're a black woman. You're less than me. So it's a society that's completely based on inequality.

Were they trying to trigger a response? Were they trying to trigger the type of response that they could get it? So if someone then decided, okay, your economy names, going to hit the prison officer. Now a crime has been committed and now you can actually be arrested and put into jail. You think there was an element of that. Whereas what ye had done is like, we're delivering aid. Like, you're not doing anything illegal. Yeah. And you're making them look like dickheads by imprisoning you. But if, well, I'm going to push you and push you, now you're going to have a crime. Now it's a different story. Do you think there might have been an element of that? Or was it just

an irrational? No, I think they were, they were clever in their approach. Yeah, I think they were, yeah. Definitely. And there's some people respond to antagonism. And I feel, you know, people resist in different ways. And I thought the, you know, the bad girls, I thought were great. I'm not a bad girl. I was, you know, I brought up obviously if somebody, you know, I'm trained if somebody is violent to me to de-escalate. Yeah. But some of the girls were bad girls. And I was like, yeah, go on. You know, they were fabulous. And, you know, they were giving as good as they got. So I think people resist. in different ways. And yeah, it takes a lot out of fun. Yeah. At what point are there like people from the Irish consulate showing up? I mean, I don't know how it works in Israel. I mean, are you completely and utterly alone?

Did anyone show up? Well, one thing I feel very bitter about is the fact that here we were, a group of 100 medics and media people in the middle of the ocean, you know, 100 nautical miles off the coast of Egypt heading towards Port Saif. We weren't heading towards Israel because our captain was clever. Matherim was her name

and she was saying they're coming so I'm going to change direction. I'm going towards Egypt. Nobody's going to catch me on the way to Israel or Gaza. So she went towards Port Saeed and you're there in international waters

and you know something becomes very real when they are allowed with impunity to descend from these helicopters and capture us all and kidnap us. And that's something that... It's not supposed to happen. It's not, I mean, they are, if we lose international law, if we lose, you know, at what point have we lost everything? I mean, that's, that was a very tangible feeling and experience there. So when I, I, you know, at what point have we lost everything? I mean, that's, that was a very, that was a very, tangible feeling and experience there. So when I saw the Irish consulate, I was like, yeah, like thanks.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, thanks very much. You're doing your job. I was pleasant. They were helpful. And, you know, they were on our side. But I don't believe the government is on our side. No, no, no, no.

They're not. They're not enacting the will of the people. They're in the pocket of Facebook. Yep. You know what I mean? We're in the pocket of the big tech companies. look at for the big tech

companies, it's America, it's Israel, the whole shabang, you know. Yeah, and they're taking our water.

Yeah. Yeah. And they're, yeah, and they're taking our electricity and they're bringing money into the country.

And, you know, we need, we need to make big decisions in Ireland about what side we're on. This has been a fucking unbelievable chat. It's been really enjoyed.

Are you liking this? And you're okay. You can hear everything as well, can you? Um, I might do we have audience questions Eminem

we do this is Eminem ladies and gentlemen I might take a few questions from the audience because I'm time conscious

throw up an old hand there and ask a question about whatever you want yeah what's the crack all good just when you're talking about paranoia

and you're saying you're touching the handle all the time yeah what type of door handle is it don't get me started the door handles man

I went I had a similar thing and I thought it was superstitious and I'm wondering are they related. Oh, there's a fun one now. Because you know what I did? I started going with the...

We've all done the St. Anthony shit, yeah? Because it works, unfortunately. I was doing St. Anthony for ages. But then I thought about it. You know why I think St. Anthony works? Because it's a little mindfulness exercise. And any time I need to use St. Anthony, right? Because I'm not...

You know when you lose your fucking wallet, lads? You know when you lose your wallet? And you're in that position of... Is it lost and I need to cancel all my cards or is it behind the couch? Because you don't want to, you ever cancel all your cards and it's behind the fucking couch? Worst feeding in the world. So when I get there, then I'm like, fuck's sake. All right.

So St. Anthony, come on, all right. I haven't spoken to about six years, but find my wallet for me. So I go into St. Anthony land and give him an old prayer. And then lo and behold, there's my wallet all along. It was there. And I kept working and it would challenge my fucking faith. You know, I'd be like, ah, shit, maybe there's something going on here. But no, it's just mind.

when it's something that's like if I lose this wallet and I cancel the cards that is a huge inconvenience this is making me anxious now because of that I'm not thinking rationing me I can't find it I'm not really present around me but then I go for all St. Anthony

say a little prayer I'm breathing differently now I'm calm oh there it is all along I think that's the crack do you think that's the crack there yeah yeah yeah Definitely. I agree with you, blind boy. Paranoia versus superstition, because that's a great question.

It's a great question. And I would say some superstition is, you know, it's based on sound, sensible thinking, don't walk under a ladder. Yeah. You know. It's there, in a sense, to keep us safe. I mean, I have all sorts of, you know, magical thinking is part of, in a way of, in a way of, The lore and the way we're brought up, you know, one for sorrow, two for joy. Who doesn't look at mag pies? And if there's one there, look for the second one.

You know, I love... All of Irish folklore is actually telling us something about systems of biodiversity and tenets about early farmers before they had writing. Like there's one I love around the start of April about the old brindle cow it's called. And it's a story my ma used to tell me about an old cow. And it's like it's going to be freezing cold for the first 10 days of April. go, how'd you know, ma'am? She goes, well, the story of the old cow who mocked the winter, and then the winter went and borrowed some days from the summer and killed the cow.

But like, the first 10 days of April actually are dodgy because the land heats up from the extra days, and then we get that cold Atlantic wind, so it's unpredictable. But our ancestors used to use that in Ireland to know when to do. We had a thing called bullying, which existed pre-manastic times. People in Ireland would move with their cattle, and they would take the cattle to the hills to the better grass for the summer. But some people were like, like the way Germans are at a resort where they want to put the towels down. You know, you get the towels down early. Irish people used to do that. Like, nearly a thousand years ago, I want to get that spot up there on the hill with my cows first. So I'm going to leave early on the first 10 days of April. And then the cows

are killed. So we have this wonderful story. But that there, that's not superstition. That's folklore. That tells us something important about biodiversity, nature and systems in the absence of a language system, writing system. Yeah, and there you have it. I mean, we shouldn't touch door handles. You know, in a way during COVID. Oh, fucking, I didn't connect those two things. Fucking hell.

Oh, shit. The whole messaging on the news was fucking door handled. Ah, that's what it is. Sure, she's a psychiatrist. This was free. You're fucking right. Of course I'd be afraid of door. How did I not spot that?

the news was telling me fucking door handles, man. You need hand sanitizer. And now I'm afraid of course it wasn't the hash at all. Excellent.

I'm fucking smoking. Again, M&M, sort me out tonight, will you? Sorry. Any other questions? Yonder here.

How's going there? I was a quick question there. What's your opinion? You mentioned psilocybin psychedelics. What's your opinion now as a psychiatrist of the future for that for treating depression, anxiety, all that kind of stuff.

Well, the studies on depression are in their very early stages, but I reckon Silocybin's going to, you know, at the moment it's going for a cure-all for everything, for every human condition, from pain to sorrow, to bereavement, everything, psychosis even. I think psilocybin, for certain people, my experience, my opinion, uncorroborated, okay, this is from my experience, I think it's particularly good for people who are caught up in an internal loop of neurosis. And sometimes it's very difficult for these people to engage in therapy because they actually cannot get outside of. their own heads. Do you mean like rumination loops and stuff? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I think for most depression, I wouldn't say it's going to be a great treatment for most depressions, but for some

people, I do think the effects that it has on consciousness are very impressive. But if you're going to expand your consciousness, you've got to know where you're starting from. So if you're in a kind of paranoid bad place, you shouldn't go to psychedelics. Or if you have a kind of predisposition towards being a bit paranoid, I wouldn't do psychedelics. But if you're in a safe place and you're all neurotically tangled up in yourself,

and I think they could have a place for you. But you need... The wrong people to take psychedelics are people who... have paranoid tendencies. And again, we're kind of coming back to this point the whole time of,

there is no awareness out there of, you know, the softer forms of psychosis that 10% of the population experience. Well, I'd imagine no one fucking talks about it because I've never heard anyone. I've never heard someone say to me,

I think I heard half a voice there yesterday. But you know what I mean? But like, no one says that. If someone is experiencing heavy psychics, and they need to get treatment, but no one is like, oh yeah, there's a fella called Paul and I heard him, yes. But this must be what you're talking about.

Someone hears a little bit of a voice here and there. Yeah, yeah. A whisper are very commonly people, children hear their name being called. And that's... Maybe it's ghost stories. Yeah. No, but seriously, maybe you do hear a lot of people of I was in bed and I heard a voice or I heard laughter next door.

Yeah. Maybe with that soft paranoia that you're talking, And it could be represented in paranormal experiences maybe. Absolutely. Or when people are waking up are going to sleep, particularly when they're waking up, they're called hypnopumpic hallucinations. Oh, they're awful.

What are they? They're the worst in the world. Yeah. Is that the one where you experience someone sitting in, like kind of not sleep paralysis, but I had it once, actually. This is the last question I'm going to ask you, right? Because you're the only person who might be able to answer this.

I was at a time of extreme. stress. My dad had just died and I was 21 and it was unbelievable grief and stress but I had that waking up in the middle of the night and reality dissolved into a universe of shapes and it was nothing but pure terror

and it was minus crack. Is this what we're talking about? Yes. That would have been in one aspect of it. I'd woken up in the middle of the night and it's just I'm not in my room. What the fuck is this get me out? It's grey hell Yeah, that's what we would

I guess that would be a kind of a nocturnal panic attack Sounds about right, yeah Yeah, and they are particularly particularly unpleasant A devil's wet dream we'll call it Sorry

Sorry It's a good name It's a good name It's a good name She had a devil's wet dream Okay I mean the other thing that happens commonly is night terrors

And I don't know Oh God Who's a fan of the old night terrors, lads? Hands up. Very mentally healthy. Or two at the front fair play, T. I've had them. They're not great.

No, you're in the stage of sleep where your limbs are paralyzed because you go through a stage of sleep where you're dreaming. And so your eyes are looking all around the place and you think loads of things are happening, but your body can't move. But something very bad happens in your dream and you want to wake up your body to counteract it, Like you want to run away or you want to fight back against somebody

and your body isn't working and your voice isn't working. So typically you wake up with what's called a strangled cry. You're trying to cry for help or you're trying to move. And that's a night terror and they're quite common and they're extremely unpleasant. Is that normal or is that just what happens? Well, I've had them anyway, not very many, but they're normal. and so are hallucinations when you're waking up. They're normal. And it's normal. It's not utterly abnormal to be a voice here. It's when it becomes something that is bothering you and interfering with your life.

That it becomes psychosis, really. And, you know, somebody like me needs to come in. I could have chatted to you all evening. That was one of the best chats I've had in a long time. Veronica O'Kine. Thank you so much for coming along. And thank you to Oliy. Go and enjoy your magic mushrooms. Thank you for listening to that. What can I say about Dr. Veronica O'Kine?

A fascinating person, a courageous person, and an inspirational person full of integrity. Someone with high self-esteem, very high self-esteem, a lot of self-worth who really is connecting, connecting with our values and acting on those values. And we could all learn a lot

from listening to people like Veronica. So thank you to Veronica for coming on. Thank you to ye for listening. And thank you for your patience this week. My chest is fucked. This is what happens. I get sick. I attended a children's party.

All right. and then I picked up a chest infection. I get sick and it's not a radio station so I can't ring someone in to pop in and do my fucking job. So I figure out ways to deal with it as it happens and make sure that I get a podcast out every Wednesday so that I'm not leaving any of you, disappointed or jilted. But I have a lovely hot take written

and I'll be back next week with that. In the meantime, rub a dog, wink at a swan, genuflect to an owl, and enjoy the fucking splendor of nature out there. To my listeners in the Northern Hemisphere, I know of a lot of listeners in Australia, and you're entering winter now. But here in the Northern Hemisphere,

it's the beginning of summer. It's the most fucking beautiful time of the year because the leaves are young. And we haven't gotten into it yet. about a week away from it maybe about a week away when the evening air is pregnant with life

the most beautiful the middle of fucking the end of May end of May as it tips into June nature sweats with this intoxicating effluvium and you'll smet it in

an evening walk go for a fucking evening walk lads don't get caught in the doom scroll go out and get an evening walk into you at the end of May and do it with the mindful purpose of noticing all the different smells it's the best time of the year for smells

everything wants to fuck each other you just get the it's life it's the smell of life all right dog bless