The Blindboy Podcast - St Audens Tapedeck

Episode Date: August 1, 2018

Being an Artist with Dublin rent, Tony Mcgregor's Jacket, Nazi Eugenics Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

open your hearts you championship brendas let in the winds of litrum what is the fucking crack how are you getting on it is august 1st it's podcast number 43 and the world Cup is over and Love Island is no longer on television it's finished so I think though there are two signifiers

that we're slowly getting back into reality you know summer is silly season and do you know what's missing as well I stuck my nose out tonight and the youthful

dew of summer was no longer present on the evening's essence, which is sad because it ushers in a bit of winter, but do you know that lovely fucking, that summer's evening smell, you know, that you can't quantify it, it's, it's, it's just teenage flowers and teenage trees, it's fucking foliage at its peak, and flowers giving off its smell, but now we're into August, so, you know, it's, it's starting to, the foliage is kind of, August, so, you know, it's, it's starting to, the foliage is kind of, I won't say the foliage is getting old, but the foliage is definitely fucking thinking about leaving its wife and buying a Ferrari, you know, gone week, oh fucking hell yeah, last week, last week I got shit-faced drunk and couldn't give you a proper podcast, but most of you really enjoyed it, which was great because I woke up the next morning with the fucking fear. I swear to fuck, I woke up the next morning going what the fuck did I put out in that podcast terrified because I was moldy now I know I didn't come

across as that drunk that's from years years and years and years of you know honing my ability of bush drinking as a teenager and pretending to my ma that I'm sober so I had to drag that skill into me last week when I was doing the podcast but I was fucking mauling lads so when I woke up the next morning I was like fuck what did I say you know did I go alt right in my drunken state em but no it was grand I listened back and wasn't too bad and ye seemed to enjoy it and there was a wonderful interview

with the brilliant author Louise O'Neill which I thoroughly enjoyed listening back to because I forgot how much crack that was it was actually a lovely room so yeah fucking something mad happened this weekend. I had a sold out live podcast in the Ivy Gardens in Dublin. And something sudden and unavoidable happened in my personal life.

I can't go into it but this caused me to cancel the gig at the last minute i'm grand don't be worrying about me but it was a gig canceling incident i'm gigging fucking 12 years i've never missed a gig this is the first time it happened you know shit happens but uh thank you to Luckily it was at the Vodafone Comedy Festival. So. A bunch of you turned up. And. A load of.

Very sound comedians were at hand. Fucking. Alison Spittel. Neil Hamburger. Jarla Regan. David O'Doherty. They filled in my slot. So.

The audience members. Got a star studded line up.up of the cream of Irish comedy, instead of my live podcast, and the ones who didn't want that were entitled to a full refund, but again, sorry for letting you down like that, but you know, I wouldn't fucking do it if it, it was unavoidable, alright, shit happens, first time in about 10 or 12 years that this has happened but it did I'm back in Dublin for a live podcast

in Vicar Street in October which is almost sold out now I think there's about 600 tickets sold for that but there's a few

hundred left so if you want to see me that'll be the shtick I don't know who my guest is yet over the next couple of weeks, I'm privately interviewing two pretty fucking famous people.

I'm interviewing one person. Can't say who they are, but they're so ridiculously stupidly famous they've no business being interviewed on Irish soil or any Irish fucking medium. Let alone my podcast. I don't know how I'm after scoring this one. But I'll keep you in the loop.

You delicious gorgeous cunts. So in last week's podcast. I promised you that I was going to do an episode. That connected a jacket to a Nazi eugenics program. And I am going to do that. I'm going to get into that in a while but because a week has passed there's just some other

shit I want to talk about one thing in particular I posted a tweet today about something that we're all kind of familiar with but the scale of responses that I got for it were pretty fucking shocking.

I said, Dublin is going to lose its creative class. I've no idea how anyone on the erratic earnings of a self-employed artist of any description is paying for rent. Me staying in Limerick all these years isn't just stubborn parochialism. And what I'm referring to there is just like rent all over ireland is pretty bad rent in dublin is fucking absurd it is ridiculous right exceptionally high i mean every week a property goes viral because it's a fucking cupboard for 1200 quid do you know the shit that's happening in London but it's really happening quite badly in Dublin and I'm an artist so like I've been that's all I've been doing since

I was fucking 14 15 I'm a professional fucking artist so the thing about being a professional artist is there's no such thing as a steady income you know and i think as well as a society we are kind of coming around to the fact too that just because someone has a million followers on fucking facebook or twitter doesn't mean they're necessarily floating in money you know um about 10 percent of the artists that you like are wealthy, and the rest are just getting by, you know? And my tweet was inspired by, there's an Irish singer-songwriter, David Kitt,

who's a bit of a legend. Like, David Kitt was around when I was in fucking school, and he's still gone, and he's a Dublin-based electronic artist. and he's one of these fellas who's just you know if you listen to his stuff you know that he's he's never really compromised he's always made the music that feels right to him inside and put it out and done the gigs and worked hard and i don't think he's the type of person who ever expected to become mad wealthy from making music just to earn a living, which is, you know, that's the least you can expect if you're a professional artist.

But David Kidd posted on Facebook that, you know, he's a Dublin native who is now having to look at emigrating, you know, either somewhere else in Ireland that's cheap or getting the fuck out of Ireland altogether to another place where he can afford to be an artist. And it's not just David Kidd as well, you know. I mean, we started off kind of professionally gigging around 2007, and 90% of the acts that would have been sharing bills with us in 2007 you know the bands that were coming out making music

they're all gone and it's not because they were shit I've just slowly watched them you know 2013, 2014 2015 slowly make announcements on their Facebook page going how are you getting on we love making music uh but we just can't earn money anymore partly because of the internet too

you know you can't you're not you're not making money from record sales you got a gig and if you're gigging only in ireland that's there's not a lot of gigs to sustain a living especially with a fucking band um so a lot of acts are in that situation but I just have to give up on their creativity and go and find jobs somewhere else and I often kind of scratch my head and wonder how the fuck I'm still going I think the reason the reason is, is, first off, there's only two of us, for the bandits, that's handy,

but, we're just both lucky, in that we're, we're creative, across multiple disciplines, so, we didn't have to do, just music,

you know, I'm, if I can turn my hand, to fucking writing books uh writing television whatever the fuck I want I'm just lucky in that way and Mr. Chrome is the same you know like our fucking music videos make the music ourselves write the song ourselves produce the music uh shoot the video ourselves Mr. Chrome does special effects, he can make fucking puppets and shit like that,

so we can make a music video that looks like it's worth 10 grand for 500 quid, just by pooling our separate abilities together, so the Rubber Bandits is quite cost effective, and it always has been, so that's kept us kind of tipping over, over the years, but,

you know, other fucking acts have just had to give up. And it's really sad, because they're not giving up for the right reasons. It's not because they want to stop creating, or because they fight with each other. It's because it is no longer an economically viable model. So yeah, I posted a status, or a tweet, about Dublin losing its creative people it's ridiculous and I got a lot of people talking and I just read out some of the like the responses I got on Twitter like Melanie Murphy she's a youtuber loads and loads of views she's got a book out and she says I still rent with my dad and brother I'm

29 soon. It's beyond a joke and I work my haul off on several creative jobs at a time. Pete Slattery says, I work in animation and the biggest problem facing the people I work with is accommodation. It's hard enough to find employees as it is, but when you factor in

the cost of living, the industry can't sustain the current situation. Anthea says, the only reason i'm able to stay in dublin and keep creating comics is by staying in my childhood home so like this is the crack this is the reality and like again like i said i'm coming at it from an artist's perspective because that's what i know but like a lot of people shit on art and creativity and go sure what's the point like it's essential that's the art and creativity is it benefits the collective mental health you have to have ingenuity you have to have

people out there doing weird shit if only to start conversations i mean it is a the benefit of art and creativity isn't particularly tangible because in today's society we tend to value things from a monetary perspective exclusively but art creativity, fucking theatre music, graphic design whatever the fuck you want

you know these things colour in the spaces of our lives and create the ambience, do you know what I mean I think I've quoted this, I think I've said this before but like, I'm quoting the great Count Winston Churchill, because it's a lovely

quote by him, during World War II, someone went to Churchill and said look the fucking Nazis are bombing the shit out of the place, we need money for the war, can we close down all the galleries and museums to fund the war effort and Churchill goes then what are we fighting for

you know that's the importance of art and creativity but like here's the mad thing like you've got artists, creative people emigrating from fucking Ireland, not because there's a recession right there's plenty of opportunity there's loads of massive fucking investment but the reason they're

emigrating is because of this investment do you know tech firms ireland's got a lot of tech firms because of our incredibly low corporation tax tech firms are coming in buying a lot of property pushing up the rent on top of that there's no regulation on the renting market so you can push things up as much as you want Airbnb is riding Dublin up the hall without a condom

and it is creating an unsustainable market where like I don't know who the fuck is living in Dublin, I honestly don't know I don't know who owns fuck is living in Dublin I honestly don't know I don't know who owns shit unless they're seriously wealthy

but what it does too as well is it like it creates em in Ireland there's this ancient concept of the pale right when the when the Brits came over here they solidified an area around Dublin when the, when the Brits came over here,

they solidified an area, around Dublin, out into parts of fucking, not Maynooth, where's that place near Dublin, where people pretend, they're from Dublin, Kildare, right,

so out as far as Dublin, and Kildare, the Brits always had a stronghold there, and they referred to it as the Pale, and anything outside that, was known as far as Dublin and Kildare, the Brits always had a stronghold there and they referred to it as the Pale. And anything outside that was known as Beyond the Pale. That's why you have that phrase, oh that's Beyond the Pale. That's an old colonial word to refer to savagery. But the Pale was traditionally a prosperous area containing Dublin and fucking Kildare in Ireland.

Where the British Protestant descendancy traditionally lived and it's with the exception of you know the incredibly poor working class areas it generally had a degree of prosperity because it was protected and then the extreme fucking third world Irish poverty was outside the pale this Dublin bullshit that we're seeing now it is in danger of creating a new pale because like aside from creative

people just anyone trying to get a fucking job up in Dublin cultures like me what's happening is that native Dublin people are able to have a job in Dublin and live with their parents and as a result of that possibly if they're earning enough save up to eventually

buy a property which means you create a a class in Dublin of richer people who own property then the Colchies who can't really find jobs in Limerick we'll say or in fucking Leitrim they have to move to Dublin to find a job but can't live with their man there so all their money goes on rent so you're reinstating

the fucking pale do you know what I mean but back to the art and creativity Ireland is traditionally art is our fucking thing okay in particular in

we'll say in literature that's our main cultural artistic export like for the size of us for a country of 4 million people our impact on global literature is unprecedented. Like, if you look at, we'll say, Brazil and soccer. You know the way Brazil is there and it's like they're just ridiculously good at soccer and they have so many World Cups.

That's Ireland with literature. And we're tiny. That's our cultural fucking legacy. and we're tiny that's our cultural fucking legacy mainly from a kind of a post-colonial point of view we took you know english the english language was forced upon us and it didn't fit with gaelic grammatical structure so we have hiberno english so irish literature is by its very core as an act of resistance to the English language and as a result of that you have a great fluidity and creativity you'll see this in fucking I don't know James Joyce, Flann O'Brien, the odd bit of Beckett you know but we've got these

towering literary figures that define our cultural fucking identity in the world and the current economic situation is turning its back on preserving fucking artists and it's a bit ridiculous like i lived in dublin for two years straight after horse outside and i had to get the fuck out because here is the crucial thing about it. If you're an artist and you want to succeed in your own art. Now success doesn't necessarily, creatively success doesn't necessarily mean earning a lot of money or being popular. Success in art means are you truly creating from your heart? Is the art that you create what you would like to see

if you weren't you that's fucking success in art in order to do that you need to be able to fail failure i've said it many times before failure is an essential facet to creativity you must encourage failure you must fail as much as humanly fucking possible so that you can truly find your voice and when failure is when you're afraid to fail then you become stifled and when you're stifled you're anxious and art doesn't come from a place of anxiety art does not come from a place of being threatened art comes from freedom you know art and creativity is intelligence having fun that's what it is and it must be a free and playful environment you can't have a free fucking playful environment if your art fucking if you

need to come up with 1200 quid a month to pay pay for fucking rent in Dublin. That's what I was doing after Horse Outside. I had no freedom to fail. I had no freedom to test my own creative boundaries. And. As well I've said before. After Horse Outside. I hated that level of fame. So.

We deliberately wanted to. Stick our two fingers up to the audience that we had. And say fuck you we want to do something different. I couldn't do that until I moved back to Limerick though. Because up in Dublin, rent had to be fucking paid. And songs like I Like to Shift Girls were written, which I'm not really mad about. Because it was written specifically to appease a horse outside audience. But only when I got down to Limerick could I write Spastic Hawk.

specifically to appease a horse outside audience. But only when I got down to Limerick could I ride Spastic Hawk. Because in Limerick, in 2011, when that was, at the height of the recession, rent was non-existent. You could live anywhere in Limerick for absolutely fucking nothing. So that allowed me to fail

and not have to worry too much about earning ridiculous money, just enough to get by. So the government in the country is kind of turning its back on the creative class and isn't valuing the importance of creativity and ingenuity in our culture which is absurd 70 i think of the elected representatives in ireland are themselves landlords so is it in their interest to do something about

the renting crisis now I'm conscious too of how ridiculously privileged it sounds to be complaining about poor old artists can't afford to fucking do their craft because the blades edge of this fucking housing crisis is people actually fucking

dying from homelessness which is obviously more important but i want to speak about all aspects of it and again from personal experience do you know thank fuck i don't have personal experience of homelessness i do have personal experience of being unable to create because the wolf is consistently at the door and how that stifles creativity maybe the government will listen if you frame it in terms of entrepreneurship you know entrepreneurship is a form of creativity how are you going to have fucking entrepreneurs in the economy if they can't afford to take risks i mean what possible solutions are there we'll say from the artists to deal with the the artist situation i can think of one example which is a pretty class idea and it's from new york in the 70s

um which is quite strange because it's a very socialistic model to come out of the Yanks but New York in the 70s is very similar to Dublin today actually you know like in that it was this big city but it's a bit of a shithole like Times Square

in the 70s was open fucking drug use and sex workers and homelessness. Like, it was not a pleasant place. It's hard to look back and think, like, Times Square now is fucking clean and unbelievably expensive. And there's barely any, you know, you'd be hard pressed to find crime or homelessness anywhere in New York's centre. You have to go up as far as the Bronx or over to Staten Island for that shit. But in the 70s, New York was a shithole.

And Times Square was basically O'Connell Street in Dublin. O'Connell Street in Dublin, our main fucking street, is not pleasant. Especially at night time. It is not safe. It's for any fucking tourists coming over it must be shocking but anyway in the 70s in new york they built this subsidized block of flats for only for artists it was in 1977 called manhattan plaza and what it was for it was mainly i think was for the performing arts for actors a lot of actors lived there but it was just, it was mainly, I think, was for the performing arts, for actors.

A lot of actors lived there. But it was just simply a block of flats where people in the creative industry, young people in particular. No, I don't think even age mattered. People who were trying to make their living from writing or painting or being actors were able to apply for housing in manhattan plaza and they got a simple flat and didn't really have to worry about rent because it was subsidized and it was cheap which allowed them to then take the necessary creative risks and to fail over and over so that they could find their unique creative voice like seinfeld you know larry david who wrote seinfeld he lived in manhattan plaza in the 70s and the apartment that seinfeld is set in is based on larry david's apartment in manhattan plaza

he even had a neighbor right across the way called kramer you know and there's a lot of other fucking mickey rourke lived in manhattan plaza angela lansbury samuel l jackson al pacino these massively successful iconic fucking artists writers lived in subsidised rent as artists in this one creative block this hub Manhattan Plaza where all they had to worry about was being the best version of themselves creatively not keeping the fucking wolf from the door

but I don't know is that a solution? I'm just a lad with a podcast. I'm not sure. Talking into a sock on my own. But if you are a Dublin artist. Or anywhere else in Ireland. Where it's just like.

I cannot. I cannot afford rent. And I want to be. And have a look at Limerick at least. Not too many of you know. Because I don't want to fucking. Gentrify limerick with a lot of dubs but limerick's not cheap limerick is probably the cheapest rent in ireland

it's definitely one in the in the bottom three of the cheapest rents in ireland um that doesn't mean it's cheap it's still pretty fucking bad you know, but by Dublin standards, it's, there's no, no comparison, but have a look at Limerick, there's a good crack down here, just stand around all the time looking at an otter, is a good buzz we've got a lot of empty spaces we've got tri studios which is a new film studios um and we've got the art college lsad fucking class art college and just a good buzz see i'm paranoid now i'm after inspiring a lot of dublin cunts to move to Limerick and gentrifying okay if you're a Dublin artist and you want to move to Limerick you have to earn every letter of your name

through a various collection of dares so if your name is Peter you know you have for the letter P you have to piss on the mayor's shoes and then for the letter E you have to eat 300 communion wafers and then for T

you have to tattoo Macaulay Culkin getting kicked out of the UVF on your calf and then for the other E, you've to, engineer a design, for a bicycle, that an ostrich, could cycle on,

which would be, very fucking strange, because they've got, their kneecaps, on the backs of their legs, and then finally, for R, you've to race,

a Jack Russell, down the hill of Tara and only by completing pre-assigned tasks corresponding to the letters of your name may you apply to fucking live in Limerick and that will allow you

to move from Dublin but not to fully gentrify it okay right 24 minutes fucking in Ye to move from Dublin but not to fully gentrify it. Okay? Right, 24 minutes fucking in. And I've been meaning to talk about this, the hot take about the jacket and fascism and Nazi eugenics. Do you remember when this podcast used to have structure? Do you remember I'd talk about something for a while,

then I'd read out drunk tweets by your drunk limerick aunt, Donald Trump's tweets. And now I'm just, I'm after getting, I'm after getting too comfortable with ranting. And before you know it, I just look at the fucking, at the timer and the podcast is over and I'm after talking about shit for a full fucking hour and there's no time for nothing right this fucking jacket anyway okay it's a week late but Conor McGregor's father Tony posted a video on YouTube speaking about his jacket and it was the talk of Ireland for a while because it was just absurd and irritating. I'll play it for you now. This is Conor McGregor's father, Tony. And Conor, I know you listen to the podcast.

All right? We established that a few weeks ago. But I've got to speak on this. Okay, everybody. Good evening. but I gotta speak on this okay everybody good evening I just let you know about my travel experience on the dart this afternoon that's the rail system that Dublin City operate is called the Dublin area rapid transport something like that da RT that was stands for anyway I was none too plus with my experience on the dirt and when i got to lansdowne

road station uh i tendered a brand new crisp 20 euro note into the automatic machine looking for a single ticket to dunlaury they had the bloody cheek to uh give me back and i'm going to show you this uh coinage 20 euros 1730 and a miserable little one-way ticket they they gave me all that coinage um i have no room to put to put those coins anywhere i wear a slim fit hand-fitted hugo boss suit ah god bless his and save his, Tony. What are you at? So, yeah, everyone was talking about that because it's so silly. Um, mainly

because, you know, he's a grown man. He's a grown man. He's in his 50s, you know? And that rant about the kinds and the trains, Tony, you just wanted to tell us about your Hugo Boss jacket man, didn't you,

and instead, there was a bang of Cruella de Vil, off it like or something, it's like, people are rooting for the McGregors, do you know what, they're from Crumlin, you know Tony,

Tony's a fucking, I think he was a plumber you know, from Crumlin, working class man, working hard all his life, you know, to keep put food on the table, and then gets a bit of money from Conor's success, and is kind of bragging about it a bit, you know, no sign of humility, and people don't like, people don't like it when people aren't humble, and people don't like people don't like it when people aren't humble but like

he could have still shown off his Hugo Boss jacket and shown kind of gratitude for it and shown look at me now I've got a Hugo Boss jacket isn't it nice on me and the whole country would have said fair play Tony I'm glad you've got that jacket but instead he went down

a just a kind of a foolish foolish route but it got me thinking and it got me into a strange old YouTube hole that has nothing to do with Tony McGregor whatsoever and it reminded me about Hugo fucking Boss and just I suppose how something bizarre I suppose in today's climate whereby we expect so much of our brands and celebrities and corporations you know

in the context like James Gunn there director of Guardians of the Galaxies you know getting fired from his fucking job because he made some bad taste, silly, paedophile jokes in 2009, but, like, how many brands today have tainted history, and Hugo Boss, like, the man himself, Hugo fucking Boss, who the company was founded on, they didn't even change the name was an active nazi for hitler right hugo boss made and designed all the uniforms for the nazi party and the ss and it wasn't like

oh poor old hugo boss hitler's taking power he's got no choice like hugo boss was an actual fucking nazi he went to the nazis and said i like what you're doing lads but i think you could do it in a more stylish fashion so he was an avowed nazi up until the day of his fucking death and they didn't think to change his name from the company like what the that they're still making jackets for conor mcgregor's da who else ibm like ibm again like it wasn't just like oh we better cooperate with the nazis ibm made early computers for the holocaust like they made uh technology for the Holocaust they made technology for the Nazis to identify Jews or whoever was going to be exterminated and to make

transport and extermination efficient and they were called IBM and they're still called IBM today who else have we got Volkswagen Volkswagen wasn't a private company that collaborated

with the Nazis Volkswagen was created by the Nazis it was a state run company set up by Hitler because kind of what Hitler did because you get these fucking alt-right shitheads who talk about.

They apologize. The biggest edgelord comment you'll see online is. Say what you want about the Nazis. But they were very efficient you know. He really repaired the economy. Which is a bullshit fucking statement. Because. What Hitler did is he.

Invaded. The likes of Poland. And all the countries around stripped resources from those countries and then brought an influx of that money into the german economy and then it prospered as a result because he robbed it that's not good economics it's just robbing money from other countries and using it to make your own country class like that's not something to be applauded but Hitler's big thing was building roads the fucking first motorways were built

by Hitler, built by the Nazis to I don't know why I think he just wanted an efficient machinated people but the roads were also built for, wherever there was an autobahn in the country, a military plane could also land on it.

I think it was to create runways too. But Hitler set up Volkswagen, which means wagon of the people, and legend has it, probably bullshit, but legend has it that Hitler designed the Volkswagen Beetle personally and based it around the design of an egg but again Volkswagen

still out there doing their thing still called Volkswagen invented by the Nazis Coca-Cola now Coca-Cola wasn't German they were American they were just opportunistic cunts, the Nazis got a fondness for Coke, so the Yanks started selling loads and loads of Coca-Cola to the Germans, they adored it, they bought loads and loads of it, this was

1937, so it wasn't, I don't think the Yanks were in World War II by then but anyway the fucking Nazis were drinking coke and then one day some top Nazi looks at the coke bottle cap and noticed on it there's a tiny amount of Hebrew writing and this indicated that Coca-Cola was kosher.

So of course the Nazis freaked out. Because there's Hebrew writing on it. And were like, fuck your Coke, America. We don't want this shitty brown drink. Piss off. But anyway, by 1940, the US had gotten involved in the war. World War II against the Nazis and

didn't stop Coca-Cola Coca-Cola were like oh fuck the Germans can no longer import our brown Coca-Cola syrup what are we going to do so what Coca-Cola did is they created a new brand specifically

just for the Nazis made from an accessible syrup made from is they created a new brand specifically just for the Nazis, made from an accessible syrup, made from orange, because they had access to orange syrup in Germany. So Coca-Cola had a bit of a think, and they started to rebrand. First of all, they rebranded Coca-Cola as very much pro-Nazi in Germany, promoting Nazi ideology. And they went to the German word for fantasy meaning imagination and they came up with this new orange drink and called it Fanta. So Fanta was actually created on the German name fantasy to appeal to Nazis for a Nazi audience, Nazi consumers, while the

US was fighting Hitler. They're still grand. I was drinking Fanta earlier. The Associated Press, massive American news agency, still rocking around today, they, I think what happened is when Hitler took power, the Nazis demanded that any news organisation, they couldn't employ any Jewish people. So most news organisations were like, fuck this. They left Germany, but the Associated Press were like,

no, I think we'll stick around and just fire a lot of Jews. So that's what they did. They're still going. The most controversial of all, of course course is Bayer Pharmaceuticals still going today they sell um Baraka, Rennie, uh what else Claritin, Alka-Seltzer they I think they invented aspirin, but Bayer Pharmaceuticals, at the time I think they were called IG Farben, or they were part of IG Farben. But Bayer were the ones who developed Zyklon B for the Nazis, and Zyklon B was the gas that was used to exterminate Jewish people and what was considered other undesirables and they're still rocking

and I suppose it's like what are the rules around this stuff like that's the thing with the the internet outrage it's like what are the rules what constitutes

someone getting cancelled and from what i can see there appears to be like a time limit on it you know it's really strange like spotify recently and they backtracked on it, but like Spotify said, you know, artists that were accused of abuse, that they would no longer platform them on any of their playlists. But it was really only artists with recent accusations, like Extentacion and fucking R. Kelly. But what about John Lennon?

John Lennon was a wife beater, you know? Are Mel Gibson still working? Mel Gibson, there's evidence. Mel Gibson was evidence of huge abuse towards his wife. If you listen to the tapes of him screaming and roaring at her. And she made an allegation that, I think she, she made an allegation that he hit her, while she was carrying her child,

but, I remember when that news broke, it's about, 2008, and people didn't really, the people who did give a shit, their voices certainly weren't elevated, they weren't loud

people kind of laughed at it and thought oh crazy Mel but no one thought about the victim but Mel Gibson's still making films I just want to know what are the fucking rules it's weird

what is the time limit for massive companies that were founded by the Nazis to still be okay one of the biggest of all is nasa and i know that sounds nuts but there was a post-war thing that they i think it was run by the cia it was called operation paperclip and when world war two ended and the nazis lost there was a scramble to bring the remaining nazis to justice via the

nuremberg trials which were international trials set up to make nazi war criminals account for their crimes and be sentenced accordingly and what operation paperclip was it wasn't set up by the cia actually because the cia hadn't been invented yet but the equivalent of cia was the joint intelligence objectives agency they did this secret operation called operation paperclip where the nazi scientists that had worked on the v2 rockets and the nazis were the first ones to have rocket technology they had these weird rocket bombs called v2s that they used to fire at london in the later part of the war hugely inaccurate but rocket technology so the u.s government smuggled 1600 nazi scientists engineers who had worked on the rocket program brought them all over to america gave every one of them you know brand new american identities erased their history let them live in

the us and these people founded nasa these nazi war criminals put a man on the moon under the american flag um i'm trying to see what i'm gonna get get at. What I want to speak about too is just. Just some of the mad shit that the Nazis did. And I'm not. Saying this stuff to. Normalize the Nazis. Or to make them humorous. Or to make them anecdotal.

It's we're familiar with their utter brutality. But. Just to kind of paint them as they were real lunatics, like. Another bizarre story. Joseph Mengele, who was known as the Angel of Death, he was, I think he was a doctor, a scientist and a doctor,

and Hitler had put him in charge of creating the master aryan race you know but he used to carry out human experiments in the death camps and he was particularly it's not worth noting as well that none of his human experiments as torturous as they were none of his human experiments, as torturous as they were, none of his human experiments, nothing good came from him. No new information came from him. There were pointless acts of fucking torture and dehumanization. When people lined up for the death camp, Mengele would stand in a perfectly white coat with white gloves and that's why they called him the angel of death and he'd stand with his arms out like an angel.

If he saw a set of twins coming into a death camp, he had those twins put aside and would experiment on them because he was obsessed with twins. Kind of torturing them remotely and hurting one twin and seeing if the other one would feel it and shit like that. But Mengele was one of the lads who managed to escape the Nuremberg trials and he fucked off to South America.

But there's a village in Brazil I believe it is so this town in Brazil, Candido Godoy, I think it's called it's got, this is the bizarre thing it's got one of the highest concentrations of twins in the world

dating from the 60s specifically blonde haired blue eyed twins and it's very very odd dating from the 60s, specifically blonde-haired, blue-eyed twins. And it's very, very odd. It's very strange, alright? This is what it veers into conspiracy theory. It is a fact that there is a ridiculous amount of twins in this small town, and they're blonde-haired and blue-eyed. And we know that Joseph Mengele escaped and lived in South America.

And we know that Joseph Mengele escaped and lived in South America. Some are saying that Mengele visited the town quite frequently in the 60s. Started doing genetic experiments on pregnant women. And tried to breed a race of blonde haired blue eyed Aryans. And no one knows what the twin thing is. but the twin thing is what connects it to Mengele because he was obsessed with fucking twins the people living there today like pretty much accept that

yeah Mengele was visiting us in the 60s doing some mad shit he told us that it was to prevent TB but the town crest like it says welcome to the land of the twins. And there's a little museum there about how many twins are in this fucking town.

So how about that for utterly batshit? One thing with the Nazis, Heinrich Himmler in particular, was the utter obsession with this pure mythological Aryan race. And they had this fucking mad kind of bureau or department set up called the Anherbe. And

the shtick was, is that, you know, they would, the Nazi party funded this, absolutely bizarre, pseudo-scientific, historical exhibitions, for Nazi scientists,

and Nazi historians, to travel the world, like looking at, any ancient civilization, that appeared to be, in any way advanced, like they were obsessed with tibet and to try and prove falsely why we'll say tibetans were actually ovarian blood because

they couldn't propagate the myth of arian perfection if other civilizations who are not blonde hair and blue eyed appeared to be historically fucking advanced so this department was set up to prove that and they ended up spending a lot of money uh in search for the yeti and they wanted to find the yeti because because it was like the yeti is like a hominid half ape half human creature that mysteriously wanders around the himalayas in tibet and i think they wanted to find the yeti to further some mad pseudo-scientific theory about human evolution i don't know but they spent a lot of money trying to find the yeti to no avail hitler spent a lot of money on creating children's television

that was designed to brainwash German kids first of its kind to be honest but the plan was is to have extensive extensive TV programming to

once you had this race of young German Aryan children born that you could feed into their heads from the earliest ages through children's television, ideas about Aryan idealism and how they should be and how they should obey the Reich and all this shit. And not just straight propaganda. Like they were looking into literal mind control, hypnosis, putting people into trances,

you know, controlling minds. Hitler became obsessed with a 14th century Dutch painting called Adoration of the Mystic Lamb by Jan van Eyck, one of the Dutch masters, an incredible fucking painter.

Jan van Eyck would be most art historians would kind of credit him as being the first major painter to paint in oils around the 1400s and this it's a particularly bizarre camp painting

it's a big green field and all these angels and bishops and then this sheep and an altar being worshipped hitler was obsessed with this painting hitler got it into his head that this painting was like a world map for holy relics like the holy grail um different artifacts around the world and hitler thought that this painting by Jan van Eyck was a kind of an indication where you could

find these artifacts around the world and once Hitler found these artifacts by using the painting as a map that they would offer the Nazis magical powers so of course he studied the fucking painting told everyone to go to the far reaches

of the fucking art searching for the holy grail and all of this shit utterly utter madness now some people will say it wasn't mad what they were doing is military kind of reconnaissance under the guise of mad historical or artistic programs but i don't think so they were lunatics and it wasn't just the holy grail that hitler was obsessed with he really wanted to find this thing called the spear of destiny which was it's a holy relic which is apparently the actual spear that the romans used to pierce christ's guts when he was hanging on the cross and Hitler wanted that spear so one of the more fucked up crazy plans that had real life uh human impact was a program known as the Liebensborn again the obsession with the Aryan race and to create a master race of Aryans pure blonde hair, pure blue eyes

white skin the Nazis were fascinated and enamoured with the Nordic peoples, people from Sweden and Norway because they're naturally blonde haired and blue eyed and tall they thought these were the true Aryans on the earth

so when Norway was occupied by the Germans and a lot of the men were off fighting they created what were known as the Nazi brides so the Nazis went around villages in Norway and found women that fit the Aryan description then forced them to marry german nazi soldiers who also were considered aryan and they forced them to have kids to create these liebensborn these kids that were pure master race nazi and a lot of them were actually fucking born and if a kid was born. Who wasn't. Blonde hair. Blue eyed. They were just killed. And there was about. 20,000 of these children.

Born. And. When the Nazis. Lost the war. Of course. These kids. Were. Treated like shit.

In Norway. They were demonized. And. Outcast from society. And had really tough. Childhoods. You know. Because they were.

Seen as. The seed of demons and one of these Liebensborn was it's Anna Fried from Abba it's the you're one in Abba who's got the

red hair and she was an actual Liebensborn she was her ma was from Norway and her da was a Nazi forced marriage and she was an actual liebensborn she was her ma was from norway and her dad was a nazi forced marriage and she was one of these kids and even to this day she's part of like a group of other liebensborn where they're trying to just get themselves recognized and to address she had a horrible childhood you know she had a very very tough childhood because of how she was born em

but yeah that's the mad batshit crazy fucking Nazis and that was my hot take that connects a jacket to a Nazi eugenics program that I promised you last week but I was too drunk there was no way I was remembering all that information

on cans, there was remembering all that information on cans. There was a lot of information there. So it's time for the ocarina pause, is it? The ocarina pause, it's a staple of this podcast, where I play a Spanish clay whistle for a short duration of time. And while this clay whistle is playing, there is a chance that a digital advert may be inserted so the ocarina pause it allows you to preempt it so you don't get a shock if you do

hear an advert and if you don't hear an advert then brilliant you get to hear a knockerina. Evil. It's all for you. No, no, don't. The first omen. I believe the girl is to be the mother. Mother of what? Is the most terrifying. Six, six, six. It's the mark of the devil. Hey! Movie of the year.

It's not real, it's not real. What's not real? Who said that? The first omen. Only in theaters April 5th. Will you rise with the sun to help change mental health care forever? Join the Sunrise Challenge to raise funds for CAMH, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health,

to support life-saving progress in mental health care. From May 27th to 31st, people across Canada will rise together and show those living with mental illness and addiction that they're not alone. Help CAMH build a future where no one is left behind. So, who will you rise for? Register today at sunrisechallenge.ca. That's sunrisechallenge.ca. That was the ocarina pause um

what else oh yes so like a lot of this podcast was about just artists artists supporting themselves I'm happy to say for like for what am I at this for 18 years Just artists, artists supporting themselves. I'm happy to say, for, like,

for, what am I at this, for 18 years? 18 years of being a creator of art. For the first time in those 18 years, this year is the first time where I actually know where my income is coming from at the end of the month. I confidently know I'm getting paid at the end of the month and the reason is is because of you the listener via the Patreon account this podcast goes out for free you can listen to this for free but if you enjoy it um a lot of people go I'll give blind boy the price of a pint. Once a month. For fucking five hours of free content.

So if you enjoy the podcast. And you want to keep supporting me. If you enjoy my art. And want to support me financially. Give me the price of a pint. Or the price of a cup of coffee please. On the Patreon account. Which is patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast

and if you don't want to you can't afford it you want to listen to for free keep doing that that's fine anyone can listen it's a voluntary donation it's a soundness model um also please subscribe to the podcast give it a rating leave a review and recommend it to people that's hugely important to me especially if you're not Irish if you're living in England or fucking America

or Canada recommend the podcast on your social media to your friends and let it grow because that's what I want if you're enjoying it and that's how you can kind of genuflect or show a bit of fucking gratitude or back if you're actually enjoying the podcast and if you're not just tell me to fuck off that's fine so what we do now i'm gonna take a few questions off of you so two weeks ago i said to you i'd be

getting a lot of requests for not just for you to be able to ask questions but for like an anonymous agony ant type of thing where you can give me personal problems i don't know who the fuck you are and you know as simple as that so you can say what you want and I couldn't figure out a way to do it so I suggested Snapchat because Snapchat's kind of anonymous because people don't use their real names in it and messages disappear

so I gave you the rubber bandit Snapchat which is rubber bandits1 all lowercase. And amongst the. Willy's boobs. And photographs of drugs. That people just send at one in the morning.

Because that's what snapchat fucking is. There was some actually some. Some. Agony ant type questions in there. Which. I will read so this person, I don't even know

their name so it doesn't matter let's just call him Kevin, Kevin isn't their name could be anything alright bio, here's one for the agony uncle bit I've been with my partner for three years, we have a flat together, we share everything I rely on her a lot

and her on me I think I'm falling out of love with her though I'm looking at others with a view to leaving her but my life would be fucked if I did am I staying with her because I love her or because I need to I reckon I do love her but I'm not sure if we're both happy

and that we are actually good for one another Jesus man let's see can I see what time he sent that fuck there's no time 12.34am ok 12.34am

that to me would suggest a time maybe a couple of cans and a bit of honesty well Kevin or whatever your name is I'd say man you're fucking after answering your own questions there and you're just looking for validation em

I tell you what's not a fucking good thing you know if you're saying that you're staying with somebody because you're kind of financially dependent that you're you know you're living you're staying with somebody because you're kind of financially dependent and you're three years together and you're thinking of fucking other beers and you're saying like

am I staying with her because I love her because I need to they're queer old questions to be asking yourself you know what I would suggest alright

if you don't want to completely fuck it up and throw it away the only rational piece of information the only thing that you can actually do practically is to actually like don't run off with another bior because that completely fucks things up maybe say some shit to her have a talk i like do you talk about this that's the

thing is this a complete silence within you and you're just getting on with your life and you don't actually speak about this or maybe it communicates itself through passive-aggressive arguments and you're unhappy you know what would happen if you actually said this and suggested that maybe if it's possible what if you lived apart for a bit and if you live apart surely will you not know the answer then because then what you're saying there is is i don't know if we're in love, I think I'm dependent on her financially, or she's dependent on me, if you're living apart,

and if you can, maybe give that a lash, three years is a long time, I mean when it comes to fucking, there's only one thing you want, in a partner. No matter what your sex is. Have they got a set of genitals that you're interested in.

And. Are they your best friend. If they didn't have those genitals. Would they be your best friend. If sex was out of the question. Would this person be your best friend. That's the question you've got to ask yourself. And if you can find that, if you can find somebody who is your best friend,

regardless of sex or anything like that, then that's a good thing and you should hold on to that. And another good thing and you should hold on to that and another good thing to look at too because people always try and find other people based on interests and shit you know like oh this person I like punk music and this person

likes punk music too we must definitely get along with each other it doesn't work like that to be honest the only thing that truly unites people it doesn't matter about careers or interests or anything how much time together do you spend laughing all right not poking fun at each other but both collectively roaring laughing right like you would do with a best friend because that's the thing with human friendships like human friendships are the thing that unites people is sense of humor that's what unites friends if you look at you know when you were back in school and your collection of friends

you've all had different interests but your friends group is what do we laugh at together ask yourself that question how much time are you spending laughing about the same shit and did you ever laugh about the same shit um because three years is a long time do you know and if it's just your mickey cop onto yourself if it's literally just. I could be off fucking other beers. Then maybe you're not ready for. A big long relationship. But be cautious.

Be cautious. Someone else's heart and feelings are at stake. So handle it fucking responsibly. And. The worst thing. The worst thing you can be doing is not addressing it. Okay. Not naming it not speaking about it in a compassionate fashion being cautious that you're not hurting the other

person's feelings opening up a genuine dialogue around it so that's name the question what you never said as well as how often are you riding do you know are you are you hardly ever riding each other that's not great name that speak about that don't allow the problem bubble underneath as this unspoken nonsense do you know this silence that sublimates itself into toxic behaviour. Because again, taking it back to transaction analysis, you'd probably just repeat whatever you saw your parents doing. Do you know? But best of luck with that one. Right, I have another anonymous one.

What's the crack? I know I'm a bit late to the party here, but I utterly enjoyed the podcast on ego states a week ago. I relate to you a lot, particularly what you said about being on the lower end of the social groups at 18. I'm turning 19 next week, and over the past year and the past few months in particular, I've been clawing my way out of a toxic friendship whereby others depend and even seek my own poor self-esteem and perceived low social standing. and even seek my own poor self-esteem and perceived low social standing. The self-scripts you spoke about helped me explain why these few people will never see me as their equal, and why my characters threatens their story and their egos.

Now I'm feeling better than ever, and that's largely down to facing the fear that was instilled in me by many sources, including these friendships, such as embarrassment and loneliness i love to hear you speak about fear and its role if any in your road to good mental health love the podcast by the way it's good shit thank you very much for that do you know what i'm fucking glad to hear that the transaction analysis podcast That the Transaction Analysis Podcast has been helping you kind of grow. So what you're asking is, I'd love to hear you speak about fear and its role, if any, in your road to good mental health. Well, it depends what you mean. But what do you mean by fear?

You can find a power in fear, do you know? Now, it's worth noting noting fear is separate to anxiety um it's something i'm going to cover in the future when i do a cognitive behavioral therapy or an emotional intelligence podcast but fear and anxiety are two different things anxiety is what would be classed as an irrational emotion. Anxiety is an over-exaggerated, unnecessary response to a stimulus. It's not based in reality. Fear is an appropriate response because some shit is frightening and fear is how you respond to it. And with healthy and unhealthy emotions, anxiety is unhealthy.

So there's very little value in it, you want to try and eradicate anxiety or not have that as your go-to emotion, but fear, unavoidable, there's power in the healthy emotions, even if they're negative, because fear is negative, you don't want to be fearful all the time, but because it's real and it can often be healthy as a reaction there's power and meaning in it so for me overcoming anxiety for me was about recognizing and acknowledging fearful situations recognizing when fear is an appropriate response to a stimulus um if that was a fear of failure we'll say or a fear of that i'm not using my time properly a fear of not being my best self

what i often do in that situation is always never give in to fear always challenge it now it depends what the fear is I'm not talking about fear as an appropriate response to a physical threat that's different that's when you're in physical danger but if the fear is I will fail. Or I'm afraid to try because I won't be good enough. Always challenge that fear. And ask yourself when you're challenging it. What's the worst that can happen? And it's never as bad as you think it's going to be. And when you challenge a fear.

Even if you make a bollocks of it. And it actually does fuck up. And you do fail. Or you're not as good as you thought you were when you challenge that fucking fear and do it anyway it's a cliche feel the fear and do it anyway every fucking time you do that you grow as a human being you become stronger your self-esteem grows your confidence but always challenge fears when the consequence of it isn't utterly ridiculous. Like if the consequence is losing your fucking job, if the consequence is ending up out on the street or in physical danger,

then assess it a bit more properly. But if the fear is a threat to your self-esteem a threat to your identity a threat to your sense of self then fucking do it do it nothing wrong with that not humiliation but being humbled in fact actively fucking encourage it. Whatever in your life today you are afraid of doing, it could be... Do you know what's a big fear? A big fear that a lot of people have, and I used to have it. Huge thing.

Fear of conflict. Massive thing. And me, over the years, challenging my own fear of conflict has been a massive growth and fear of conflict challenging the fear of conflict is a key component of becoming assertive now what's fear of conflict it's i don't know you're you're one of your housemates isn't doing the dishes you know this is where these passive-aggressive notes come from you know someone in the house I don't know, one of your housemates isn't doing the dishes. You know, this is where these passive-aggressive notes come from, you know?

Someone in the house isn't doing dishes, so you write a note on the fridge. Like, that's an unhealthy response to the emotion of fear. When we write these passive-aggressive notes, I noticed the dishes weren't clean today or whatever you're given into the feeling of fear and it actually makes what you're scared of there is conflict you're scared of going to your housemate and assertively saying to them in person the over text doesn't count because you can text somebody and that again removes yourself from the situation of conflict. But the fear is, I'm going to speak to my housemate and I'm going to approach them about doing the dishes. And what you're scared of is too much emotion coming out.

You're scared of either, I'm afraid of getting too angry or I'm afraid of getting too sad or I'm afraid of it being too awkward. And that can be fucking terrifying because if you don't have a solid grounding and sense of self, that's actually really scary because you don't know how you're going to react. Do it anyway and do it assertively. You know, again, take in the transaction analysis shit that I was talking to. Your person in the house, the person in the house isn't cleaning the dishes you don't go to them and say clean the fucking dishes you go to them and you go look what why why are the dishes not clean i cleaned it three or four times this week use open questioning that's what psychotherapists do you approach the person with a

question uh that doesn't have a yes or no answer and the only answer that person can give is an honest appraisal or reflection of their behavior so why are the dishes in a pile like that and what's the person going to say they can either go complete into their child ego state and say fuck off or they can go i didn't have time and then you say well you know i cleaned the dishes last week would it be okay if you do it this week or do you know what can we work out a system can we work out a system because i think what the problem is here is that we don't really have rules around who should clean the dishes and whatever and i'd hate for it start you know causing a fight between us or something and what you've done there is

you've approached the person in the adult ego state conflict resolution but i guarantee you whoever's listening to this 90 of you have some source of tension in your life with another person and you want to approach them about it, but you're afraid of the conflict, even over something shitty and small. And what you're scared of is bursting into tears or bursting out in anger. And it doesn't have to be that way. out in anger and it doesn't have to be that way actively confront that fear and speak to that person and ground yourself beforehand so you don't get too angry or you don't get too subservient

approach them like an adult and an adult is only concerned with the issue at hand it's not about winning or losing. It's about the fucking dishes. If you do that. Fuck me the rest of your week will feel amazing. I promise you that. But every time you avoid it. And don't embrace the fear of conflict. Every time you avoid that.

You become more and more afraid. And fear of conflict and avoiding it. In my personal experience. Can over time be detrimental for self-esteem because you start to feel like you can't assert yourself with other people and then you start being subservient around them i don't know if i answered that question properly but that's my own little uh thesis on on fear well it's not mine. It's taken from psychology. That's two agony-end questions with long answers.

And we're 73 minutes now, so I'll leave you at that. You gorgeous boys and girls. Enjoy yourselves. Do something nice for yourself this week. Be sound to somebody. Be sound to yourself. Have some crack. I hope you enjoyed this week. Be sound to somebody. Be sound to yourself. Have some crack.

I hope you enjoyed this week's podcast. Either having a clue what next week's podcast will be about. Having a clue. I'll figure it out during the week. Alright. God bless. Thank you. rock city you're the best fans in the league bar none tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation night on saturday april 13th when the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm.

You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com.