The Blindboy Podcast - Sugar Push

Episode Date: October 31, 2018

A hot take on the History of Sugar and Rum Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Bola bus, you brosing juice cruisers. How's your hopes? Are ye a pack of cozy cunts? Welcome to episode number 56 of the Blind Boy Podcast. It's the 31st of October, Halloween. Ea ha ha wan. Eitha ha-wan Halloween of course a globally celebrated holiday that has Irish origins comes from the Irish festival of Samhain could have done a Halloween episode but

just didn't want to yeah it is an Irish fucking holiday interestingly the jack-o'-lantern you know carving things that's the mad thing actually all the Irish people

carving shit into pumpkins you know carving jack-o'-lantern faces into pumpkins and putting them up on social media in Ireland and it's so ironic because

where that tradition comes from is that's an ancient Irish tradition Irish people used to carve faces into turnips you know and Jack O' Lantern

I might be wrong with this now first off in Ireland he wasn't called Jack O' Lantern there was a legend about some fella who on the night of halloween he gets sent to purgatory or hell or no purgatory and it's pitch dark and order for in order for him to see his way around he carved out a pumpkin and put a candle into it and that allowed him to find his way through purgatory and that's an old kind of an Irish myth

but then with the amount of Irish that went to America you know they were still celebrating Samhain in 16th, 17th century there was no turnips in America but they did have in abundance pumpkins so the Irish started carving fucking faces into pumpkins. And then the non-Irish, like the Brits in America, would have seen, you know, the poor Irish with this bizarre tradition they have of carving into pumpkins.

And then they decided to call it it in a pejorative way a Jack O' Lantern which is like kind of a play on Irish names Jack O' Lantern so it's the pumpkin is an Irish American thing which via American culture

has now been transported to us and now we're importing pumpkins and carving things into them. So it's this. Bizarre triangulation of. Irish culture that's been Americanised. And now they've sold it back to us. Very odd.

Today I drank. A turmeric chai latte. And I announced it on Twitter. And it ruffled a lot of feathers made people very upset, very uncomfortable that somebody would drink a turmeric chai latte I think it just

sounds too hipstery just sounds too hipstery em I mean my attitude is is right, why was I drinking a turmeric chai latte? Because I wanted a winter drink that had health benefits and wasn't full of sugar, basically. You know, hot chocolate is lovely, but drink enough hot chocolate and you'll grow a set of tits.

So I was looking for something different. So I made myself a turmeric chai latte, which was basically just hot milk, a bit of turmeric, and then a chai tea bag. Do you know a tea bag full of chai spices, which is like cinnamon, cardamom, licorice, whatever the fuck. And it was delicious. It was delicious. It was like warm spit from a spicy cloud it really was a comforting winter drink and I'll be drinking more of them

and I don't give a fuck if I get called a hipster for drinking a turmeric chai latte I'd rather drink a turmeric chai latte than not drink one because I'm worried about being called a hipster

how about you stop worrying about what someone else is drinking you silly bi turmeric as well is it's got proven health benefits turmeric is very good, it's an anti-inflammatory number one and it's good for the lungs

and with the cold weather coming in i have a touch of asthma you know and sometimes the cold can irritate it a bit so it's good to have a bit of turmeric for the lungs to soothe that and i get sore tendons in my ankles for all the running that i do i run about 30 kilometers a week and the tendons on my ankles i do all my that I do. I run about 30 kilometres a week. And the tendons on my ankles, I do all my stretches and I look after them, but they get a bit sore. And so I take turmeric in tablet form to try and reduce that inflammation. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't. Who gives a fuck, you know?

But it's an anti-inflammatory, so technically it should at least help to reduce the localised inflammation in my ankles alright that was the podcast I'll see you next week no so as you know because I've said it before I've been working with the BBC

making a television show for the BBC that's out today I made a pilot episode about the housing crisis in the UK and it's called Crack, it's I worked with a team of investigative journalists

and mixed it up with some mad shit it's myself and the Trout of No Crack investigating the housing crisis in the UK and it's released on the iP of no crack investigating the housing crisis in the uk and it's released on the iplayer well bbc3 which is online the iplayer today and it is called what did they call it blind by undestroyed the world housing great title bbc I don't get to choose the titles of these things you know as a

with anything there's always a compromise so I'm happy with the TV programme but in order to get we'll say creative control for the actual programme you have to hand over creative control when it comes to the packaging we'll say it was the same with my book so they've called it

Blind Boy Undestroys the World Housing great name fair play to the packaging, we'll say. It was the same with my book. So they've called it Blind Boy Undestroys the World Housing. Great name. Fair play to the Brits. So get a crack at that. Do you know what? If you're in Ireland, I don't know if you can see it. Can you watch the iPlayer in Ireland? I'm not sure.

They will be showing it on television as well. I don't know what that date is, but it'll be soon enough. So get a crack at that. Just plug some live podcasts last week we had Radley Dial on which was good crack I got good feedback from that so I have two more Vicar Street live podcasts

coming up and there's there's a few tickets left so please buy them because I'd love to have those sold out the 8th and 9th of November, which is a week away. Vicar Street, 8th and 9th of November in Dublin. My guest on the 8th is Emma De Beery.

I haven't announced my guest on the 9th yet, because I have a few potential candidates and I haven't decided upon one. So that's the 8th and 9th of November and then I've got a live podcast in Killarney that's in December sometime don't know the date I also have

a live podcast in Cork in December, it's sold out so they're announcing a second night that's going on sale, very shortly, second night in Cork, the live podcast, don't know who my guests are for them, but it will be crack, and please come along, the live podcasts are unbelievable fucking crack, it's great, um, energy in the room, very engaging engaging fucking participation at the end people asking questions

they've all been fucking class up to this point and I've really gotten my shit together with recording them so that when I put them out to ye they they have a lovely energy you capture the energy of the room but with a bit of intimacy too so

yeah regarding the tumeric um i've been the past week right i'm recording as you know my book of short stories that i put out last year the gospel according to blind by i'm going to be releasing an audio book of this very shortly before Christmas, very shortly so I'm recording the audiobook as we speak and it's 99.9% finished and it's not just an audiobook to be honest what I've done is I'm reading the stories but I've also

this is why it's taken a long time this is why it's taken a year I'm reading the short stories but I've also this is why it's taken a long time you know this is why it's taken a year I'm reading the short stories but I'm also creating pieces of music that go with the short stories so it to create a kind of um a mood and an ambience so something new to make it more theatrical it's almost like I envision in my head, almost like a monologue, like a theatrical monologue, you know, so I've been doing that, but, I got a fucking, a bit of a dose of a cold over the weekend, like, do you know, like, just a little, a pang of a sore throat, and a shitty nose, and a shitty nose which is kind of hilarious because like what's the one thing

that can go wrong when you set aside a weekend to record an audio book getting a fucking sore throat or a blocked nose that's what happened and I was thinking back to you know as you know

with this podcast like I speak about mental health a lot and my journey with mental health and I remember back when I used to be at the height of my anxiety and depression 10 years ago if I got a sore throat or a flu or a cold it would really fucking fuck my shit up like if I got a sore throat while I had anxiety or while I had depression the sore throat would become fully

septic and it might have me bedridden for a week and it mightn't go away for six weeks and I'd have to visit the doctor and get antibiotics and it really meant a lot of hassle and it would travel down to my chest and I might end up with bronchitis as a result. Getting a sore throat while I had mental health issues was not pleasant at all. And then when I started to get my mental health in check, I stopped getting these bad sore throats or bad illnesses. or bad illnesses okay um now this is 100 percent anecdotal me talking out of my arse with no medical expertise whatsoever all i'm saying is that when i had mental health issues physical sickness was evidently fucking worse and i don't know why this is um there's a number of things i can think of you know when you have depression and when you have anxiety your body is releasing a lot of stress hormones like cortisol

which will lower your immune system and make you more susceptible to viruses or bacteria but also what happened is I think it's behavioural when I was in a state of anxiety and I'd start to feel that sore throat, I wouldn't react to it in a very rational fashion. So when I would get the sore throat, while being anxious, I'd go, fuck it, I've got a sore throat. Shit, what if that turned into bronchitis?

Fuck it, what if I get pneumonia? People die from that so then the sore throat would become a source of anxiety to alleviate that i'd immediately go to the doctor pretty much not leave until he gave me antibiotics and over reliance on antibiotics is not great at all okay it can really fuck you up so there was a behavioral element and when I started to overcome anxiety and overcome depression when I got a lash of a sore throat or a nose what I'd start doing is fighting it actively I would not spend the day in bed, I'd go, I've got a bit of a sore throat now, I'm going to cope with it, I'm going to try my best to get on with my day, and when I

started doing this, they'd just disappear, like I haven't gone to a doctor with a sore throat in a long, long time, so that's what happened at the weekend, the sore throat came on me, so I said, right, right okay i know what this feels like this this can go shitty on me i need to cope so i said i'm gonna go for a run so i went for a 10k run i the only medicine i do use is like benlin day and night which is just a bit of paracetamol and and what's it called pseudoephedrine and then I eat oranges to get vitamin C in you know

vitamin C is very good for the immune system but I actively take a proactive attitude against the sore throat and without fail it just goes away in three days I cope with it, I deal with how uncomfortable it is. I tell myself, this isn't pleasant,

but most likely it's not a fucking bad, threatening illness. I'm just going to get on with my fucking day. And I sure as fuck, I'm not staying in bed. I'm not lying around the couch. I'm going to try my best to keep my daily routine and to tolerate the how uncomfortable this is

and yeah it goes away I beat it so I don't know what that is I haven't a clue what that is it's anecdotal but it's something I've definitely noticed like here we have a physical illness

an invasion of my body from either a virus or a bacteria most often a virus and my attitude towards it determines its severity on my physical body and I've never gotten a decent answer for that but it's my anecdotal experience so I am essentially talking out of my arse And I've never gotten a decent answer for that. But it's my anecdotal experience.

So I am essentially talking out of my arse. So I've got kind of a bit of an old fashioned hot take for you this week. I started re-watching Mad Men Mad Men is watch it if you haven't seen it it's because it's up on Netflix and it's about an ad agency

in Manhattan in the 60s but it's about more than that you know it's kind of a cultural commentary on America in general and cultural change in the 60s but it's about more than that you know it's kind of a cultural commentary on America in general and cultural change in the 60s and the first thing that shocked me was that Mad Men came out in 2007 I couldn't believe that it was 11 years old and I just in my head I felt it was maybe six years old I couldn't believe it was 11 fucking years old and it was great to go back and watch it because I watched it 11 years ago

and I was 11 years younger obviously so there's so much that I missed the subtleties of the writing and the characters do you know what I noticed as well commentary on sexism and the characters and do you know what I noticed as well commentary on sexism and the treatment of women I noticed that now

do you know obviously 11 years ago I would have noticed the blatant sexism the really obvious shit but microaggressions the silencing of women that's all present in it I didn't notice that 11 years ago

it wasn't on my radar you know but fucking phenomenal excellent but one thing I noticed about it as you know I love cocktails I've spoken about my love of the zombie cocktail and the Hemingway Daiquiri

cocktails are something I enjoy and I realized that the reason cocktails are kind of popular now is probably because of Mad Men Mad Men coming out in 2007 like hipsters in 2007 weren't drinking cocktails. They were drinking beer. And not even craft beer. It was just cheap beer. So the cocktail movement and its popularity. I would blame that on Mad Men. Because. Now it doesn't glamorise drink.

It does a bit. But it shows the consequences of it. Like. They all just drink cocktails in particular the character Don Draper drinking an old fashioned which is it's alright an old fashioned is

like bourbon whiskey a sugar cube and a bit of lemon I think is this lemon no it's just sugar cube bourbon whiskey. And a small bit of sparkling water. And you throw an orange into it.

And I can get started with bitters. Which are a weird tasting thing. But I think Mad Men created the modern. The contemporary fetishization of cocktails. Of which I am a part of. And. The reason I love cocktails to be honest. Is. which I am a part of and the reason I love cocktails to be honest is it's a mindful way of drinking

too often with Irish drinking culture in particular when you have a pint drinking pints is about it's like drinking a glass of water

it's you're just really consuming it quickly and having another one and drinking to get pissed, but with cocktails, proper cocktails, what I like about them is, you have to drink it mindfully, number one, a good cocktail is between 10 and 15 euros, so there's no way you're fucking wolfing that down quickly. And they're just a nice, there's theatre to a cocktail as well. It's like a gourmet meal. So if I go out and have a cocktail, I'd probably only have three at the most.

Because they're strong. And I'll drink it very Very slowly. Very mindfully. I'll truly appreciate. And take on board. Every single sip. Because this is something that has been. Specially made and curated. And has to be cherished.

And it's a good. Do you want to sit down with someone. And have a decent conversation. And a nice evening. Where you're not getting shit faced. It's not about going on the lash cocktails are my thing specifically for me tiki cocktails like a zombie or a mai tai and having one drink in front of you and it taking a half an hour to drink the entire thing or more

and i love that It's mindful drinking. Where it's not about alcohol. It's about the experience. Now. I have to be cautious around this. Because. I caused a mild panic. In the bars of Limerick.

Over the past year. Because I first spoke about. The zombie cocktail. About six months ago. And I was telling you a little about a little bit about tiki cocktails and the zombie and this being my favorite cocktail and since then anytime I go out in Limerick whether it be inside Pharmacia or 101 they'd be the main cocktail places in Limerick, I see nothing but people drinking zombies and

I can sometimes if you go on a Saturday night they'll say there's a two zombie limit and I know this is because it's too much hassle to make so with a packed Irish bar you've got people going up going can i have a

round of fucking zombies and then the bar staff are driven off their fucking feet making these complicated drinks so apologies to the bar staff of limerick for popularizing zombies a zombie is a a very powerful tiki cocktail which is a form of American cocktail inspired by Polynesian culture and it just it has three or four different types of rum and passion fruit

and the passion fruit on top is on fire and it's served in a tiki glass and I love them and I'll give a little shout out

the best places because here's the other thing with cocktails if you want to get into cocktails you have to be careful because especially in like hotels you'll have people with cocktail menus and they're just serving you a lot of fruit juice with one shot of rum in it and charging you 12

quid and it's bullshit so you got to go to the right place to make sure you're actually getting proper value cocktails that if you're spending 12 quid on something you know it's worth 12 quid and you want a bartender who knows what they're doing you want to be able to go to a bartender and say I don't know much about cocktails these are the type of flavours I like and they will come back to you with something proper

and always start off with classic cocktails cocktails that pre-exist mai tai zombie old-fashioned manhattan things that actually have established recipes sometimes if you're going somewhere and the cocktails are names that are made up by the establishment sometimes if it if it's a good place. No. But if it's not a good place. Making up names for a cocktail. Is a great way.

To just. Fill it full of fruit juice. And put fuck all alcohol in. And charge you 12 quid. And a lot of places do that. So here's some recommendations. Of good places. So in Limerick.

Pharmacia. Ask for Jake or Mike he does the good cocktails in there and then 101 Cal there's a fellow up in 101 called Cal

who's a very passionate man about cocktails he knows his shit and then if you're in Dublin there's a lovely place called Perrook and Periwig that's on Dawson Street I am not being paid

by these establishments this is just me being sound and not wanting you to get ripped off if you are interested in the mindful responsible drinking of cocktails so I've got a big steaming boiling hot take for this week

that I want to get into it's a big long rant but before we do that I think we'll into. It's a big long rant. But before we do that, I think we'll get the Ocarina Pause out of the way so that it's uninterrupted. So the Ocarina Pause is, if you listen every week, you'll be familiar. If you don't listen every week, go back to the start.

Sometimes adverts get put into this podcast, digital adverts. So rather than these coming out and shocking you out of nowhere, I give a little warning by playing my spanish clay whistle the ocarina and the ocarina pause is a little digital angelus that allows for reflection or possibly an advert for shit you don't need On April 5th, you must be very careful, Margaret. It's a girl. Witness the birth.

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podcast is the same whether you pay for it or whether you don't also like the podcast subscribe to it leave a review all that shit God bless you

so I was going to do this podcast on subscribe to it, leave a review, all that shit, God bless you so I was going to do this podcast on like the history of cocktails the history of how cocktails came about because it is quite interesting, it's very interesting but then I got thinking to a more kind of

a hotter take because the only way to talk about cocktails is you have to go to rum rum as a spirit is probably the most important alcohol when it comes to the creation of of cocktails. More than any other. I mean. Obviously gin. Now I've done a podcast before.

On gin. Because gin is. Incredibly interesting spirit. Because of what it did. To London. In the 17th and 18th century. Gin was the first. Spirit alcohol.

To be industrially produced and it created widespread alcoholism and pandemonium and panic and fascinating what gin did because of the industrial revolution and slum conditions and all of that and the gin and tonic I suppose you could call that a cocktail

gin and tonic came about by the way because of gin became the kind of a British drink even though it's I suppose you could call that a cocktail. Gin and tonic came about by the way. Because of. Gin became the. Kind of a British drink. Even though it's Dutch. When the Brits were over in India. Doing their colonization. All the British soldiers were getting.

Malaria. So there was a tree in malaria. Or in India. Called the fever tree. That's where the tonic fever tree gets its name from so it was this tree and in the bark of the tree there's a chemical called quinine and quinine is a prophylactic if you drink quinine a mosquito won't bite you you won't get malaria if you drink a lot of quinine so all the british soldiers were drinking quinine but it was disgusting it's imagine the taste of tonic water that little bitter taste but multiplied by 100 that that's what quinine is like pure quinine and that's what

the soldiers had to drink to stave off malaria so because they were brits they were drinking gin so they mixed the gin with quinine and a bit of water and that's the gin and tonic so that's like an early cocktail but true cocktails if you want to speak about true cocktails you have to go to rum and rum is an interesting spirit so today's podcast will be a hot take on rum. So what is rum? Rum is a spirit and it comes from sugar. It's distilled from fermented sugar juice. So, what I want to talk about is sugar now sugar is interesting because

it doesn't really occur that much in nature okay and our the organ in our body that demands the most energy over any other organ is our fucking brains. Okay. And humans have got gigantic energy consuming brains compared to other animals.

So remember at all times, like our bodies, our bodies don't know that we live in the 21st century. Our bodies still think that we're 30,000 years old know that we live in the 21st century our bodies still think that we're 30 000 years old that we're cavemen so in the world that humans evolved in sugar is not really naturally occurring the only real presence of sugar that we have is honey right we crave sugar irrationally because it's so scarce and we need it so much

like why do you think the main natural source of it honey is protected by thousands of insects that have knives do you know what I mean there's a reason that bees are cunts and that wasps well wasps don't do honey but there's a reason bees sting you and can kill you

it's because they're protecting honey and prehistoric humans would go out of their fucking way to get access to this honey because it was the only source of naturally occurring sugar that our brains absolutely crave and our brains will tell us that our brain doesn't really have an off switch

when it comes to sugar that's one of the great problems today we now have absolute access to sugar whenever we want but our brains are stuck back 30,000 years ago when sugar is something you come across once a year and in prehistoric societies a lot of dominance and like the most powerful member of a tribe

was the person who was willing to climb up that tree and get the honey that was the most powerful person the person who could get the honey and then cleverly distributed amongst the group this is how much our brains crave fucking sugar and for years and years and years and years we didn't really have it uh Not in the West, anyway. Going back as far as the 13th century, the Crusaders from Europe, the Christian Crusaders, there's evidence that they met caravans, Muslim caravans,

somewhere along the Middle East, and they reported that one of the caravans had sweet salt and that was the first kind of interaction with sugar that the West had so then something interesting happens there's sugar cane sugar cane is a

it's a type of Asian grass that's found in Papua Newinea and there's two kind of stories about what happened so christopher columbus the magnificent terrible cunt christopher columbus who discovered in inverted commas the americas there's one story that Christopher Columbus was in the Canary Islands where they had sugarcane and he took a few sugarcane plants over to

I think Hispaniola is the island he took it to the Caribbean and when Christopher Columbus planted this sugarcane in the Caribbean now this is the new world we're talking the 1600s or the 1500s Columbus planted this sugarcane in the Caribbean. Now this is the new world. We're talking. The 1600s or the 1500s.

1500s. Christopher Columbus. Plants this sugarcane and realises. Holy fuck. Sugarcane grows very very well in the Caribbean. This is nuts. So that's the story of how apparently. Sugarcane made it's way to.

The new world. In what's referred to as the Columbian Exchange the Columbian Exchange is like there's so much shit that came from the Americas that's now a staple like tomatoes

came from South America tomatoes, potato chocolate, tobacco came from the New World. These things that are now staples like potatoes for fuck's sake. Potatoes come from Peru. These are things that were introduced to Europe after the 1500s. And what did we give them? Death the flu

you know the huge amounts of indigenous populations in South America were wiped out by the common cold that Europe brought over and they gave us syphilis syphilis is a disease that came from South America

and came back to Europe and decimated Europe but that's the Colombian exchange, the exchange of goods that are now considered staple that just didn't exist 600 years ago so anyway

Columbus plants sugarcane, apparently, and is like, fuck me, this grows really well here, so this is 1500s, by the mid 1500s, what happens is,

is a little bit of a sugar industry, starts to, kind of flourish, in the Caribbean, being run by the Brits and then the Portuguese down in Brazil had their sugar plantations too. This is also the start of the Industrial Revolution in Europe and with the Industrial Revolution what you start to see is for the first time ever the emergence of a middle class. You know, this is where civilization moves out of...

What do you call it? Not fiefdom. What's the fucking word for it? Feudalism. Medieval feudalism. Where social structure is basically incredibly rich. Kings and princes or whatever. And then a peasantry. When the industrial revolution starts to happen in Europe,

you start to see a middle class, which are commoners who start factories or industries or whatever, and all of a sudden now have disposable income. And this is the birth of the modern world. So, again, because we have our primitive caveman brains the desire on the west for fucking sugar starts to explode

and sugar becomes by the 1600s sugar becomes the equivalent of what oil is today it's as important as oil it is a luxury good, and you have a new emerging class of people who can actually afford it.

So what this does is it drives colonization of South America, because South America now is the place where sugarcane, sugarcane doesn't come from South America, but it grows brilliantly there now similarly to oil when humans have a this insatiable desire for something and the market is driving it that's where human rights abuses come in it's always what happens so first of all you've got sugar driving increased colonization and subjugation and murder and genocide of the indigenous populations of south america and then the other thing with sugarcane

is that in order to harvest the sugar from the cane it's very labor intensive what's required is like sugarcane is like think of it as like a bamboo, very thick, dense bamboo, and then what needs to be done is this bamboo, when it's fresh, needs to be put into a very strong press, and this press needs to be operated by human hand, and the press squeezes out the juice, this sugary juice, from the cane. Then what happens, this cane juice has to be brought into a boiling house. The juice is boiled and boiled and boiled into massive vats until you're left with crystallised cane sugar. And that is the white gold of the 1600s. This is where the slave trade starts to emerge

the nasty horrible African slave trade so sugar basically drove the demand for that the ships started to kind of would go from Europe to Africa they would take African slaves

against their will, bring them over to work on the sugar plantations of Brazil, of Barbados, of Cuba, of Jamaica. This incredibly labour-intensive, they're obviously not getting paid because they're slaves, are making this sugar for the demands of the emerging moneyed classes in Europe because of their primitive cave-like brains that are searching for more sugar than they actually need or want.

And what starts to happen on the plantations is the slaves that are working on these plantations with the sugar cane, excess sugar cane juice, which is essentially, I don't know, what would you call it, sugary water, this starts to go off, you know, and because it's natural too, like there's going to be a certain amount of yeast present in we'll say the skin of the cane so you've got juice with yeast in it starts to ferment so the slaves start drinking this kind of fermented sugar juice which is alcoholic and they start getting pissed off it

and that's their way of having a bit of crack. And then what happens from that, and this is where the history around it is a bit hazy, but I'm trying to speak about the, I've spoken before about the myth of the Irish slaves, okay? It is a fact that in the 1600s to 1700s, when the Africans were being brought as slaves to the Caribbean, Oliver Cromwell also sent between 50,000 and 200,000, we're not sure, Irish indentured servants also to the Caribbean to forcibly work on the sugar plantations alongside African slaves. So you had African slaves and Irish indentured servant working together in horrible fucking conditions on these sugar plantations in the Caribbean.

Both forced labour. But however, African slave is not considered human. They're considered property. Their children are property. Their. Their children are property. Their children's children are property. Irish indentured servant, still treated like shit, but after 10 years can achieve the freedom and dignity of being human at least.

So that's why we can't call the Irish slaves, even though they were brought against their will. But anyway. African slaves are drinking this fermented juice. But then most likely what you have. Because the Irish. Have a history of distillation. You know.

Puccine. Whiskey. Like whiskeys from fucking Ireland. Most likely. Irish indentured servants on the sugar plantations started to get this sugar cane fermented sugar cane juice

make crude stills and start to create the first rum this spirit this strong sugar cane spirit most likely invented by Irish indentured servants now it's not technically correct to call this a rum because

when you distill the fermented sugar cane juice that's closer to there's a drink today called Cachacha it's a Brazilian rum but it's from the sugar cane juice it tastes differently I had a neat shot of cachacha in limerick uh a few months ago and it you can taste kind of it has a grassy taste it's like

rum but there's an extra taste of grass and there's a drink called a caprahina which is lovely it's cachacha and a lot of lime juice and ice and sugar. So what rum actually is, is there's a by-product of the sugar production called molasses, which is this dark kind of black treacly shit. And molasses didn't have much value. You know, molasses was kind of fed to cattle and shit. Rum comes from molasses.

So finally now now of course the industrious slave owners or possibly even uh you know irish indentured servants who once they had found their freedom quite a lot of them became slave owners themselves that's a very important thing to uh remember the ir Irish got their freedom and then bought land and became plantation owners and slave owners someone basically figured out this shit that the slaves and indentured servants are doing is pretty tasty

so that's when we first start to see the industrial distillation of molasses and rum is created and in the 1600s1700s it becomes incredibly popular because it's tasty and it's smooth and this kind of evil triangle starts to emerge where like the way that the ships used to work is like, if you're sending a ship from fucking Europe to America, it doesn't make sense to just head one way with cargo, you know, you'd go to Africa, they would collect a lot of slaves in Africa, then they'd travel from Africa up to Barbados or Jamaica, drop off the slaves, then while they're in Jamaica and Barbados, they'd buy a fuckload of rum.

They'd take the rum then up to North America up to maybe Virginia or up to New York they would trade the rum which was a very popular spirit in America at this stage they'd trade the rum for fur or leather or American products then bring them back

to Europe and do this whole triangle driven by sugar and rum and the slave trade and the whole thing like I said driven essentially by the human brain with its prehistoric desire for sugar so one thing that massively drives the popularity of rum as a drink is Britain the biggest like producers of rum the likes of Jamaica

will say in around 1650 it was all controlled by the British so and the British controlled the Caribbean with its navy one of the biggest issues in the 1600s on ships was

water the British would leave Britain with all their sailors on their ship and what they'd do is they would bring like you can't drink seawater obviously, full of salt and the technology for like nowadays

what a ship will do a modern ship will have a process called desalinization so it'll have like boilers on the ship where it can take seawater

boil out the salt and produce fresh water this didn't exist in 1650 so ships would leave navy ships would leave London or wherever and they'd have to bring wooden

casks of fresh water with them on the ship for journeys that could take weeks. And the water would go stagnant. Stagnant water is very dangerous so the soldiers were getting fucking sick. So the bitch were trying to figure out, what the fuck are we going to do? What are we going to do with this?

So they figure, we control Jamaica, we control most of the Caribbean. Grown sugarcane, the biggest export is rum. We'll simply take the rum. And when we take this rum, we're going to give rum to the soldiers, or to the sailors, instead of giving them water. Now they also used to give the sailors. Instead of giving them water. Now they also used to. They used to give the sailors beer. And brandy. The problem with beer.

Is. It was bulky. It relied upon wheat and barley. Which are. You know. They're not grown in the fucking Caribbean. And then with brandy. One of the issues is.

Brandy is a French drink. So Britain has a strange relationship with France at all times. And as well, we remember from gin, it was important for Britain to have a spirit that could give them a sense of national identity. So gin was that spirit and now rum is starting to become that spirit. So the Navy decided to give the fucking sailors rum rations. So the sailors now have no water. They're drinking a pint of rum a day. Not a great idea, obviously.

The sailors start getting absolutely pissed drunk. They start to develop issues with alcoholism because they're drinking only rum. And what was happening was, as the sailors were developing alcoholism, they'd get their pint or half pint of rum a day, and they'd start to save it up so they could get totally shit-faced because they're developing a tolerance in alcoholism.

So what the Navy decided to do to stop this, and it was a brilliant accident, is they, if they gave the soldiers their their rum it was diluted in the water so the rum actually kind of sterilized the shitty water they were drinking and this became known as a drink called grog so the the sailors now were given navy grog every single day which was like one quarter rum to three quarters water the other main issue that the soldiers were facing was a disease called scurvy and scurvy used to happen sailors it was i'm not sure what scurvy is i think it fucks with your muscles but it's unpleasant and it'll kill you and a lot of sailors were dropping dead from scurvy. So what they found was they'd get limes. Limes were easily available in the Caribbean. So they'd be mixing lime in with the rum and in with the water to have this grog which most tiki cocktails today are a variation of that most tiki cocktails

all of them have lime all of them have rum and a bit of water or a bit of sugar do you know so this grog sort of similar to the gin and tonic it's a medicinal drink with a spirit that has a very real medicinal purpose now as well with the lime the relevance of the lime they didn't know it at the time but scurvy is what happens when you don't have enough vitamin c in your diet so the sailors had no vitamin c they didn't know what fucking vitamin c was but lime is full of it citric you know citrus fruit is full of vitamin c so this grog was not only hydrating them but the what the stagnant water was being sterilized by the rum and the lime was providing them with vitamin c so they had great health now um like the idea of us fucking drinking a pint of rum and water a day as our only fluid

obviously now we know that's terrible but that's why people only lived to be 40 back then but it was a huge boon to them at the time the other kind of bizarre casualty of

sugar in the Caribbean were populations of monkeys. When the ships would come from Africa. These kind of. I think they were macaque monkeys. Would sometimes. Sneak onto ships.

And these monkeys would find their way over to the Caribbean. When they were being transported accidentally with slaves so you had these odd little populations of monkeys in the Caribbean and they used to hang around near the sugar plantations and eat sugarcane but then the monkeys started to drink the fermented sugarcane juice and a population of little monkeys who are alcoholics started to emerge

and these populations of alcoholic monkeys are still present in the Caribbean they're in Barbados, they're in Jamaica and they have alcoholism bred into them after years and years of this fermented sugarcane juice but the thing is now Jamaica doesn't make massive amounts of sugar anymore makes some

so in 2018 if you're on the beach in Jamaica or Barbados there's clans and families of these monkeys and they rob tourists' drinks. They go around the beaches intimidating tourists and distracting tourists and robbing cocktails and robbing beer and getting shit-faced. And these populations of monkeys are studied by scientists because they found that the exact amount of monkeys that are alcoholics, the same amount of monkeys that are teetotalers, the ones that are moderate drinkers, is reflected in the human population.

So these monkeys are studied to try and understand human alcoholism. These drink-stealing monkeys that started off on sugarcane 400 years ago. So where's the hot take what am i getting at you know where's the controversial opinion that borders on conspiracy or sensationalism well what i keep harking back to what i keep harking back to is sugar, right? And sugar and the primitive human brain. Our desire for sugar is irrational. We don't need the sugar that we think we want.

Do you know what I mean? Because, like I said, our brains think we're cavemen and sugar is something that really doesn't happen a lot once a year with a beehive maybe so what you have is essentially

what drove horrible colonisation and the slave trade one of the greatest abuses of human rights that in living memory what drove it was humans irrational desire for this sugar our primitive brains wanting more sugar and not actually fucking needing it

and our desire for such driving the market to the point that people don't care that there's a slave trade going on and people don't care that there's a slave trade going on and people don't care that entire tribes and civilizations are being wiped out in South America because they're getting their lovely sweet sugar with their new money and the hot take really is that I see a parallel, a very similar parallel to that today and what it comes down to is smartphones essentially, right? now here's the thing our caveman brains irrationally

desire sugar and the stimulation that sugar gives us, but similarly what we also desire is social approval okay the caveman also wants social approval and sugar and we want far more social approval than we actually need there's an anthropologist called Robin Dunbar and Dunbar is most famous for positing the idea that the human brain is only capable of

caring about 150 people. Okay? That we can all, our brains, our primitive brains, like human communities 30,000 years ago were able to live in communities of 150, that was the biggest a tribe could be with chimpanzees, chimpanzees

can live in troops of 30 but anything beyond that and chaos happens so with humans Dunbar posits and it's called Dunbar's number that we can do 150 people, that's the amount of faces we can remember, it's Dunbar's number that we can do 150 people that's the amount of faces we can remember it's the amount of people that we can care about

and it's the amount of people that we can accept social approval from Dunbar would say that beyond 150 people that's when we begin to dehumanise like I don't know you know if you're at work and there's somebody in your workplace who you don't know them, you know, you don't, you only know their face, you wouldn't

really talk to them. Maybe they're the person who, I don't know, delivers paper to your work. And one day you see them in a coffee shop and it's confusing they're not wearing their uniform they're drinking coffee they're with friends and your brain doesn't process it it's weird or like when you're a child

and you see your teacher wearing normal clothes and socialising or inside in Duns and it's weird and uncomfortable that's Dunbar's number in effect. The person you work with. Who you don't really know.

Your brain isn't registering them. As a human being. They're simply. A machine that brings paper to you. Or your teacher is simply. A machine that gives you knowledge. So when you see them in a new context. You can't fathom their humanity

do you know what I mean but also within this we want we thrive on approval you know units of people telling us that we are good

people in our community of 150 or whatever telling us that we are good people in our community of 150 or whatever telling us that we are good but our desire for approval very similar to our desire for sugar is we want far far more than we truly need or can get the desire for sugar and the desire for approval are both kind of similar it's the primitive human brain trying to operate within a society that can give us far more than we actually need or should exist in nature. So the 2018 equivalent of sugar and the primitive human brain is social media likes. and the primitive human brain is social media likes Instagram, Twitter, Facebook

can provide us with what we perceive to be approval within our neolithic community like it's not it's just a like on a fucking screen but our brains register that as a that little buzz

of it's like we did something good in our in our prehistoric community that day when we get a little like that's how our brains perceive it our desire for approval far exceeds what we need or what is natural and like the way you know this drove the sugar trade in the 1600s and our irrational desire caused us to not care about the human lives of either slaves or the indigenous populations of South America

we have the, not the same, but something similar happening today. Smartphones. Smartphones are essentially driven by social media, okay? It's not really the internet. That's what your fucking laptop is for. But what drives the new iPhone, whatever the fuck is out there the new android smartphones are about social media it is about your immediate connectivity and it is your smartphone is your conduit for that piece of

approval that you get on twitter on facebook on. Those little dopamine hits that you get from the likes, the smartphone is what allows that to happen. That's the sugar. But just like the sugar trade depended upon human rights abuses, so does our mobile phones. Our mobile phones, the batteries in our mobile phones, there's a mineral that's required in them called cobalt. And in order to satisfy our continual need for these better, more rechargeable batteries in our fucking smartphones,

most of the cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo in Africa and a huge amount of this cobalt is mined by children, adults in horrific conditions and slavery is present and abuse is present and violence is present

in order to get this cobalt and how it's kind of done it like the companies that are making the batteries have themselves distanced enough from these mines obviously so that they can be they can have the illusion of being ethical but a lot of the cobalt comes from what's known as and this is a disgusting word artisanal mining and artisanal mining is a sanitized word for a mine that does not have sophisticated equipment is not run by a company but is simply humans the absolute poorest of the poor in the world, down little holes, usually small children,

risking their lives. These mines are run by warlords. Slaves are used in order to fucking get it. And what I'm saying basically is our irrational desire for likes is fueling this in the way that our irrational desire for sugar was fueling the slave trade same shit is happening it's a different shoe it's a different shit but it's the same kind

of crack and similarly with the north atlantic slave trade it's you know it's the people of the Congo that are fucking over their own people to satisfy a capitalistic greed from outside and it's not just the cobalt for the batteries there's several minerals conflict minerals they're known as that are

mined and resourced under the exact same conditions to create a smartphone you know stuff that goes into smartphone screens so that's the hot take it's you know we can look back on the sugar trade as this horrible thing that drove these human rights abuses

but it's happening now too in a different form and I'm fully aware of the hypocrisy. Like, I am part of this system. This podcast, I've said it before, this podcast is dripping in blood to even make it, you know. There's a battery in my laptop in front of me. I've a battery in my smartphone here.

Screens, this podcast is dripping in blood. You're listening to it on a device that's dripping dripping in blood we're all complicit in the system um one positive about it the eu has brought in a law that states that by i think it's by 2020 all smartphones that are sold in the eu have to prove that they do not have conflict minerals. That's a great thing. But unfortunately, it's just not the way it works. What happens, unfortunately, is that the companies find loopholes around declaring what is considered...

They distance themselves. Corporations distance themselves from pain and suffering so that at some point they can just say well we can't be sure where they came from and that's how they do it and the other the real crew

of the issue and the thing to look at too is smartphones are probably mad cheap like the new iPhone is like a grand but that's probably incredibly cheap and what would that cost if

to create these phones everything was fair trade it could be ten times as much that's one of the shitty things about the society we live in we have access to some very cheap things and we're unaware of their true value

because in order for them to be created there is an unseen people in parts of the world operating under horrendous conditions for our desire and wealth you know and it's one of those things

like ISIS and it's a mad way to look at it's a mad way to reframe the world okay this is classic hot take too because I'd be kicked off Twitter if I said this on Twitter but if you look at ISIS

we view ISIS as a very rightfully barbarous ideology and we'll say the communities that ISIS want to create, the caliphate, we would view them as incredibly disgusting and barbarous and abhorrent to our

values, you know, fucking executions in the street throwing gay people off buildings stoning women to death for adultery this is abhorrent but ISIS's

goal as well is to live in a technology free agrarian kind of society because what ISIS abhor is technology-free, agrarian kind of society. Because what ISIS abhor is our capitalism. They would look at our society,

and these are cunts who chop people's heads off in the street, but they look at us with our smartphones and with our money, but also see the violence and human suffering and abuse that is necessary for us to have these comforts and they look at that and think that's abhorrent and that the west is evil and that this is the work of the devil do you know what i'm saying but we're here going you can't be chopping people's heads off in the streets that's disgusting and typing it on our phone

that required a three year old to have his hands chopped off in order for us to even do it it's nuts it's insanity and

I don't have a fucking solution to it I don't know I'm as guilty I'm not I'm complicit in this this is the way the world is

this is how it is it's just a mad thing and it's how things are since the late industrial revolution our religion is consumption and being able

to satisfy our desires and needs and the only way out of it is to not live in that society and that's kind of the society that ISIS want. Just a devoted. You know living off the land. Everything is free. And you devote yourself to spirituality. And you do not have your needs met. Because of the.

Suffering that it might incur. I'm not being pro fucking ISIS. For a second. I'm just. Reframing. The modern kind of society. The modern condition, do you know? Can we live in a society where the jumper that you wear, that might be your jumper for five years, do you know? Because to get that jumper, it was fairly made by someone who makes jumpers in your community do you know

or that the food you eat is scarce and expensive because the person who made it is being paid properly these are the conundrums of the modern fucking condition

ended on a bit of a tragic note there but do you know no harm being aware of this stuff become the change in you do you know what I'm saying it's a massive system

to deconstruct the great skill of our time is we've managed to live with our head in the clouds about it for some reason but that's all we've got time for this week I don't have time to take any questions off you don't get bogged down over that shit don't be careful it doesn't impose on your

personal boundaries of your mental health okay you still ultimately have a responsibility personal boundaries of your mental health okay you still ultimately have a responsibility to yourself to be the best version of you, to be as happy as you can be, to look after yourself that's a very

individualistic look but that's what I'd always say pain and suffering exist. They exist. But look after yourself first. Because if you're not looking after your own mental health, your own well-being, if you're taking on board stuff that's outside of your control,

you're no good to anyone then. Be compassionate to yourself. And then you'll be compassionate to other then. Be compassionate to yourself. And then you be compassionate to other people. You know, understand your own emotions. Be, you know, correctly able to label your own anger, your own fear, your own anxiety. And when you understand your own internal language around that shit, then you can empathize with another person and help them. But if you are wallowing in your own confusion of what am i feeling am i sad am i happy

am i worrying about something i can't control then you're not helping yourself and you're not in a position to help anyone else so responsible hedonism there's nothing wrong with that have a tremendous week have a beautiful beautiful gorgeous week. Enjoy the lovely. The autumnal evenings let's. Enjoy that smoke. That's hanging in the air. The turf smoke. The bite of the cold.

Enjoy that. Find a nice little bar. A warm bar. And have a cocktail for yourself. Christmas is coming up. We'll be grand. Yart. 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 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.