The Blindboy Podcast - Sudden Mystery Arse Pain

Episode Date: December 15, 2021

A deep dive art history podcast about the colours red and blue. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Bend heaven in the direction of Bethlehem, you jettisoned Kevins. Welcome to the Blind Buy Podcast. If you're a new listener, maybe go back and listen to some previous episodes. Maybe even begin from the start to familiarise yourself with the lore of this podcast. Because this episode is a bit extreme. This episode is for regular listeners, it's for seasoned Cuevas. So if you're a brand new listener listener this one might be a bit much or maybe not

maybe you're ready for it maybe you want to go bear chest in the midday sun get conkers deep in the steeplechaser sepia so this week's podcast was going to be about a fella called Harris Devere Cole who was from Cork in the Victorian period

and he used to walk around the streets with a cow's udder a cow's udder sticking out of the fly of his pants so it looked like his dick and then when anyone saw it

he'd take out a scissors and chop it off just for his own enjoyment so the podcast was going to be about that but then a very strange sequence of events happened to me earlier this week which has bent the direction of this episode so recently I've started to become interested in baking. Now I was never much into baking. Baking cakes. Cookies or whatever the fuck.

I love cooking. I enjoy cooking. But I was never into baking. Mainly. The mathematics of it used to freak me out. You can't fuck around with baking. You're either correct or you're not. When you're cooking savoury food. When you're cooking a dinner. You can't fuck around with baking. You're either correct or you're not. When you're cooking savoury food, when you're cooking a dinner, you can eyeball things.

But when it comes to baking food, you have to be exact, you have to measure things, and you've got to be correct. Or you'll make a bollocks of whatever the fuck you're baking. A couple of days ago, I wanted to make a red velvet cake. Red velvet cake is fantastic. It's red, very vibrant, a very violent cake. It's got layers of quite simple sweet sponge. It looks red, but it doesn't taste like red. And then it has lovely layers of like a buttered frosting in between

but I didn't want to make a red velvet cake I wanted to make a blue velvet cake which is essentially the same thing as a red velvet cake it tastes the exact same except it's blue now I wanted to make a blue velvet cake as an homage to the David Lynch film blue velvet and also the song of the same name from the 1950s so I'm like fuck it I'm making a blue velvet cake so I did I took it upon myself to make a blue velvet cake now it's worth noting while I was making this cake in the daytime I had an appointment like an hour later a couple of weeks ago

no maybe a couple of months ago I spoke to you about I want to get a driver's license I want to get a driver's license just to have one so I did my driver theory test. I passed it. Thank fuck.

And then I found out. In order to get a fucking driver's license in Ireland now. A provisional. You also have to have this thing called a public services card. Which I didn't know about. So as soon as I passed my driver's theory test. I applied for the public services card which means that I'd have to go to the dole office in Limerick with like a birth cert and a passport

and apply for my public services card and only then can I get my driver's license so I had the appointment I've been put on a fairly long waiting list because of COVID, but the appointment was there. But like an hour or two previous to this appointment, I was making this blue velvet cake in my kitchen. Now, part of making this blue velvet cake, so I was making the batter for the sponge, right? So I was making the batter for the sponge, right?

And essentially all you're doing is making this sweet, spongy batter, and then you add food colouring to the batter. Normally it's red to make red velvet cake, but I was adding blue food colouring. Now as I'm doing this, I receive a very unannounced sudden sharp pain in my rectum now this pain which I I've always called it sudden mystery arse pain or SMAP if you enjoy acronyms

it's a pain that I get in my arse about once a year completely unannounced for as long as I can remember just out of nowhere once a year I just get this this stabbing pain in my arse for like two seconds a pain so extreme that like I have to catch my breath and then effectively run away from my own arse. This happened while I was making the blue velvet cake and then I walloped my head off the cooker hood. Quite painfully, quite sore.

Now the thing with sudden mystery arse pain. For years and years and years I thought that this was just me. I thought I have, there's something going on with my anus, whereby once a year, I just get this mad sharp pain that makes me go, and then I have to run away, run away from my own arse. And then I have to run away. Run away from my own arse. And it's the type of thing that. You don't know how to vocalize it.

Or say it to another person. And you kind of don't want to. Like all my life. I never wanted to say it to someone. Do you ever get a sudden pain in your arse? So bad. Like a knife. So bad. That you have to run away from your own hole.

Does that ever happen to you? I never said that to another human, ever. Because it's such a strange, sudden, quick experience. And it's so intense that after it happens, you kind of don't believe that it just happened. I entertained the idea of like a ghost sticking something up my arse, like when I was younger I went there and you don't want to say it to another person in case they go no no I've never gotten that I've never gotten that that must be there's that must be unique to your rectum and your rectum

alone you weird cunt so I never said it it was once a year I didn't know when it was going to happen I just kept it to myself and then one day I was in college and it happened to me in front of a buddy, a buddy from Cork

and he was watching me and he just suddenly saw me just go and run away and he came up me and he just suddenly saw me just go and run away and he came up to me immediately afterwards and he'd recognised what it was and he said to me did you just get that pain that pain in your arse

that happens out of nowhere that mad arse pain and then I went yeah you know about this and then he goes yeah I get that too and then he said to me, in his Cork accent, What's the point of that?

Why does that exist? Why? What's it for? There's no reason for that to exist. And it felt amazing because I knew, alright, okay, I'm not alone in sudden mystery arse pain. My buddy's getting it. I feel like I've got an ally.

So now we start asking our other pals, do you ever get that sudden pain in your arse that makes you catch your breath? The fuck is that? And then they start going, yeah, yeah, yeah, Jesus, what the fuck is that? You get that too? And now we're having this open discussion about SMAPs.

And I realized that it was like almost a universal human experience. And I realised that it was like. Almost a universal human experience. And I thought about it more this week. Because this is the first time it actually resulted in an injury. Because what I always wondered about. Sudden mystery arse pain. Is. Like.

Someone must have died. From that. Like. And I guarantee you. You're listening to this podcast. I'd say 95% of you know exactly what I'm talking about. With this sudden mystery arse pain. I guarantee you.

But like. Someone must have got it. While they were standing on the edge of a cliff. Admiring the view. And out of nowhere. They just go. And then jump off the cliff or in front of a bus

or in World War I and they're hiding in a trench and then the sudden mystery arse pain comes on and they go and get shot or what if there's like a famous plane crash

and no one knows what happens no one can tell why did the plane crash what And no one knows what happens. No one can tell. Why did the plane crash? What happened? What if the pilot just got sudden mystery arse plane and that was it? Nosedive. Everybody dead. It has to have happened.

And the person isn't around to tell us that that's what went wrong. I got that sudden unannounced pain in my rectum that feels like I'm being stabbed in the hole and I did some mad shit. Now this podcast, this episode isn't specifically about sudden mystery arse pain but it happened to me and it derailed my week. It does have a name by the way it's called Proctalgia Fugax. I can't pronounce it. Which is quite fitting. I shouldn't be able to pronounce it. It's too mysterious. It's too mysterious. But basically

you look up the definition. It's a severe episodic pain in the region of the rectum and the anus. And it can be caused by cramping and it's just something that happens to all people some people can develop it as a condition and it's happens a lot and it's debilitating but for most of us it just happens quite rarely there is statistics to say that it happens more in women than it does in men but they also point out that they don't know because they think it's the type of thing that men are men are more likely

not to go to a doctor about probably probably men think does this mean I'm gay does this mean I'm gay if I get a sudden pain in my arsehole is the universe telling me to put things in there? Have I just received some type of interdimensional penis? So that sounds about right to me in terms of the toxic masculinity we're raised in and the general anxiety around the male anus as a sight.

But it's called Proctalgia Fugax and I get it like at the same frequency I get birthdays. So here's what happened to me this week. This is why I'm speaking about sudden mystery arse pain. This is why I'm speaking about baking a blue velvet cake. So I was making this blue velvet cake in my kitchen

doing fantastically about to make the batter and in my hand was an open bottle of blue food colouring because that's how you make blue velvet cake it's a pretty straight forward cake you've got cocoa powder

eggs, flour, bit of salt, and then blue food colouring to make it blue. Then I get the pain in my arse. The sudden pain. I attempt to escape from my own rectum. I jerk my head forward. I hit my head. Off the corner of the cooker hood.

Which was right beside me. And then now I've injured my head. So I put my hand up. To my head. To check if I'm bleeding. Because it's really sore. And then I go oh no fuck it feels wet. But it wasn't wet from blood.

It was wet from blue food colouring so I basically like mashed blue food colouring into my forehead and it dripped down my face and blue food colouring is not easy to get out of skin. It takes a while. So I dyed my face blue, effectively. Now, I don't wear my plastic bag in, like, everyday life. That's just when I'm on stage and shit. So I had a blue handprint on my face, tried to wash it off.

I got about 70 or 80% of it off with vigorous scrubbing but the rest of it was just like nah this is blue food colouring on the skin on your face and it's kind of going to stay there now for a couple of hours or maybe even a day and if I scrub anymore

I might actually injure my skin now as I mentioned I had that fucking appointment for the public services card in like two hours and this is like this is a serious government appointment thing this is this is me going to the dole office with a birth cert and a passport to get effectively official government identity so these people don't fuck around like i'm getting my public services card so i can get a driver's license but i've been on the dole back in the recession and i remember going to the fucking dole office and there's not a lot of room for laughter there it's a it's a very serious space also i i'm pretty sure when you go for

your public services card like they take your photograph there and then so that you're there it's definitely you i'm pretty sure i would have had to get my photograph taken there and then with a blue face so i'm like i'm not i'm just not I can't turn up here with a fucking blue handprint on my face that won't come off. Also, my anxiety kind of started to kick in. And sometimes when my anxiety kicks in, my imagination turns against me. So I started to think like, this is a really serious interview where I have to get my national government identity card essentially so if I turn up with like blue food colouring

on my face the person is just going to think what are you hiding? what are you hiding? and then they're going to be like he's covering something up on his face he's got a birthmark or a tattoo and he's covering it with blue ink

and he's not who he says he is. Call the police. Sudden arse pain. Baking a cake. This doesn't add up. You're faking your identity. And then it's all over the papers that I'm turning up to the dole office in Limerick

and dying my face blue. So no, not a fucking hope. Cancelled it. I didn't up to the dole office in Limerick and dying my face blue so no, not a fucking hope, cancelled it I didn't want to do it so I cancelled the appointment and now I'm back on this long waiting list, this COVID waiting list to fucking

get my public services card so that's what happened to me this week and I'm not going to say it was upsetting because I'm'm aware how ridiculous it is. And I'm laughing at it. It's just a mild inconvenience. But it certainly derailed what I intended to do with the podcast this week. So like when I was trying to get the food coloring off my face.

Like the first thing I started doing obviously was googling. When I was washing it I'm like right this isn't coming off this is like a stain I go on to google how the fuck do I get food coloring off my face few people were saying use toothpaste I tried that it wasn't working there was still this stain there and it actually it led me down an interesting rabbit hole

about pigmentation and colours and this is a kind of continual theme on this podcast I've done about three podcasts about the importance and history of colours not just colours within

art but the symbolism of colours and also we take colours for granted now but throughout history they're the only colour you'd see really is in nature but humans finding pigments for certain colours and and for these effectively to work as paints and dyes that took hundreds of years a lot of discovery a lot of ingenuity like i did a podcast this year i believe called lobster purple if you want to go back and listen to that where it's an entire podcast about the history and importance of the color purple and i spoke about how purple as a pigment was really discovered by the ancient Greeks.

It was a colour known as Tyrian purple. It came from the arse of a type of snail around Greece. And this industry of this purple dye, Tyrian purple, was very closely guarded by the Greeks. And it was quite exclusive. And only the wealthiest people could afford to buy clothes that were dyed in Tyrian purple so purple became associated with royalty

so to this day when you think of royalty and you think of purple as a luxurious thing it's because of this fucking snail's arse thousands of years ago in Greece there's one example of a podcast I've done on pigments and colours and the importance of them in human history and culture and this incident of getting the blue on my face when I started googling I started to think to myself like afterwards when it came off it came

off after about four or five hours I was actually fine that evening it was gone I started to think if I'd have accident if I was making instead of evening, it was gone, I started to think, if I'd have accident, if I was making, instead of making blue velvet cake, if I'd have been making red velvet cake, and it had been red dye that got all over my face, like, would I have been more comfortable going into the, the dole office to get my public services card, I probably would have, to get my public services card I probably would have because you know red is red is present on the human face it wouldn't be that obvious

they'd probably still tell me to fuck off and wouldn't take my photograph if I had red dye on my face but I started to look at red food colouring and I found something really interesting which is most of the red food colouring. And I found something really interesting, which is most of the red food colouring that we consume today,

whether it be in our foods or even in things like lipstick, most things that we consume into our bodies that are red, it's actually made from the crushed up bodies of this little insect called a cockniel. So if you're not into the concept or idea of eating insects most of us do it every day in some shape or form if you consume food that has red food coloring in it. The specific e-number for this color is is e120. So if you look at the ingredients of any processed food that you have, and you look up E120, you're eating the crushed up bodies of these tiny little insects called Cockniel.

So as soon as I hear that, I'm like, wow, that's interesting. So I want to find out more about this. I want to find out at what point did humanity decide the best way to get the colour red is to crush up a load of these little insects where does that come from, how did it start what's the history of it now when it comes to colours

and human beings discovering colours like I said we take this shit for granted. We now live in a modern society where we're surrounded by colours in print media, in television, in everything. This wasn't always the case. There was a poverty of colours throughout history, colours that we could use.

But the easiest colours, like if you go back to cave paintings so you're talking 50 000 years ago now the earliest humans when humans would draw on caves if you look at the color palette that humans had they had blacks browns kind of yellowish and reds so in general any color that you can kind of take out of the ground those were the most ubiquitous colors in human art the ones that were easiest to get also they were the cheapest if you look at the paintings of most artists from about 1400 onwards you look at the early paintings of like Leonardo da Vinci. When the artist is young you'll notice that the paintings are very much using these arty colours.

Browns, blacks, ochres, maybe a bit of green. Like black came from charcoal, burnt wood, so you didn't need a lot of money as a painter to have access to that. Then your browns and your ochre-y colours, they come from clay, they come from the earth. And then even something close to red, a reddish colour would come from rust if you just have access to iron and that iron comes in contact with oxygen.

You've got iron oxide oxide you've got rust now you have your kind of browny reds but what you didn't see is a lot of blues a lot of bright yellows a lot of bright reds because these were expensive colors that you needed a lot of money to have access to so if you look at a renaissance painter's career someone like Raphael you look at a Renaissance painter's career, someone like Raphael, you look at the later paintings of Raphael when he had someone paying for his paints, you're going to see lots of bright reds, bright blues, bright yellows. Because, again I did a full podcast on blue before, but the bright blue in Renaissance painting came from a precious stone called lapis lazuli that you could only find in a certain part of Afghanistan. So blue was more expensive than gold. This is why most of the paintings of Holy Mary, her robe is in blue

because this was the most expensive colour you could use. Bright yellow was incredibly expensive. It could only be got from India. They used to get cows and the cows would only eat a diet of mangoes and then the cows piss, gallons and gallons, tons of it

would be distilled and dried so you just got a tiny little bit of yellow, so yellow was really expensive and then red the type of really bright, vibrant red that jumps out from the canvas like the one that would be used to paint someone's bright red tunic or the if there was a painting where someone was injured and they're bleeding the type of red that was used for that blood

that came from these insects the cockneyl insects that were ground up it was very expensive and these are the same insects that are ground up today that we eat that's in our food coloring but the discovery of these insects and the red this was really really important historically so I mentioned previously and I covered it in depth in a podcast called Lobster Purple I spoke about how purple was in terms of dyeing fabrics for a long time purple was the most exclusive color that you could have if you were very wealthy very posh if you wanted to connote status about yourself if you were royal you wore a tunic or a robe that was dyed this tyrian purple now this purple was very tightly controlled by the greeks and then the Romans they controlled the harvesting of the colour purple

from these murex snails these sea snails that were native to like parts of Turkey and Lebanon so the Greeks

and the Romans controlled this industry where they have control of all the purple so if you are posh anywhere in fucking Europe and you want to wear a purple tunic,

then you have to buy it from the Greeks and the Romans. And this is how it was for the best part of a thousand years. Purple was the most important colour. But then, in 1453, you had the fall of Constantinople. Now, Constantinople was the seat of the Byzantine Empire. We know Constantinople today as Istanbul, it's Turkey. But the Byzantine Empire was like the late Roman Empire. It was like the Eastern Roman Empire and it was Christian.

So within the Byzantine Empire in Constantinople, you had this thriving industry of producing the color purple, purple pigment and purple dyes, and an outright monopoly over the color purple. That's what you had in Constantinople. But in 1453, Constantinople is taken over by the Ottoman Turks. The Ottomans were Muslim and they basically conquer Constantinople. And what they do is, because they're conquering, they want to not only conquer this entire region, not only make it Muslim,

but part of that means destroying the ideology and the symbolism and the things that that culture would hold important. So one of the things they went for was the industry of creating purple dye. So the Ottomans went in and said, alright, okay, I see you're making all this purple shit and this means royalty and it's what the Christians are wearing, it's what the popes are wearing, the cardinals are wearing. Well then fuck purple. We're the Ottomans, we're Muslim, fuck purple. So to destroy all these murex farms where these little snails are being harvested for their purple, the Ottomans just get rid of them all,

kill the entire industry overnight and now you no longer have access to this purple so what does this mean it means by 1453 royalty across Europe and in particular the Roman Catholic Church can no longer have their bishops cardinals and the pope wearing purple tunics because the industry doesn't exist anymore so they have to find a new color to symbolize power and status and royalty and they go for crimson and you'll see this reflected in the paintings of the time you see earlier paintings of popes and they're wearing purple robes and then after 1453 they start wearing these bright crimson robes so purple is no longer the royal important colour

now it's this bright fucking crimson but it's very difficult to come by to get a bright vibrant red dye that sticks to fabrics in 1453 is very difficult there's only a few places in Europe where you can actually do it because these little

cocknail insects a small community community of them exist in poland and i think around romania so the amount of bright red crimson dye that's available to europe at that time is fucking tiny so for a brief period red becomes incredibly rare and only accessible to the wealthiest of people in europe and purple is practically gone in the meantime what happens the great nations of europe quote-unquote discover quote-unquote america right so the spanish in particular who were very brutal, horrible colonizers found themselves over in Mexico. And when they get to Mexico and they see the ancient civilizations of the Aztecs and the Mayans the first thing the Spaniards start to notice when they look around is

fuck me, look at all the reds that they have here. I have never seen a red so vibrant so deep, so bright this is the most beautiful red I have ever seen in my life and the Spaniards first encountered this in Mexico around 1500

so it turns out that the indigenous people of Mexico just like the Greeks and the Romans in Europe and in Turkey and Lebanon just like they had this thriving industry with this little Murex sea snail

where they're getting the most beautiful purple that you've ever seen over in Mexico the indigenous populations there have been doing that for years with the colour red so in Mexico there's this cactus called a prickly pear cactus. And these insects, the cockniels, they're parasites on this cactus.

And what the Mayans and the Aztecs realized is when a prickly pear cactus gets infested with these cocknail insects these tiny little insects when the insects feel threatened as a defense mechanism these cocknail insects they shoot out stuff called carminic acid right and this acid is the brightest red you've ever seen and it serves as a deathly warning to any animal who wants to try and eat these cockneels. They shoot out a red so bright that it terrifies any animal away. And the Aztecs and the Mayans figured out, fuck it, that's a nice red. So they start to grow these prickly pear cactuses, deliberately introduce these insects on them and now they start harvesting the carminic acid, the red that these insects

are spitting out. Carminic acid is where we get the word carmine from. If you think of carmine as a deep red, that's where it comes from. So the Spanish conquer Mexico and after they conquer Mexico, the Spanish start exporting all this ground up cockney red insects so now by 1520 the Spanish have this secret red and everyone in Europe the Brits the Germans everyone is going what the where the fuck are the Spanish after getting this red from they have the best red that we've ever seen this is blowing our minds, and this is the cockney insect, this is that ground up cockney insect, this changes art, it changes clothes, the west, Europe now has access to a red that we've never seen before, but the Spanish are aware of, well alright, well the fucking, the Pope is after deciding now, since the fall of Constantinople, that red is the holy colour.

Because the Pope has decided it, all the royal people have decided that red is now the colour of royalty, so the Spanish start to capitalise. They keep this thing a dead secret. They only sell red in ground up powder. Nobody knows how they're doing it, what it is. All they know is that the fucking Spanish cunts are holding on to this and they'll sell it to you but they won't tell you how they got it. Like the exact same as with the Greeks and the Romans and the purple. Controlling this colour like a monopoly.

Think of it today like oil. Think of the countries. Think of the wars and the tension that happens in the Middle East because certain countries are like, this is our oil and we control who we sell it to and at what price. Look at the hassle that America puts itself through, practically colonising all of the Middle East so that it can control the oil.

Look at the aggression that America has towards Iran because Iran doesn't play ball with its oil the way America wants it to, well imagine that except now it's about the colour red in the 1500s in Europe and the Brits used to go mad

for this red, like you think of the Williamite conquest of Ireland you know the vision of the red coats you think of the Williamite conquest of Ireland you know the vision of the red coats you think of British soldiers from like 1500-1600 onwards the American colonial period they're all wearing red coats like where do you think they're getting the red

well the thing was is that the Spanish used to withhold the pigment the red pigment from the Brits because they weren't getting along with each other so the Brits would have to weren't getting along with each other. So the Brits would have to get a shittier quality red from different sources, and most of the British soldiers with the red coats,

the red of their coats wasn't actually a nice red, it was like an earthy red, and only British officers had access to the cockneyl Bright Carmine Red from this insect because the Spanish were holding on to it or charging too high a price. And the Brits used to use pirates essentially. The Brits would use pirates to rob Spanish ships of this red dye. And the rest of Europe was trying to figure out what was it. Now the story of this Cockney red dye takes a bit of a, quite a dark

turn. So before I get into it I think it's time for the Ocarina pause. I don't have the Ocarina this week. I don't even want to go into it. I just I keep forgetting to bring it. I finished the podcast and I keep forgetting to bring the Ocarina down and it's upstairs.

So we've got... Do you know, I needed a break from the ocarina. I don't mind doing without the ocarina for a couple of weeks. I've got my shaker. So let's have a shaker pause. You're going to hear an advert for something while I play this shaker. On April 5th...

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big corporate podcasts and the smaller more passionate podcasts are getting buried. Also, because it's coming up to Christmas, I should probably plug my two books. Over the past four years, I've written two collections of short stories, The Gospel of Cardinal the Blind Boy and Boulevard Wren. And they're in bookshops. So if you know someone who listens to this podcast and you want to get them a little gift,

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half eight, twitch.tv forward slash the blind boy podcast. So back to this, this red, the cockney red that the Spanish had a monopoly over. From 1520 onwards. The other nations of Europe. It was like. Not only were they pissed off. That the Spanish controlled this colour. They were denied that.

It was just the best colour they'd ever seen. So you can't just go. Let's pick a new colour for royalty and for potpourri it's like this is the best colour so we have to go with this and we hate the fact that the Spanish control it

so all the other nations of Europe tried their best to find out how are the Spanish getting this red what is it, where does it come from they the Brits tried to say that it came from a thing called warm berry so they managed to get this raw cockney powder and they could see all these little things that they believed were berries but they weren't berries they were the

the eggs of the cockney insect and it wasn't until 1720 so that's more than 200 years later that what happened was they figured out all right okay so it's this little insect that lives on a cactus that comes from mexico so then what happens is the other european nations start to take advantage of the places that they're colonizing they get their hands on a few of these cactuses and some of these insects. Now you have the Spanish, the Portuguese, the French, growing and harvesting the cactus and the cockney insect in places like North Africa, Java in Indonesia, in the Canary Islands. So red now is available to all of Europe.

It's no longer just a Spanish monopoly, this particular vibrant red. But it's still incredibly expensive, even by 1720. It's been slightly democratised, it's not as expensive as it was, it's out of Spanish hands completely, but it's a bit cheaper,

but still mad expensive. So what happens in around 1704, and this is really interesting, Cockneel Red is so in demand and still so expensive that there's a dye maker, right? A professional dye maker called Called Johann Jacob Diesbach. A German. And he. Tries to set about. Not necessarily making counterfeit.

Cocknail but. Kind of stretching the cocknail out. Trying to make more of it. He's engaging in. An early form of chemistry. So Diesbach. Right. He mixes. He's engaging in an early form of chemistry. So D's back, right? He mixes, he gets ground up cockney red, mixes it with potash,

which is a type of, like a potassium salt, potash and then iron sulfate, and he mixed these things together. And instead of getting what he expects, which is basically stretching out the red to make a cheaper version of it what happens is that it turns blue so the cockney now because he added potash and iron sulfate becomes blue a chemical reaction occurs and it's this really deep blue that he's never seen before now he gets it into his head that he's uncovered an ancient form of blue. Now here's the thing with fucking blue.

Like blue was one of the rarest colours. Blue was really hard to come by. Right, as a pigment. I mentioned before about ultramarine or lapis lazuli. Most blue in dyes and paintings came from this incredibly rare gem. This stone from Afghanistan that was as rare as diamonds. That's where blue came from. It was the most expensive colour you could use.

That's why Holy Mary was painted blue. Expensive colour you could use. That's why Holy Mary was painted blue. And this fella. Deesback. Is after synthesising. A type of blue. From.

Cockney red. And he's like what the fuck is this. What's going on here. Because chemistry hadn't really been invented. But what he'd done there. Is he'd created the world's first. Synthetic pigment. Like. invented but what he'd done there is he'd created the world's first synthetic pigment like quite a lot of the pigments we use today all the colors we see around us in today's world they're synthetic they're made from chemistry they don't have to be extracted from the earth

they're not prized commodities anymore so dees back by fucking around with cockneyl accidentally created the world's first synthetic pigment and that color was called prussian blue prussian blue revolutionized color dye everything because now the world could see if you understand this thing called chemistry and elements, you can actually make your own colours. This is how fucked up blue is throughout human history. First off, there's a theory about Greek poetry that when you analyse ancient Greek poetry, there's no mention of the colour blue whatsoever. And there's a theory that the Greeks didn't see blue so there were no blue flowers there were no blue trees there were no blue birds the only blue that existed in the Greek world was the sky and the sea so if only the sky

and the sea are blue then you don't need a word for the colour blue. You only need a word for the colour blue when there's multiple examples of it in your environment. So some people claim that blue didn't even exist in Greece, let alone a pigment for it. But what we do know is the Egyptians had blue. The Egyptians, thousands of years beforehand, had a blue pigment. Now I mentioned there that your man Deesback, he's credited with discovering the first ever synthetic pigment Prussian blue. But when he discovered it, he believed that he'd actually rediscovered the ancient Egyptian blue. So the Egyptians had a type of blue called Egyptian blue or ceruleum I think they called it

but this is actually considered the real first synthetic pigment that the Egyptians had figured out but then the recipe for making this blue just disappeared so blue died with the Egyptians and wasn't rediscovered for more than a thousand years.

And the only other source of it was this lapis lazuli, incredibly rare precious stone that you had to grind down. But by the 1730s, after the German Diesbach discovered Prussian blue, the formula had become kind of widely known. Prussian blue the formula had become kind of widely known and then all of a sudden now we entered the world of synthetic pigments and Prussian blue became incredibly affordable and it changed the art

world and what becomes really interesting is Holy Mary is still being painted quite a bit but now Holy Mary's robes, for about 500 years, were always only painted using this lapis lazuli, the really, really expensive blue stone

that was more expensive than gold. Now she's being painted in Prussian blue. She's being painted in this really cheap, synthetic pigment. Prussian blue wasn't just being painted in this really cheap. Synthetic pigment. Prussian blue wasn't just being used. As a paint and a dye. And as something affordable. The fact that it had been discovered. The fact that it had been synthesized.

Created like. A revolution in chemistry. Chemistry was emerging as a new science. So now. By 1782 you've got this new emerging science of chemistry there's this German chemist

who's messing around with Prussian blue in his laboratory and he figures out he can reduce Prussian blue to a salt and to an acid but while he's fucking around with Prussian blue to a salt and to an acid. But while he's fucking around with Prussian blue, he creates this new acid. And this acid is called hydrogen cyanide.

A deadly fucking poison. So let's look back there at that little journey. Purple was the colour in the early Middle Ages. Then Constantinople gets taken over purple's gone, fuck that red becomes the new colour you get this new red from Mexico

that the Spanish bring over these crushed up little insects in the 1700s a German fella's going how do I make it cheaper he accidentally synthesises Prussian blue from these little insects. And now Prussian blue has been synthesized into the acid hydrogen cyanide, which is no longer a color. It's a deadly poison. This is where things take kind of a really dark turn. Prussian blue is quite a controversial colour.

It's a beautiful colour. If you ever see, like, if someone ever handed you a set of oil paints, Prussian blue will always stand out because of its transparency. It's a deep blue, but also with a little bit of green turquoise emerald in there it's an absolutely beautiful blue but the reason Prussian blue is controversial is it's a central

tenet of Holocaust denial you see the discovery of Prussian blue is what led to the development of the gas chambers of Nazi Germany, which was used for the genocide of 6 million Jewish people. Hydrogen cyanide is also known as Prussic acid

because it comes from Prussian blue. And this was developed into a pesticide, which was used in America for spraying trees in like the late 1800s. This hydrogen cyanide was made into a pesticide called Zyklon B. Now in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, as we all know, there were extermination camps where Jewish people, disabled people, Romani gypsies were sent to the gas chambers

but what these these were basically rooms where this powdered Zyklon B was poured in, it was like a dust and Zyklon B was prussic acid and what would happen in one of these gas chambers

after all the Zyklon B was spread to kill the people within it because it effectively came from Prussian blue the walls of these extermination places would start to develop a residue of Prussian blue

so the insides of these places became blue so this beautiful colour the first synthesised pigment which was used to create art to create beauty to improve humanity this beautiful Prussian blue which replaced the lapis lazuli blue of Holy Mary's

robes was now what would appear as residue on the walls when millions of people were being gassed to death. And the reason Prussian blue is now such a very controversial colour is because in the 1980s there was Holocaust deniers. There still are Holocaust deniers. People who, anti-Semitic people, who believe in a conspiracy theory that the Holocaust didn't happen. And in the 1980s in particular, this group of Holocaust deniers went to extermination camps and studied the walls of some of them and said, well, these walls don't have evidence of Prussian blue. I can't see any Prussian blue on these walls.

Therefore, this gas was not used. And it turned out to be, be like not very scientific at all. And Prussian blue isn't present all the time. But one of the fellows who made that claim as well went to jail because Holocaust denial is a crime. But it's why Prussian blue as a colour is tarnished. It's tarnished. It's controversial. This colour that was once a bright celebration of life, the robes of Holy Mary, now symbolises genocide. So that's what this week's podcast.

And that all came about because i accidentally dyed my face blue with blue food coloring and then i started to think about red food coloring and to this day to this day red food coloring is made with the cocknail insect and then you might be asking why why are we eating crushed up insects why is it all the red food coloring crushed up insects because i believe we used to have red food coloring that came from synthetic pigments but it wasn't safe for human consumption so making red pigment from these crushed up insects is actually safe for human consumption and that's why we still do it today i hope you enjoyed that journey as much as i enjoyed researching it so i'm

gonna sign off now dog bless i'll be back with a podcast next week it'll be the 22nd of december i believe just before christmas i don't know what next week's podcast is going to be about I hope you all have charming days, charming evenings don't let the weather get you down too much hopefully we won't get further restrictions keep yourself safe so I'm going to sign off now

and say goodbye I'm going to do what I usually do I'm going to have a brief little pause and afterwards I'll come back with a song from my never ending video game musical that I do live on Twitch but if you're not interested in that, if you're not into music

you can just say goodbye now and you don't have to listen and if you are interested, just stick around after the break and you can hear a little bit of music that i wrote rock city you're the best fans in the league bar none tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation night on saturday april 13th when the toronto rock hosts the rochester nighthawks at first ontario center in hamilton at 7 30 p.m 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. so this is a new segment in the podcast that i've been doing the past uh few weeks and i've been getting really good feedback from it so thank you so much so basically what i've been doing for the past year or so i started live streaming on a website called Twitch right when lockdown happened now Twitch live streaming generally what it is is you play a video game online while an audience is watching you do it but I wanted to do something that allowed me to be a bit more creative than just doing that so I started a project. I call it Hyper Real Songwriting. So what I do basically is once a week I go on to Twitch,

twitch.tv forward slash TheBlindBuyPodcast, and people turn up and watch me, and I play a video game called Red Dead Redemption 2, which is a video game, but it's also a huge open world digital map of America in the 19th century that you can just walk around. And random things can happen in the game. The artificial intelligence of the universe of this game is pretty advanced. So it allows for random things to happen. And it can feel like walking around in real nature like a real world so what I do is I have a lot of musical instruments with me in the real world and I have recording equipment

and I have production equipment so I play a video game but as I'm playing it instead of commenting on what's happening I make up songs in the moment and write record and produce them in the moment as improvised music what an audience is watching and participating and the reason I do this is it's hyper real songwriting I'm not writing songs to the real world I'm writing songs to a digital environment and it's participatory art which is about the process rather than the finished piece so I'm going to play a song now that I would have written about six months ago on Twitch this song is called there's a man in Longford town in the video game i was in a canoe i was in a canoe going up a river and something about the imagery just this image came into my head of what if this man

is going up the river to longford because he heard the man in longford was saying mean things about his sister and also he believes that jesus christ is present with him in the canoe. So him and Jesus Christ are going up to Longford to kick a fella's head in outside a chip shop. And this just came into my head in the moment. So I whipped out my guitar and this song is what came out. So the song you're about to hear was improvised, made up on the spot in the moment,

mixed and produced in the moment, because that's what this project is. So here you go. There's a man in Longford town. There's a man in Longford outside a chipper And he said some bad things about my sister So myself and Jesus Christ are going up the river To Longford Town, gonna beat a man right into his skull

There's a man in Longford Town who said some things about my sister There's a man in Longford Town who won't be long for this world. There's a man in Longford town who has some things to say about my sister. There's a man in Longford town who won't be in this world for very long cause myself and Jesus Christ are in the river. Went up the Shannon to go to Longford Town Gonna find a man and his name is Declan Kinsella Declan Kinsella has got a fine big head of red curly hair Declan Kinsella was talking shit about my sister Man in Longford Town has something to say about my sister A man in Longford Town I'm going to kill Gonna string him up on

the GAA pitch, gonna string him up like the Lord, I'm gonna string him up on the GAA pitch, oh, there's a man in Longford Town who isn't long for this world tonight, there's a man in Longford Town, I'm gonna hit him in the face with a pint glassasp There's a man in Longford town who hasn't got too long for this world There's a man in Longford town who's got some things to say about my sister A man in Longford town who has some things to say about my sister A man in Longford town who has some things to say about my sister There's a man in Longford town, he's got some things to say and he's on a train There's a man in Longford Town He's got some things to say And he's on a train There's a man in Longford Town

I'm gonna kill him Cause Jesus Christ is in my boat Oh Jesus Christ is in this boat Myself and Jesus Christ Are looking at keys On a train on a bridge Myself and Jesus Christ Are on a boat

Up to Longford Town They've got fine chips in there And the chips in there and the chips in the chipper. I want a big bag of chips with salt and vinegar, salt and vinegar, a big old bag of chips and for the Lord. In the chipper in Longford Town with Jesus Christ and it's 4 a.m. and the two of us are famished from the night. And Jesus Christ, he asked the man, he says, can I have a cheeseburger? But will you take out the cheese?

And I said to Christ, I said to Christ, no, that's no cheeseburger. It's a hamburger. And he says to me, it's a cheeseburger without the cheese. There's a man in Longford Town who has some things to say about my sister. A man in Longford Town and he wants to be long. And I'm sitting with Jesus Christ in the

chipper now in Longford Town and he's eating a cheeseburger without the cheese. And Jesus Christ went out the door and he's eating a cheeseburger without the cheese and jesus christ went out the door and he saw punch's pilot and he went up to punch's pilot and stuck a pint glass in his face and jesus christ was outside the chipper up in langford town seen punch's pilot on the road and I went up to Pontius Pilate and said there is a man over there you might recognize him from long ago and Jesus Christ he had a pint of bulmers and he threw it on the ground and he went up to Pontius Pilate and twisted the pint glass in his face when the blood came out of the face

of Pontius Pilate Jesus Christ laughed at him and said he's a girl.