The Blindboy Podcast - Thatchers Spit

Episode Date: June 19, 2019

Love Island, Naked Mole Rats and the Mushroom Internet Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and you are very welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. How are you getting on? I'm not sure what number episode this is. Not 100% sure. It's either 88 or 89. I'll have to check. my vape is acting the cunt it's all bubbly so instead of it flowing in a kind of a free and breathy fashion it's spitting hot vape fluid into my mouth so that's rather unpleasant

sounds like a rat with tuberculosis a rat with bubbly lungs and I'm just sucking sucking vape fluid out of his snout but yeah

great fucking response to last week's podcast lads last week's podcast I recorded it on the fly in San Francisco using my binaural mic, well I don't know, no I wouldn't call it a binaural mic, it was a stereo mic, but very good reception to that, you were very

happy with it, which I was thrilled, because I wasn't sure, you know to to record a podcast on the side of the road um i didn't know how it was going to go but i got a very positive reception off you and what a lot of you suggested which i liked the sound of was that i should every so often consider doing a travel podcast, which I would absolutely love to do, where maybe I, visit somewhere at your suggestion, and go and record a podcast, on a street corner, and report what the vibe of the place is,

I'd love to do that, so that's something I'm going to consider, for down the line, I've been watching, so I've been up to, I'm back, I'm back in Limerick obviously, from San Francisco, after a couple of days of terrible jet lag, but I am up the fucking walls busy as soon as I get back, I'm filming with BBC in Limerick filming the last leg of the TV series so insane days if TV filming is is very very laborious of time it's 12 hour day carry on so up the walls doing that and what it does as well is it's exhausting it's mentally exhausting so in the evening times i like to switch off i like to completely and utterly switch off

so i've started watching love island um because everybody on twitter is talking about Love Island and I enjoy a bit of trash reality TV there's nothing wrong with it I enjoy I loved Big Brother when it was on and I enjoy watching Jersey Shore I used to watch Jersey Shore although it's back now on TV now I like that so I figured

I'll give Love Island a go it sounds like very emotive simple fucking reality TV I'll give Love Island a go it sounds like very emotive simple fucking reality TV I'll give it a lash and I did, I tried to give it a lash for 2 or 3 days I couldn't do it I just can't do it

mainly because I work in TV so because I work in television the level of editing that is on Love Island is so fucking extreme that it's hard for me to enjoy it as reality

TV it's hard for me to get invested in the characters to you know start getting passionate about the drama and the fights which is all the stuff we love about reality TV I can't do it because I just look at it. And I can see how heavily edited it is. And a few other things have me sceptical.

Like. I know people. Okay people I'm working with now in TV. We were talking about it on set. They've all got buddies that are working on Love Island. And. The general consensus seems to be is like every day on love island the contestants sit down and have dinner with the producers

and the producers decide what the contestants wear they decide who the contestants talk to and what they're gonna say so it's not like with big brother it's not love island isn't scripted in the sense that people aren't reading scripts but what happens in love island and who's friends with who and who fights with who it's very much constructed in the way that a television script would be constructed just without actually paying writers or paying actors do you know? A couple of things that have me sceptical also, like two contestants in there that have been getting people really riled up, we've got Mara from Longford and Tommy the boxer who is, he's your man's brother, what's his name? Tyson Fury's brother. Mara's a ring girl. In boxing promotion.

And Tommy's a boxer. They both have the same. I think it's agent or promo person. So both of them are in there. And essentially. Their management. Their professional management as such. Are overseeing them.

Do you know what I mean? So how can I watch any interaction that the two of them have. And view it with any authenticity. When I that they both have the same i think it's agent right so that's why i can't enjoy love island and i don't say that as a cynical person i like reality tv i like jersey shore i like the big brother it was on, I'm not someone who's like, because the thing with reality television too is, you get people fucking, I don't know if it's virtue signaling the word, but you get people going, oh I'm too smart for that shit, I'm too smart for, that's for idiots, and it's like, chill out will ya, there's nothing wrong with reality TV, it's, it's like chill out will you there's nothing wrong with reality tv it's it's very simple base level entertainment that tugs at our emotions it tugs at our fears our desires it tugs at the part of ourselves that wants to bitch the part of ourselves that wants to gossip these are all facets of the human condition everyone has a part of themselves that wants to gossip these are all facets of the human condition everyone has a part of themselves that wants to gossip everyone has a part of themselves that wants to hear gossip

everyone likes seeing people fighting and i think if if if watching it on television is the way to do it that's a much healthier way of engaging with these parts of ourselves than actually enacting them in real life if you're in your office and your co-workers are fighting and you stand back and you're getting intense pleasure out of watching two people fighting then you have to check in with yourself then you have to go hold on a second these are real human beings in my office in my environment maybe i shouldn't derive pleasure from watching two people in real life have a feud we'll say or maybe i shouldn't gossip about this person or maybe in my office or in my friends friends group, it's unwise, not only for me from a perspective with other people, but for myself to engage in gossip.

These are all gossip, and gossip, bitching, enjoying people fighting, taking pleasure in other people's misery, taking pleasure in the drama of seeing conflict in real life. These are unhealthy things that ultimately lead to us lowering our self-esteem. But to watch something like Love Island and to engage in these parts of ourselves and to do it through Love Island, I don't think I don't see anything wrong with that

I think that's incredibly healthy because there's no actual consequences assuming of course that because there is the ethical issue

with reality television and whether or not the contestants on a reality TV show are effectively prepared psychologically

for when they go out into the real world if someone's on reality TV and they are edited to look like a villain when that person goes out into the real world they're going to be treated like a villain so all in all

look I don't see anything harmful in Love Island I think people who say they're too smart to watch Love Island are being silly, silly people but I'm not enjoying it, it's just not doing it for me, I can see the strings that are being pulled because I work

in television and as reality TV goes Love Island is very very heavily manipulated and scripted and plotted out as opposed to like big brother big brother was essentially security footage that's edited like security footage that's edited to be like EastEnders so they trawl through actual footage of people in a house and the natural dramas and interactions that happen and then they edit that footage so that it conforms to a storytelling journey okay I quite like that but I'm not crazy

about reality tv where what where what happens in it is deliberately manipulated by producers and screenwriters that's not reality TV what that is is television drama where writers and actors aren't being paid or hired so I'm not crazy about that so there you go

but I can understand why people do like love island this week's podcast is not about love island and what i want to do this week because you've been hounding me like last last week's podcast was supposed to be a podcast where i answer your questions and non-stop on fucking social media. Whether it be on my Instagram or Snapchat or on Twitter. People are always saying please do a podcast where you're answering our questions. We like those ones. And I get tons of questions that I never get around to answering.

So this week I'm actually going to answer some of the questions that you ask me. About various subjects and i'm looking forward to it because i love doing question answering podcasts so laura asks i don't know does laura even ask it simply says because i got this one on the Patreon. Laura just posted. Naked mole rat. Which I assume is. A request for me to talk about the naked mole rat. I would gladly take up that mantle, Laura.

And speak about the naked mole rat. Because it's just it's a fascinating fucking creature it's a fascinating animal if you don't know what a naked mole rat is bizarre creatures how do I describe a naked mole rat

it looks like a cross between a testicle and a piano. A shorn, unkempt testicle and an ivory piano. It's like, it's a mole, is it a rat or is it a mole? It's a mole rat. So yeah, so it's a rat. Okay, so imagine a completely hairless rat. Right, really long. With this incisor like yellow ivory teeth at the front. And little beady black eyes. And no hair. And the skin is translucent pink

not a physically attractive animal by any stretch of the word you know by you know traditional aesthetics that humans will hang over animals and what we as humans often to be honest when we consider

you know what humans consider to be beautiful and what we as humans often to be honest when we consider you know what humans consider to be beautiful and animals is is it's often it reflects human beauty it's often what what we like animals that we consider to be cute are animals that remind us of of human children like even yesterday a study came out which proved that through i think it's about 30 000 years of evolution they proved that dogs have evolved muscles in their face that basically do you know the look of puppy dog eyes and i a dog that has puppy dog eyes really cute kind of that sad look that dogs can get scientists prove that that's kind of a symbiotic evolutionary thing that dogs because first off and i've said this before dogs aren't real there's no such thing as a dog in nature. They're not, um, wolves are real. There's an animal called a wolf, and wolves evolved over many,000 years ago, humans selected, like because wolves are mad cunts, very vicious

with those dead staring eyes, they're killers, but certain wolves were a little bit sound and those wolves that were friendly and sound, they slowly became dogs, the wolves that hung around with humans and helped us and all this shit, they evolved into dogs to the point that they physically changed. But scientists proved that dogs have got extra muscles and shit around their eyes specifically to maintain eye contact with human beings. And to a dog's face face the puppy dog eyes basically is it the evolutionary advantage of that to dogs is that they they slowly bred themselves into a way that they could their faces could echo the look of a human child so that it would cause us to nurture that animal and therefore

improve its survival so they only proved that one the other day but yeah cuteness in animals generally what we consider to be cute in animals is anything which reminds us of a human child and causes us to want to nurture and care for it naked mole rats i'm sorry to say um do not conform to this in any way. Like I said, they look like very long, shaven testicles that have been genetically crossed with an upright piano. And these queer, long, yellow, tusk-like teeth. Not very pretty animals at all and sorry to say that to the naked mole rat

spiders as well you know Jesus Christ it's hard to find spiders cute actually spider update long time listeners to this podcast you will remember about a year ago right I was talking about

when there's spiders in my house you know I'm ok with spiders and I hate killing insects I really really dislike killing insects I hate I just can't do it I find it very arrogant

of me to think that I would see any kind of living creature and just go I decide that you die I can't do it even though you know I eat meat once a week once a week it's ironic I know I don't know how I can balance those things out but I can't enact the agency to end the life of something because it inconveniences me or frightens me I just just can't do it. So when a spider is in my gaff, especially if they're really large, if they're small, I leave them off. None of my business.

But the really, really big fuckers, the ones that you can hear, they make me a bit uncomfortable to the point that I have to put them into a glass and put them outside the house. So last year, you'll remember on this podcast I was telling you a story about what I was trying to do this so this big fucking spider was in the studio a huge bastard so I says fuck that man you gotta you gotta leave you gotta go out um if I can hear you

walking on the wooden floor then you know you should be paying rent so I went to this spider with a glass and as I put the glass down on top of him he moved and unfortunately I ended up cutting off one of his legs and that broke my fucking heart because I saw him kind of crawling away and then I'm like for fuck's sake now I know he's a big spider but now he's missing a leg if I put him outside that puts him at an immediate disadvantage and he's a big spider but now he's missing a leg if I put him outside that puts him at an immediate disadvantage and he's going to get eaten that's not fair

so I made the decision there and then you get to live here alright I know you're a big massive cunt you're a huge bastard but it's grand you can live here and he disappeared off into a scirting board now that was a year ago

the other fucking night I was in the other room and he was on the wall by the light switch I posted it on Instagram a huge spider house spider with seven legs and it made me feel fucking great

because I'm like I remember you I cut off your leg here you are a year later you went and had a snooze for the winter now you're back out you're mobile, the leg has healed you've still got seven legs

but you're fucking alive, you're doing grand so that felt fucking great, that I was able to trace that spider's the fact that he's alive today, back to a decision I made a year ago, it made me feel really great and it made me appreciate the, just the significance of something like a fucking spider. Do you know, it's a life as well.

But cuteness and naked mole rats. Yeah, we don't like spiders because they don't look like human babies and I'm sure if there was a spider that looked like human babies, we'd be very quick to cud cuddle it you know but mole rats translucent testicles that burrow under the earth um not very aesthetically pleasing animals but hugely interesting very fucking interesting animals i'll tell you why um their behavior really stands out the first thing right is

mall rats are known as eusocial which is mall rats are the only animal or mammal the only non-insect we'll say

they're the only mammal that lives eusocially and a eusocial kind of society is like they basically naked mole rats will farm into groups that are much more similar to how bees and wasps and ants live and they're the only mammal that does it, they'll have these huge colonies of loads of naked mole rats, right, but there'd be like a queen mole rat, so you'll have one queen, that's the reproductive female, and then the rest of all the naked mole rats, they're made up of like subordinordinates that their role is purely for the health of the colony and to support the children of this one queen that's normal in ants bees insects but the naked mole rat is the only fucking mammal where this happens my fucking voice broke

there because i was getting so excited about the eusociality of naked mole rats but what makes this kind of class is the other thing about naked mole rats is they're like they're like mice or rats they're about the same size and they are rodents but they can live to be like 30 years old in the wild it's like several times longer than any other rodent okay and the reason for this is because of their eusociality so when you have this huge huge colony where you've one breeding female basically and then the rest of the colony just kind of serves her and serves the benefit of the colony, you don't have a lot of death, we'll say. You sociology, it's far more complex and advanced than how humans organise ourselves, which is called pro-sociality, okay?

So the mole rats live to be like 30 years of age. You don't get mole rats competing with each other for mates you don't get a selfishness you don't you get you don't get fighting you don't get them killing each other you have this huge huge amount of naked mole rats feeding each other helping each other and all working towards one common good which is this one fucking female. Now the other thing with naked mole rats is they're able to live in this eusocial utopia because they spend their entire lives underground.

They burrow. They do farm colonies like ants or termites would do. So they don't stick their heads above ground to have any predators really, now I'm not trying to hold the eusocial model of role of naked mole rat colonies as something to aspire

to because naked mole rat society is, it's very very unequal, it's kind of what, it's not a million miles off what the brits tried to do medieval british society will say what it aspired to be is quite close to how naked mall rats live in that you have a queen mall rat okay and then you have around this queen a harem of males, about six males, and the only people, or the only mole rats who have sex are this one queen and five or six of these males,

and that's where all the babies come from. But then the vast majority of the rest of the colony, it's very much a 1% versus the 99%, of the rest of the colony it's very much a one percent versus the 99 the rest of the colony they live lives where they're safe they eat food very very long lives but they don't get to reproduce uh they don't get to have sex none of that they simply serve this one queen and the couple of males around her and they service the offspring that she will have there are male and female mole rats that aren't, like there's females

that aren't queens but they're like they're worker females and the thing is that the queen mole rat has got a she's got a different body to all the other females, she's got this long body but every female mole rat has got a different she's got a different body to all the other females she's got this long body but every female mole rat has in her the potential to become a queen but from what i've read scientists can't understand what change happens in the colony that triggers an actual

physical change in the female naked mole rat's body to make her turn into a queen but there's only one queen but like naked mole rats would have predators like snakes we'll say because they live down in burrows and they don't go up above but they have seen like if a fucking snake goes down the burrow and is near the queen she will catch male like either the males around her that are having sex with her or any available worker she'll catch them in her mouth and fuck fuck them at the snake so the snake eats them first so while the eusocial uh model of the naked mole rat colony is admirable for them. It's not something I'd be suggesting for human beings. What you have there is. An extreme totalitarian monarchy.

Is how they live. Where you basically. Do you know what it'd be like? It would be like. If the British Empire. Decided to sterilize everyone who wasn't the Queen. And the King. And their immediate family i suppose that's

that's that's the closest human analog i can think of so it's not something to aspire to it's it's a a highly regulated caste system where only the top one percent benefit but where naked mole rats are are kind of being aspired to is they're very closely studied by scientists because there's a few anomalous things about them that make them very unique as mammals. And it's shit that humans are interested in. First of all, they found that naked mole rats seem not to age. Right. Not only do they live to be 30, but they don't actually, their bodies don't seem to age right not only do they live to be 30 but they don't actually their bodies don't seem to age and they're the only mammal whereby getting older doesn't increase the likelihood of death

okay they can't explain that one the other thing that makes naked mole rats unique and why science is looking at them closely, naked mole rats don't seem to be able to get cancer. They don't get any cancers whatsoever. So obviously for this reason science is studying them very hard to go right. Why is there a mammal that does not get cancer? Is it genetic? What's the crack and how can we use this to prevent cancer in humans sometimes when i think about the naked mole rat i do you know the way we've got like uh you know dietary fads so you've got the paleo diet where people go jesus cavemen must have had it good uh let's try and eat like cavemen even though cavemen had it terribly but

because ok naked mole rats don't age and they don't get cancer they also don't drink water and they eat their own shit ok they don't drink any water they get their water from

vegetables that they eat or food bulbs I think they eat bulbs of plants and they eat their own shit when they're underground in the colonies as a way to stop waste and to help the absorption of nutrients i believe naked mall racks regularly eat their own shit so i'm wondering now i don't know are you gonna have fucking Instagram influencers

trying to promote the naked mole rat diet where you can live cancer free for several times your age if you don't drink water and you consume your own shit madder things have happened

but yeah thank you Laura for asking about the naked mole rat it is a a very a fascinating creature visually fascinating and it's lifestyle is fascinating

and I stan naked mole rats, I think about naked mole rats quite a bit so thank you for asking that question I think it's time for the ocarina pause lads is it? 28 minutes in, alright you may hear an advert, you may not, I don't know here for the ocarina pause lads is it 28 minutes in all right you may hear an advert

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That was the ocarina pause. That's the ceramic ocarina. I've been playing it more gently. Do you know? It requires a more delicate lip or else it gets too loud. So there you go. This podcast is sponsored by you.

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and you can truly change my fucking life and thank you so much to everyone who's already a patron honest the fuck thank you so much i never ever thought that i would have a regular wage doing what i do but now i do so thank you so much to everyone who's already a patron honest to fuck thank you so much I never ever thought that I would have a regular wage doing what I do but now I do so thank you em what did I want to get onto let's have a look at some of the other questions Snipper Witch asks

Blind Boy what are your thoughts on the wood wide web the wood wide web em this is something I don't know a hell of a lot about on the wood wide web the wood wide web and this is something I don't know a hell of a lot about but I'm getting interested in it I bought a book recently

which I haven't read or gotten into properly it's called The Secret Life of Trees and it does mention this but the wood wide web is something I find fucking fascinating I will tell you the little bit I know about it so far and why the wood wide web is something I find fucking fascinating I will tell you what I the little bit I know about it so far and why the wood wide web is it's one of these things it's it sounds mad but it also makes a ton of sense as well.

I'm trying to figure out the way to contextualize this with language because I have a bit of a kind of a hot take around the wood wide web. First off, what is the wood wide web? It refers to specifically a way that trees communicate with each other. Okay? Now, it's not really a new thing in that for years and years and years, if you listen to like hippie-ish type people, people who are connected with nature, or we'd say cultures that are very nature based such as certain Native American cultures

that are very much their spirituality is very much related with their connectivity with nature and their environment for years and years and years people would talk about you know the trees talk to each other and you know the relationship of nature

and the ecosystem and all of this but what the wood wide web is is you imagine a forest right so underneath we know what roots are so we know roots exist they're fucking you know the bottom part of a tree that reaches down into the soil to anchor it and also to extract nutrients from the soil but in the soil also what they've discovered recently there's vast vast

networks of fungus fungus are essentially mushrooms but these fungus would be fucking tiny you'd barely see them with the naked eye but so basically here's my hot take i think like we've discovered the wood white scientists have discovered the wood wide web

recently the past 30 40 years we are only taking the wood wide web seriously now because we as humanity have the internet so because we as humans have this thing called the internet we can now take the we now have a visual language to understand something that we've probably already known or seen but now we can take it seriously because we can compare it to the internet so this is how it works trees have their roots okay but throughout all of the soil in a forest we'll say for miles and miles and miles you have networks of fungus okay little strands that are going through all the soil and essentially trees the fungus grows around the roots of trees and trees through their roots are all able to communicate information to each other relating to their survival using the fucking fungus as such so So think of it this way.

The fungus are broadband cables, but the trees are your computer or your phone. Do you know what I mean? The trees are like the servers, but they communicate using the wiring of the fungal network that exists in the soil right now this isn't mad talk this is science is finding this now there is trees have a fucking internet trees use fungal mushroom networks as a type of internet to communicate with each other throughout

a forest trees and plants it's it's a intercommunicated ecosystem right and some of these fungal networks can be like millions of years old and it's it's a symbiotic relationship a symbiotic relationship in nature is when two two separate organisms have a connectivity with each other because that that connection and relationship is mutually beneficial to the survival of each separate organism so like the fungus is underground so it doesn't receive any sunlight and it doesn't need sunlight because as you know from fucking school trees use a thing called photosynthesis alright what the fuck is photosynthesis trees use

the green in a tree's leaves is from a chemical called chlorophyll and when the sun hits this chemical it produces sugars I believe, yes, so trees through photosynthesis of the sun, the trees use the sun's

energy to create sugars, the sun the trees use the sun's energy to create sugars the fungus is in the ground they can't create these sugars so when the fungus attaches itself to the tree's root the tree gives the fungus some of these sugars that it is photosynthesized from the sun and in return the fungus gives the trees the fuck does it give it phosphorus phosphorus and nitrogen from the soil so there's a symbiotic relationship the tree needs phosphorus and nitrogen the fungus gives it that and the fungus needs sugar and the tree can give it that which it gets from the sun so that's a symbiotic relationship in an ecological system right there okay so that's why the huge mushroom network exists and why the trees hook into it but this is where it gets interesting okay the trees can share tree the trees and plants in a forest can share resources and chemicals with each other using this mushroom fungal internet.

Put it this way. Okay. Someone asked me a question. Someone asked me, can you speak about the wood wide web? And I'm answering this question. So me, let's pretend I'm a tree i am sharing the resource i'm responding to that person who asked the question i don't know where the fuck they are in the world but they could be listening right now and i'm sharing this resource with them and

i'm using the internet to do this the internet is the mushroom network so let's just say like i explained there with the photosynthesis okay so photosynthesis creates the sugars that the tree needs to survive let's just say you've got a big tree because this tree in the forest has a lot of access to sunlight therefore this tree is doing a lot of photosynthesis and it's creating a lot of sugar for itself it might have too much sugar a mile away there's another tree and this tree is in a fairly shaded area and doesn't have access to as much sunlight therefore it's not photosynthesizing as much and it's not maybe getting as much sugar as it needs the big tree can transfer sugar to that

tree that's in the shade, a good distance away, by transferring the sugars via the fungal network that's in the soil. So it's using the internet of mushrooms to send sugar from one tree to another tree that needs it. What scientists have also observed is, if you have a very old tree in a forest we'll say and this old tree lived for 100 years it's huge stored within the trunk of this tree are tons and tons of nutrients phosphorus nitrogen sugar whatever the fuck you want stuck in this big tree but the tree is going to die so it hasn't much use for it. So what that tree can do. And it's kind of beautiful and spiritual in a way.

There is a spirituality to it. Before that old tree dies. It will dump. All of its nutrients. Into the mushroom internet. And distribute those nutrients. To all the other younger trees that need it. And. and distribute those nutrients to all the other younger trees that need it and it's it's fucking fascinating and

I see an element of I've done podcasts before on consciousness and I often wonder in the way that you know trees have this relationship with each other where they've got the fungal network where they can communicate these things and I often wonder is human consciousness similar

you know the theory that we are all part of a collective unconscious together and that's where instincts come from you know maybe I'm talking out of my hope. The word wide web, it's also used to communicate danger. If, what it's doing as well is it's causing people to,

you know, do we now look at a forest, we'll say, as simply an area of land that has a bunch of, like, do we go at it from an individualistic point of view? Is a forest an area of land that has several different plants on it, all competing to be the best? Or is a forest, in fact, a giant superorganism? Is it one? Do you know?

Is it not just individual trees fighting to be the best, to get the most light? Instead, can we view the forest as one organism? But what they've found is if a tree or a plant, let's just say it gets infested with insects, aphids or whatever, eating the fuck out of one plant. If this one plant is getting a particularly hard time from a predator or from a disease it will send stressing distressful signals through the mushroom internet out to all the other plants to let them know lads i'm getting the arse eating off me here by aphids and those plants that get the warning will then put up their defenses against aphids it could be the release of chemicals or whatever that make their sap bitter i don't know but this again this is science

i'm not talking out of my arse this isn't some new crazy theory this is what scientists are looking at right now um another thing that's kind of class is there's types of orchids now orchids are always interesting plants because they're parasites they're incredibly orchids are incredibly beautiful flowers but they're parasitic plants and arc there's certain orchids that act as hackers in this mushroom internet under the trees so certain orchids will spring up and these orchids they can't photosynthesize like they're parasitic plants so they will latch onto something else in order to survive so the orchids can't produce the sugars that they need through photosynthesis so what they will do is they'll still send down their route hook into the mushroom internet and hack it and they'll hack this internet i don't want to use

the word virus because that's no virus is confusing they'll hack the mushroom internet to confuse a nearby tree so it's almost like they're they're robbing your files off your computer it's it's yeah the orchids so and the orchid is the hacker going onto your laptop and stealing all your bank information so the orchid goes down goes into the mushroom internet and manages to convince a tree that the orchid is another tree and because the orchid can't photosynthesize and create its own sugar the nearby tree in a state of confusion because it's been hacked by an orchid will send sugars to the orchid believing that it is a tree so it's it's like the tree had its bank account hacked by a cunt do you know what i mean and there's other elements within the

mushroom network they kind of remind me to be honest a bit now of like uh the huge rivalry that's emerging in technology between china and the the us or the west you know i spoke about that a couple of weeks ago but you know companies like huawei they're Huawei, who are owned by the Chinese government, these are being, like, boycotted now by a lot of Western tech companies. And there's this huge fight where I think there's going to be two Internets. There's going to be the Chinese Internet and the Western Internet. But, like I said, the orchids will act individually to hack this network for their own benefit. to hack this network for their own benefit there's also

certain trees that will not necessarily they won't they'll do straight up fucking hacker attacks on other trees so let's just say you've got

I don't know a forest full of fucking what's the name of the tree that's cunty it's some type of walnut black walnut I think is the one, so let's just say you've got a, I don't know, a fucking forest full of sycamores, and all these sycamores and the plants, they're getting on grand, they're using the internet, they're sharing resources, it's a healthy forest, and then you plant into the middle of that a black walnut what the black walnut will do the black walnut is like the chinese agent or the russian agent that's in the western internet they will the black walnut will deliberately send out toxic viruses that

hack into the mushroom internet and kill all the other plants so that the black walnut can survive so there's all these parallels that exist in the forest and how it uses the mushroom internet that parallel it's like humans are catching up it's like we're catching up with the trees we've invented our own mushroom network with the internet you know this all sounds very highfalutin mad shit lads um what i should have done to be honest is research this one properly i read my book the secret life of trees and then came back with a full but maybe i will a full podcast on this but those little tidbits that's what i know so far about the the mushroom internet or the the wood wide web as we call it Michael asks will we be getting more dramatic

readings from the next book Blind Boy all going to plan yes you fucking will long time listeners to this podcast will know that this podcast started out in October 2018 initially just as a way for me to promote my my book of short stories the gospel according

to blind boy the first four episodes of this podcast is me reading out short stories from my book um and then of course the podcast got more popular than i thought it was going to get and i was like fuck it i'll continue it so and here we are nearly two years later but my second book of short stories um you know fingers crossed unless any disasters happen will be coming out within the next few months uh close to Christmas and the first draft is written so assuming that it's 90% we'll say the only reason i'm i'm not saying definitely is because i'll never say that until it's actually confirmed in writing but i don't know i could get hit by a fucking car i could fall out of a plane i could shit my pants i don't know until i have 100 utter confirmation that it's being released for christmas then i'll tell you but it is highly

likely and in the event of that yes i can't fucking wait to read out some brand new short stories on this podcast um i'm really enjoying the work like the second book will be it's another collection of short stories it's I'd like to think it's more it's a more mature piece of work uh than the first book how do I quantify that statement I'm just writing longer I'm more considered with my prose um i've been reading a lot more so it's still the same fucking you know i like i like surreal what i love what i like when i'm writing when i'm writing a short story i like my short stories to be how surreal they are um within a technique called the unreliable narrator which is not too far off what flannery bryan used to do you know i mean flannery bryan is a big influence on me when you when you go completely surreal with a short story what you're essentially doing is

writing science fiction right or or fantasy i don't want to do that i don't want to have books where crazy things happen in them what i prefer is more almost magical realism it's surreal things happen in my book because they are told through the lens of a character but you don't know if that character's perception of reality is to be relied upon or not so therefore me reading it or writing it i don't know whether the mad things are actually happening or not in reality i like to root things in our lived reality but tell them through the lens of someone who's a bit unhinged you know i i like um i like to write mad stories i like to write stories that are very strange dreams you know that's what i'm into so the second book is definitely it has that type of carry on going. But.

I would like to consider the prose. Which is the poetic use of language. To be a bit more considered this time around. And I did enjoy writing it. But. If I could do it all over again. I'd love to have just been able to focus on the book. The first book. Was an absolute pleasure to write because I had no other distractions I was just focused on that

book but with this book it took a little bit longer because I've got this weekly podcast continually on tour with gigs I've got a BBC series that I was also fucking writing and filming so several distractions uh while I was writing this second book instead of being able to focus on it entirely. But sure, there you go. I'm not going to complain about being busy. No harm in that. Yes, there will be stories being read out very, very soon

unless something mad happens. Pierce asks, I don't want to get too personal, but what's your favourite childhood memory it's my favourite childhood it's not specific right actually this is a bit bleak I remember when I was

I do remember being very very young and there was this feeling of waking up first thing in the morning and just being overwhelmed with this massive feeling of happiness and hope and safety this very very heaven almost heaven like what you'd imagine it would feel like to go to heaven of simply waking up as a little kid and I'm talking probably I don't know earlier than six years of age maybe five six seven I do associate it a bit with waking up looking out the window and seeing that it's sunny I think that correlated with it but a few times of just simply waking up looking out the window and seeing that it's sunny I think that correlated with it but a few times of just simply waking up and being overwhelmed with this feeling and sense of love

and positivity and it would happen less as I got older I would experience it sometimes as a teenager where it gets bleak is that feeling disappeared completely when my dad died when I was 21. So it's, it's one, I remember it, I remember, yeah, like I'm, I'm a very happy person. I experience a lot of happiness in my daily life. But I do remember a feeling of utter euphoria and pleasure at simply waking up to another day. And that feeling was taken away when my father died. and I think because at that moment, when a parent is taken suddenly, or someone you love is taken suddenly like that,

you're confronted, it's almost like life hits you with a hammer, and you're at that moment confronted with the inevitable reality that life contains pain and misery. And very, very bad things can happen. So I think that's when you say to me, what's my favorite childhood memory? I don't know is it my favorite, but it's the one that... I guess what I've learned with age is when I was a little child and I would wake up with this euphoria at simply having a day ahead of me

it was naivety it was the naivety of not truly knowing what utter horrible pain and disappointment is like losing a parent so I lost it at that moment it was like being dragged into adulthood so not to say that I'm unhappy and as you know I'm always talking about you know in order to have a sense of personal meaning we have to confront address and own the fact that life contains inevitable suffering and that is part of being alive but before my dad died I was kind of naively floating along thinking that I knew death and pain were things that were out there. But I hadn't felt them. I hadn't experienced them. And when I felt and lived and experienced them. It robbed me of this feeling of elation. And sometimes when I create.

Especially when I write. When I'm writing a short story and I'm in a state of flow. When I'm in flow. I think that feeling is the dragon that I'm writing a short story and I'm in a state of flow when I'm in flow I think that feeling is the dragon that I'm chasing because sometimes I can glimpse it because I can leave into this fantasy land of writing where I exist only in my creativity and I can feel that elation

and pleasure for little glimpses of it so that's a bleak end to the podcast lads not really bleak no it's not fucking bleak it's it's like no it's like i said pain is part of being alive but happiness is also part of being alive and there's a balance there and you cannot expect to exist as a human being and avoid hurt pain disappointment lost that's part of the deal that's the tapestry of human existence and if you want to experience the pleasure of humanity and the here and now you're going to have to also experience a bit of pain it's a given, so there you go

alright, that's nearly an hour you're probably hearing this in the morning but I'm recording this at night time and I'm up very very early to do a bunch of filming tomorrow so go fuck yourselves have a wonderful week enjoy the fucking summer time lads enjoy the summer time plant some wildflowers that's another thing I've been saying at the end of Fuck yourselves. Have a wonderful week. Enjoy the fucking summertime lads. Enjoy the summertime.

Plant some wildflowers. That's another thing I've been saying at the end of a lot of podcasts. To plant wildflowers. Make fucking damn sure. If you're buying wildflower seed. To plant it. Or to create seed bombs. In the interest of helping biodiversity.

Make fucking 100% sure they're Irish. Or English if you live in, make fucking 100% sure they're Irish, or English if you live in England, make 100% sure, a lot of wildflower seeds, that are being sold in garden centres, they're not really, they're not Irish wildflower, they could be German wildflower,

you know what I mean, there's, yeah, I think it's irishwildflower.ie, let me double check here on the internet because someone's son hold on a sec irish wildflower i think yeah so someone on twitter said to me during the week, they warned me, they said, be sure and tell people to be careful that when they're buying wildflower seeds in garden centres, that they make sure they're Irish wildflower seeds. But however, he said, my father has a legitimate Irish wildflower seed business that's been going for 30 years.

So the address he told me was irishwildflowers.ie now i'm not sponsored by that i'm just being sound there so that's a guaranteed way to get actual irish wildflower seed online if that's where you want to go if you are going to the local garden center double check the back of the packet or take out your phone and fucking check it up on google if the wildflower seeds you're buying are actually irish okay good luck talk to you next week Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. 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 Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game, and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com.