The Blindboy Podcast - The History of Carrot Cake

Episode Date: May 23, 2023

The History of Carrot Cake. Russell Crowe visited me in a dream. Mindfulness meditation  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Peel off your suntans, you fun-sized Duncans. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. I hope you've had a charming week. Let's begin this week's episode with a piece of short prose. This prose was submitted by the actor Russell Crowe, who I met recently while I was having a dream. This piece is called Why Did Prince Live in a House That Looked Like a Call Centre in Clonmel?

by Russell Crowe. Why did Prince live in a house that looked like a call centre in Clonmel by Russell Crowe? Why did Prince live in a house that looked like a call centre in Clonmel? Look up Prince's house on Google. Look it up. Tell me that his house doesn't look like a call centre in Clonmel. It's perfectly square. It has that white Celtic tiger cladding on the outside that makes the building look like it's made out of plastic.

It has a car park, a smoking area. It has a bark mulch with the type of hardy evergreen shrubbery that you only ever see in an Irish industrial estate or retail park. There's fire exits and the inside, there's fire retardant carpet. Why did Prince, why did Prince, one of the greatest musicians of all time, live in a house that looked like a call centre in Clonmel? He died in that house in front of the elevator. Don't look up those photographs. Why did Prince's house look like a Vodafone call centre in Clanmel? And you might be wondering, why do I, Russell Crowe, even know what a call centre in Clanmel looks like?

Because I met Richard Harris and the set of Gladiator and he lived in Limerick and I drove from Dublin to Limerick and I stopped in Clanmel and I saw an ESAT Digiphone call centre and I said to myself, that call centre looks like Prince's house. Why does Prince live in a house that looks like a call centre in Clonmel? Thank you to Russell Crowe for submitting that piece of prose. I'm telling fibs. Russell Crowe didn't send me that.

But there are little strands of truth. So I used to work in a call centre. And I did have a dream. I had a dream last week. That I was back working in that fucking call centre. I hated the job. I really disliked that job. But I had a dream last week.

That I was back in that call centre. Answering the phones. And Russell Crowe was my team leader. leader I don't think he had any ears and he kept trying to be my friend so we went out to the smoking area and he was smoking those really small silk cut red cigarettes and then we both found Prince's dead body and he said I'm going to ring the guards and say that you killed Prince and I woke up I woke up with a poor opinion of Russell Crowe

and then I had to I had to have a chat with myself and say it was a dream it was a dream Russell Crowe didn't accuse you of killing Prince and you didn't find his body in a call centre

out in Clonmel and I don't know how Russell Crowe ended up in my dream. But Prince did actually live in a house. That looked exactly. Like a call centre in an Irish industrial estate. Paisley Park it was called. Like look it up online.

Prince's fucking house. The maddest house you'll ever see. Like do you remember MTV Cribs. That programme that used to be on fucking years ago where famous musicians would showcase their houses and they usually lived in these giant plush mansions. Now most of them were fake. They rented them out for the day but Prince was a proper gigantic multi-millionaire huge rock star who could afford a massive luxury custom-made mansion and he didn't. He literally lived in a building that looked like a call centre in Clonmel. Now he built it himself,

it was custom-made but possibly like the ugliest celebrity house I've ever seen but so ugly that it's intriguing and if you look at photographs of the inside of Prince's house, you get this unsettling feeling. At first I'm like, something's off here and I don't know exactly what it is. What's going on with the inside of Prince's house here that doesn't feel comfortable in any way? And then you look at the scarting boards and the doors and the tables, the furniture, the walls. And you realize that Prince's house deliberately looks like the inside of a corporate office. And then other parts of it look like the backstage of a venue. And at no point in any of Prince's house, with the possible exception of his bedroom, nowhere in his house feels like anywhere you could call home. And I couldn't

understand it. I was like, why the fuck would he do it? Why would you want to live here, man? And he spent a lot of time there. Like, why do you want to live in a call center? And I think the reason was, is Prince was an absolute workaholic. He dedicated all of his time to work and work only. I think he needed his house to feel like work. Like if you look at the doors in his house, it's real horrible corporate wood panelling with emergency exit signs and the carpet is like that cheap fire retardant carpet. It feels like an office space. I think he had to do it so he didn't feel like shit when he was on tour. Like the most insufferable part of being on tour when it's your

job. Doing the actual gig is lots of fun but the waiting around is horrendous. Either waiting around in hotel lobbies, hotel rooms or backstage at venues and then by the end of the tour you eventually get used to it and then you're back of the tour you eventually get used to it and then you're back home and when you're back home it's all comfortable and homely and then it feels terrible to go on tour again so I think Prince toured so much and worked so much that he just designed his entire house to feel like perpetual hotel room slash office space slash backstage and I think that's why his house Paisley Park looks like that. You can do tours of it. It's in Minnesota. I'd love to do a tour of it but I was talking to someone recently who works in the music industry. Someone

who works on big tours like Coldplay sized tours where they're touring all around the world for six months and he told me about a dude he knows I think he worked as a lighting man but this person would spend nine months of their year on tour with a band and usually when a big band will do a huge tour they like book the same hotel in every city They'll go to like Hilton and do a deal with Hilton and every single city they stay in on the tour, they stay in a Hilton hotel. So this dude, this lighting man, he had a room built in his house that looked exactly to a fucking T, like a Hilton hotel room in his house so that when he got off tour

he never had to feel that experience of being home he just stayed in a Hilton hotel room that was in his house like in the mercantile era the 1700s and the 1800s when sailors would be at sea

for like 8 months a year and then they couldn't return to land, they'd get land sickness. They'd be on a boat so much, moving with the water, that when they got to dry land, they'd get dizzy and they'd feel physically sick and they'd get anxiety and depression, so they just had to stay on boats. So that's why I think Prince's house looked like a call centre in Clonmel and that was the only way he could not have his soul crushed by the process of touring.

And that's why I think Prince's house looks like that. I think Prince was doing that. And Russell Crowe did actually come to Limerick and he may have seen a call centre here. When Russell Crowe was on the film Gladiator, Richard Harris was in that film too. It was like 2002.

Richard Harris played the part of Marcus Aurelius. Marcus Aurelius is someone I need to do a podcast on. Also because he has a book called Meditations, which is like a fucking precursor to CBT, written in the first century. But Richard Harris and Russell Crowe became friends on the set of Gladiator and then

Richard Harris said to Russell Crowe I come from a city called Limerick Russell and you have to promise me that one day you will visit my home city of Limerick and you'll watch a game of rugby in Thoman Park and you'll have a pint of Guinness and Russell Crowe said I promise you Richard Harris that I'll do this and then Richard Harris

died in 2006 I think and Russell Crowe was like well I promised Richard Harris I was going to come to Limerick and go to Thomann Park and have a pint of Guinness so he did but he tried to do it all secretly he didn't make a big deal out of it and then Russell Crowe came to Limerick and he had a big long ponytail and he wore a giant hat he wore a big huge hat

so no one would know it was Russell Crowe but he did such a good job of disguising himself He wore a big huge hat. So no one would know it was Russell Crowe. But he did such a good job of disguising himself. That he went to a pub in Limerick. Nancy Blake's. And he got there late. And they'd stopped serving. And he looked so much not like Russell Crowe. That the barmaid refused to serve him.

And then it ended up in the paper and it was just reading the local paper in Limerick and the barmaids being interviewed and getting interrogated and questioned as to why she refused Russell Crowe a pint so that's real, that happened I can't find the fucking news article online

but anyone in Limerick will tell you like that happened everyone remembers it let's ask let's ask artificial intelligence and if you've been listening to this podcast over the past few months you'll know that i've trained an artificial intelligence model to have the brain of 19th century politician charles stewart parnell so let's ask artificial intelligence Intelligence Charles Stuart Parnell. Did Russell Crowe get refused a pint in Limerick? My dear compatriot, the Honourable Gentleman Mr Russell Crowe, as of the year 2021 which marked the limit of my training data. There is no record to suggest that Mr. Crowe has ever refused a pint, be it in Nancy Blake's or any other establishment within the vibrant city of Limerick. Now we live in a world of constant change where news travels faster than the wind itself. The truth can oftentimes be

obscured by rumours and hearsay. Let us honour the truth with the same passion with which we pursue justice. After all, knowledge is the cornerstone of any free society. Alright, Mr. fucking Charles Stewart Parnell, that's the weird thing about artificial intelligence. So I asked artificial intelligence Charles Stewart Parnell, was Russell Crowe ever refused a pint in Limerick? He answered and said no. However,

I didn't mention the pub Nancy Blake's, but artificial intelligence Charles Stewart Parnell did. So AI is covering for Russell Crowe. Why would it know the name of the pub that it happened in, but yet say it didn't happen? Okay. Did Russell crowe accuse me of killing prince in my dream esteemed blind boy as the renowned charles stewart parnell might have stated

the domain of dreams is the last true refuge of the individual untouched by the hand of another i find myself bereft of the capability to witness or comprehend the ethereal occurrences that manifest in the realm of human dreams. Is it fair for me to hold a grudge against Russell Crowe because of something he said to me in a dream? The esteemed Mr. Russell Crowe, being a man of the waking world, possesses no dominion over the realm of your dreams. The phantom of Mr. Crowe that appeared in your dream was not the man himself, but a construct,

a figment of your imagination, born of your own subconscious mind. Therefore, my dear friend, it would be unjust to bear a grudge against Mr. Crow for an offence committed by a spectre within a dream as that spectre is not the man but merely a shade reflecting some aspect

of your own subconscious you dirty cunt. Ha ha ha ha ha So I think I killed Prince. A so I think I killed Prince a dirty bastard I'm projecting I think I killed Prince I didn't do you know what it is

I'm being disrespectful to Prince I'm disrespecting Prince's choice to create a fucking house that's just a consistent place of work all the time maybe that's what so maybe my unconscious mind is saying

chill out a bit buddy let Prince worry about his house you worry about your house why are you projecting onto Prince so that's why in my dream Russell Crowe accused me of killing Prince and I am fucking projecting because

yeah I'm sitting here in a fucking corporate office my podcast studio is literally a bland grey corporate fucking room with fire retardant carpet and fire doors and emergency exits. I work in a studio that's a corporate office so that I can imbue a sense of structure and rigour on my job, which has the potential to be chaotic. So I'm actually projecting

thank you Charles Stuart Parnell I'm projecting my own shit on Prince I'm judging Prince I'm oh fucking Prince what a lunatic what a mad bastard man would you not just get a nice couch for yourself why'd you have to build your

house like an office I'm fucking I'm doing the same thing I'm projecting on prince i'm embarrassed or ashamed in some way about my own eccentricity i refuse to take ownership of it so i've projected it on prince by judging and shaming his his house which is none of my business and then Russell Crowe appeared in my dream to say I'm going to tell the guards that you killed Prince so that's my unconscious mind saying go handy on Prince blind boy you're projecting buddy go handy you'll worry about your office Prince worries about his office jeez I think I just used artificial intelligence there as an effective form of therapy rest in in peace, Prince.

So that's all we have time for this week. That was this week's podcast. Imagine that was the podcast. Fuck me. What an odd start. So for this week's podcast, I'm going to answer some of your questions because I haven't done a question answering podcast in I think like six weeks

or something like that and I got asked some wonderful questions on Instagram of course because Twitter is fucked man Twitter's gone bad basically with Twitter Elon Musk took

away everybody's blue tick. Right? And now if you want a blue tick, you have to buy one. And it's like 8 euro a month or something like that. But the thing is the only people who are buying blue ticks tend to

be right-leaning people. People who lean right politically. Twitter was always a bit of a left-leaning space, but anyone who's been on Twitter and is left-leaning, they're kind of not buying a blue tick on principle because they don't want to, they just don't want to do it, almost as a protest against Elon Musk. but what's happened now with Twitter is because only people with right leaning opinions have blue ticks it tends to be all you see now

for instance today a video came up on my timeline and I won't describe the video but a video came up on my timeline from someone I don't follow and the video contained racist disinformation it was disinformation and it was racist now usually if you see disinformation and somewhere like Twitter you go to the replies or the quote tweets and then someone will say in the replies or quote tweets this video is wrong and

here's why this video is wrong so this is disinformation but now the replies that you see first to anything on twitter are all blue tick accounts so when i saw this racist video i couldn't see anyone disproving that this was disinformation or this was incorrect because every single response was a blue tick person with right-leaning racist views and I had to scroll right down to the bottom after about 60 comments to finally see someone saying who didn't have a blue tick saying the information in this video is harmful wrong and racist and here is why so twitter has radically changed as a space and if your job requires you to use social media like me i don't think you can rely upon twitter anymore so i'm kind of moving to instagram instagram instagram

is just a nicer place and it's always been a nicer place and people are just people behave on Instagram a little bit like they behave in real life and in real life people tend to be a lot more nicer than they are online so when I ask on Instagram do you have any questions for this podcast I just get like 500 like I think it was like 500 people just giving me really, really good questions. People genuinely engaged going, yeah, I've got a question for the podcast. So I was fucking utterly spoiled for choice questions this week from Instagram. Follow me on Instagram, by the way, blindbybowclub, if you do have an Instagram. So Megan asked, what is the history of the carrot cake?

Now when I saw that question, I went, yeah, what is the fucking history of the carrot cake? I think I need to think about carrot cakes now. I mean, carrot cakes are great, aren't they? Carrot cakes are fantastic. They're one of those cakes that are a mark of

culinary maturity, I find. Like when I was a child and I first tasted a carrot cake, I was like, what the fuck is this? Ma, you bitch. No, I didn't say that. But the first time I tasted a carrot cake, it very much challenged my palate. Because but the first time I tasted a carrot cake it very much challenged my palate because you have to search for the sweetness

in a carrot cake alright you've got the icing on top and that carrot cake fucking icing that's the real deal carrot cake icing is em I think there's a bit of cream cheese in there is there? it's like a cream cheese icing so it's not as

intense as straight up what you call that icing that just looks like cum but i've got the giggles this week i got i've the guardian called me one of the best food writers in the world and here i am asking which is the icing that looks like cum but you know regular icing where it's just melted fucking sugar carrot cake icing is different you know because it has I think there's cream cheese in there so there it has that the cheesy tang to it so that the icing is sweet but the main body of the carrot cake it's it's like gingerbread if it went to college and got a job in the civil service there's a sensibility to carrot cake

it's not for kids it's not for children there's sometimes there's walnuts involved so there's a meatiness to the body of carrot cake there's a there's a faint meatiness that comes from the walnut then you've got the memory of ginger but it's not it's not there it's it's the memory of ginger it's it's a rumor about ginger and then of course there's a heaviness to it there's a real heaviness to carrot cake and a moisture whereby if you eat a carrot cake like it doesn't feel like a dessert i mean if you took the icing off and just ate the the fucking ate carrot cake bareback then and he just

it's almost like a meal it's not like a dessert I'm unintentionally sexualising carrot cake here and it's the least sexual of all the fucking cakes it's a very functional cake which I'd nearly eat it for lunch of all the fucking cakes it's a very functional cake which I'd nearly eat it for lunch

I'd nearly eat the carrot cake sans icing and go that works as a lunch that does and I think what it is, it's the carrots there's fucking carrots in it there's grated carrots in it

but when you're eating it, you kind of have to go, oh there's carrots in this, really? Tell me more. And someone has to tell you before you get the carrotness of it. So I, carrot cake is great. It's fantastic. It's a very mature

choice that challenges the palate a bit. And first you've got to start talking about carrots. Because let's face it, like, it's a cake made out of carrots. It's a cake made out of carrots. Are you mad? There's a bit of that. You can't make a cake out of carrots,

Russell Crowe, you lying bastard. So the thing is with carrots, they're not real. You know, they're humans created carrots. Like dogs, they're not real. You know, they're humans created carrots. Like dogs. Dogs are not real. I've maintained this for a long time. A dog isn't real.

There's no such thing as a dog in nature. A dog is a wolf that became friendly with humans over thousands of years and then became this new animal which exists alongside humans. It's domesticated. Carrots are the same. There's not really such thing as a fucking carrot in the wild. In Persia, around that area, maybe 5,000, 6,000 years ago,

I'm talking cradle of civilization, Persia, Babylon, Mesopotamia, the fertile crescent there. When humans stopped being hunter-gatherers who moved with herds and decided to settle down into villages and towns and started exploring agriculture, there were wild plants that were carrots, right?

But a carrot isn't a tuber, like a spud, like a potato, you know, even though it grows under the ground. A carrot is just a root. It's an engorged root. So the first ever carrots 5,000 years ago, they would have been related to parsley. And they would have had roots, like yellow roots, that people would have been related to parsley and they would have had roots like yellow roots that people would have eaten and said the roots of this plant taste nice I wish there was more of them

so people would breed these ancient carrots so that the roots grew fatter and fatter and then all of a sudden after a couple of thousand years you had something that looked a bit like a carrot with an engorged fat root. But they were yellow and some of them were even fucking purple. And fast forward a couple of thousand years and now carrots are quite popular in Europe around the 10th century.

But again, these carrots, they were purple, yellow. They would have looked a bit like a small parsnip. Carrots and parsnips are very closely related. And these carrots in the 10th century, they wouldn't have been as sweet as the carrots we have now. Like when you eat a raw carrot, you can taste the parsnipness of it. Like I can't describe the taste of a parsnip as anything other than parsnip. There's a tartness to it you know. A tart herbiness

and that's present in carrots. So how did we end up with orange carrots that are kind of sweet, the carrots that we know today. With this ironically there's a historic parallel with this and like orange men you know the people up north the unionists up north the fucking orange men so orange carrots modern orange carrots they come from the netherlands specifically around the 15th century because the royal family in the netherlands then was the house of orange and this is where I'm relating to you know William of Orange, the Battle of the Boyne the Orange men up north in Ireland

today who celebrate the Battle of the Boyne and the ascension of William of Orange to the English throne the House of Orange in Amsterdam this was the 15th century so you had all these competing fucking royal houses

in Europe and the Dutch were like we're the house of orange so we think orange things are class, we think orange things are brilliant so the Dutch started to breed carrots that looked orange what makes carrots orange is a

it's a pigment called beta carotene this pigment it's in a lot of foods as an additive What makes carrots orange is a pigment called beta-carotene. This pigment, it's in a lot of foods as an additive. Do you remember when we were kids, there was like a moral panic because everybody... Sunny Delight was really popular when I was about 12. Sunny Delight is this orange drink. It's shit now. It used to be fucking... Oh man. Sunny Delight when I was 12 was like

crack cocaine it was incredible and if you drank enough of it kids were going orange kids faces were turning orange and their eyeballs were turning orange and parents were freaking out and it was all over the news this is because Sunny Delight had a

fuck load of beta carotene in it to make it orange but beta carotene is also what's in tanning pills i don't think anyone takes tanning pills anymore but you can buy pills in the chemist and they'll give you a weird looking tan they'll turn your face and eyeballs orange that's beta carotene beta carotene is also there's quite a lot of it in irish grass because of our ample rainfall and irish butter such as kerrygold like our butter is quite yellow compared to american butter or canadian butter and that's because we've a fuck ton of beta carotene in our butter that comes from the grass that gets all the rain and finds

its way into the cows and their milk so the dutch were breeding these carrots to make them extra orange and they were upping the beta carotene in it and also upping the sweetness of the carrot so it was the dutch and the house of orange where the orange men come from where we get the modern sweet orange carrot but it was around this time that the carrot cake started to be invented there wasn't a lot of sugar around the place in the 15th century 15th century means the 1400s so that's before what's called the columbian exchange when the quote-unquote great nations of Europe, colonized the continent of America and killed all the indigenous people.

That's when humans were like, oh, there's sugar cane here. And also like a hundred years later, practices in technology and industry led to more efficient ways of extracting sugar from things. But in the 15th century, there wasn't a huge amount of sugar. There was honey, but that was expensive as fuck.

And even with sugar beets, they couldn't produce sugar from sugar beets on an industrial scale. So people didn't have a lot of sugar. So carrots were fucking unreal to the mouth in the 15th century. A carrot to a person in the 15th century was the sweetest thing they'd ever tasted. So in the 15th century, quite a lot of cakes were carrot cakes, because this was a great source of sweetness. So quite a few cakes had carrots added to it.

So then what happens is the years roll on. You get to the 16th century, 17th century. Colonization is happening. Sugarcane, molasses, the Industrial Revolution. Now people have greater access to sweet things. So people stopped kind of using carrots in cakes and the carrot cake was kind of forgotten about until World War II. Carrots became quite important in World War II, particularly over in England, right? So in England, when the Nazis were bombing England,

Britain had blackouts, which meant the Luftwaffe are going to come and bomb Coventry or Sheffield or wherever. So they'd turn off literally every single fucking light. You couldn't even turn on a candle. So for weeks and months, and it would have been real shit in winter, if you lived in a city in Britain during World War II, there was no light at all.

People got in trouble for lighting a cigarette, because the Nazi bombers would be above, and they're looking down trying to find cities, so you had to make the city look as black as the countryside from above. And it was really shit for people. There's kind of an urban myth, in like there's kind of like an urban myth in that there's probably some truth to it but it can't be fully verified that more people died from the blackout than the actual bombs that were dropped because of the amount of accidents that

happened people would drive down the road without their lights on and no street lights and and kill people in cars because it was in complete pitch black, blackout. People would fall downstairs. It had a terrible impact on people's mental health because you're not even allowed to turn on a candle to read a book unless maybe your windows are perfectly blacked out so no light can escape. But there used to be police going around, and if you did anything that involved light, you got in trouble, and it was taken real seriously,

because one cigarette or one light turned on in a kitchen could mean a neighbourhood getting bombed. But at the same time, there was rationing going on, so you couldn't turn the lights on in case the Nazis bombed you and also all the food in Britain needed to be sent for the war effort so people were encouraged to eat less to literally ration and also if possible to grow as much vegetables as they can at home in their own gaps like people used to build makeshift bomb shelters at their back garden called anderson shelters and then on the roof

of the bomb shelter they'd have a little victory garden as it was known and in this they were encouraged to grow vegetables that grew easily like parsnips carrots and spuds but the british government also engaged in kind of a propaganda campaign to boost morale to tell people like how wonderful these vegetables are that they can grow themselves at home and one of the vegetables that got a lot of good press at the time was the carrot and the reason being there's all these blackouts you can't see fucking shit but carrots have all this beta carotene in them and beta carotene when i think when when humans consume beta carotene i think we turn it into vitamin a and vitamin a helps the eyes so they put out all these adverts in world war ii in britain saying

eat as many carrots as possible because it'll make your eyes fantastic and you'll be able to see in the dark during blackouts bullshit but it was just for morale but it's from this that we see the resurgence of the carrot cake because people were rationing sugar so you use the least amount of sugar that you could least amount of oil the least amount of butter so the british the ministry of defense would give people recipes for carrot cake where it's like use this fucking thing that you can grow out your back garden and you can grow it yourself so use as much of it as possible and make this cake out of it so that's where like the carrot cake that we enjoy today kind of comes from that world war ii recipe it was a cake that

was sold to people as something that could help them see in the dark so they didn't get bombed by Nazis. And the reason it was orange is because of fucking William of Orange the Orange Man. And quite a few recipes like that survived beyond World War II as like nostalgic food that people enjoyed. So the carrot cake became a staple. Another one was, and no one does this anymore, but you couldn't get bananas during World War II in fucking England because the bananas came from South America.

So people used to grow parsnips. And a substitute for mashed banana in World War II was to get a parsnip, cook it mash it and add a little bit of vanilla essence. So that's the history of carrot cake. Which I just fucking knew it would be fascinating. I knew it. It's too weird a cake. I can't explain it like

I'm not that interested in finding out about chocolate cake. I just know when I eat chocolate cake it's like yum yum. This makes a lot of sense everything in this cake makes sense it's fucking chocolate and it's cake I'm not thoroughly

enthused to go looking into the history of chocolate cake I'd imagine it's just we got this new thing called chocolate as a result of the Colombian exchange and we mixed it with sugar and we made a cake. Whoop-de-woo. What a fucking carrot cake.

That's nuts. So I knew, like, I want to find out how this happened. Sometimes I feel that way about Black Forest Gato. Like, Black Forest Gato is the other side. Like, Black Forest Gato is nearly too delicious. Black Forest, like, who the fuck's got a problem with Black Forest Gato? Like Black Forest, my God. Chocolate cake base,

fresh cream, lovely cherry tomatoes, sprinkles of chocolate. Like Black Forest Gato is nuts when you think about it. And like a real one. It's rare you get a real one. Like not the shit ones you buy in a petrol station but something that a person has really put some time

into. And I went looking up the history of Black Forest Ghetto and it's not very interesting. It's as I expected. It's from the Black Forest region in Germany and some chef just decided let's get a bunch of delicious ingredients

and put them into a cake and it makes sense so I know the history would be a bit boring see carrot cake is about conflict that's why I like fuck carrot cake is about conflict I described it earlier like

there's a story going on in a bite of carrot cake there's opposing narratives in there you know it's carrots, carrots, really? in a cake? do you know what I mean? that type of conflict

in a morsel of food there has to be history in a story there no one just decides that no one just decides that. No one just goes, let's put carrots in a cake like mad bastards. No. There has to be conflict narrative and history to arrive at something that weird. And there is.

It's an orange man's cake that helps you see in the dark so you don't get bombed by the Nazis. Let's consult Charles Stuart Parnell. Why did I describe carrot cake in a sexual way? What's going on for me psychologically to do that? Well, as individuals we are a complex tapestry of experiences, thoughts and emotions. Food in all its glorious variety often evokes strong feelings and memories due to its inherent sensory nature. The act of eating can be quite an intimate experience involving taste, smell and touch, senses that are also engaged in romantic and sexual encounters. If one finds oneself describing a carrot cake, or any food for that matter, in a sensual or sexual way,

it might be an expression of this intimate relationship with food. There's a term for this known as gastrophilia, which is a love or deep appreciation for food, sometimes expressed in a manner akin to sensuality. It's important, however, to maintain an awareness that there is a significant distinction between appreciating the sensory delights of food and objectifying individuals or relationships

in a manner that could be inappropriate or uncomfortable. So I think what Charles Stewart Parnell is saying there is, I don't want to fuck a carrot cake, and I don't want to use a carrot cake to fuck anybody else. And you couldn't, because a carrot cake is flaccid by its nature, it has perpetual speed, Mickey. So long as I'm not there, I'm grand I'm doing okay, it's okay to describe a carrot cake in a sensual or sexual fashion

and the subject of food writing my favourite fucking food writing Ernest Hemingway Ernest Hemingway has a biography called A Moveable Feast about his time in Paris and I swear to fuck

it's not a biography it's a man in the 1920s who wished he had Instagram A Moveable Feast is it's him writing down all the wonderful dinners that he ate in fantastic detail

and wanting to like that's what we do with Instagram now you know Instagram is the new grace before meals if you're in a restaurant and you get a nice piece of food the first thing you do

is you take a photograph of it sometimes you want to share it but I don't really I don't share photographs of my food with anyone but if I'm in a fucking restaurant I'm taking a photograph of a nice bit of food that I had so I can memor a fucking restaurant I'm taking a photograph of a nice

bit of food that I had so I can memorize it I want to hold it as a memory and Hemingway's biography A Moveable Feast that's what that is he just describes fantastic fucking meals and fantastic drinks it's a it's wonderful to read he actually found it by accident so Hemingway lived in in Paris in his 20s and I don't think he had a lot of money and he'd been writing these descriptions of food and just almost like a diary the whole time and he left it in a suitcase in Paris in the 1920s in a hotel, I think the Ritz Hotel. He just left it in a suitcase and then forgot. He forgot that he'd spent all his time writing this diary. And then when he was an older man in his 60s, I think, he went back to Paris and went into the hotel.

And the hotel were like, oh, Mr. Hem Hemingway we've a suitcase belonging to you from like fucking 40 years ago and he opened it up and there was his manuscript of everything he'd written about when he was in Paris in his 20s and that's that biography a movable feast it's fantastic and I know it's a cliche to be going on about Hemingway but if you're a fucking writer if you're even thinking about writing or starting to write, you can't go wrong with fucking Hemingway. Read any of his short stories. Read Big Two-Hearted River.

He wrote in this incredibly simple, descriptive, highly detailed, slow prose. And when he did this, you would feel what's happening in the story. He'd never tell you what's happening in the story. His writing would make you feel it. And Hemingway is one of those writers that if I'm to sit down and write a thousand words,

if I'm writing a short story, Hemingway is someone I'd crack open beforehand just to ground myself, a thousand words if I'm writing a short story. Hemingway is someone I'd crack open beforehand, just to ground myself, just to remind myself what nice clear writing is. It's like listening to the Beatles, listening to the Arlie Beatles if you were about to write a song, to remind yourself what a really catchy melody is. Okay, it's time for the ocarina pause now and then I'll answer more questions. I've got my Puerto Rican guero. You're going to hear an advert for something. Will you rise with the sun to help change mental health care forever?

Join the Sunrise Challenge to raise funds for CAMH, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, to support life-saving progress in mental health care. From May 27th to 31st, people across Canada will rise together and show those living with mental illness and addiction that they're not alone. Help CAMH build a future where no one is left behind. So, who will you rise for? Register today at sunrisechallenge.ca.

That's sunrisechallenge.ca. On April 5th, you must be very careful, Margaret. It's a girl. Witness the birth. Bad things will start to happen. Evil things of evil. It's all for you. No, no, don't.

The first omen, I believe, girl, is to be the mother. Mother of what? Is the most terrifying. Six, six, six. It's the mark of the devil. Hey! Movie of the year. It's not real.

It's not real. It's not real. Who said that? The first omen. Only in theaters April 5th. That was the Ocarina Pause. You would have heard an advert for something I don't know what for. Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page,

patreon.com forward slash theblindboypodcast. If you enjoy this podcast, if you listen to it, if it brings you mirth, merriment, distraction, joy, whatever has you listening to this podcast, please consider becoming a patron because this podcast is my full-time job this is how I earn a living this is how I rent out this office it's how I live and exist and pay my bills

and patrons are the reason I'm able to show up each week and deliver you a podcast that I genuinely care about deliver something that I can put time and effort into. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month. That's it. And if you can't afford that, don't worry about it. You can listen for free. Because the person who is a patron,

they're paying for you to listen for free. So everybody gets a podcast. I get to earn a living. It's a wonderful model based on kindness and soundness. And it's worked fantastically so far. And I hope it never changes. Also, it keeps me independent. It keeps me independent.

Advertisers don't come in and say, change the content of what you speak about so we can get more listens. I guarantee you, every single advertiser in the world would say to me I like that bit there about the carrot cake but you see the first 20 minutes where you spoke about a dream where Russell Crowe accused you of killing Prince can you take that bit out

it's a bit weird no, fuck off and that's what patrons do that's why patronage is that a word? patronage that's is that a word patronage is it's a good way to support independent media whatever independent media you enjoy try and support it directly if you can my new collection of short stories topographia hibernica is coming out in november pre-orders are available right now they They're signed copies. They're one of a kind.

Go to my Instagram. And on my Instagram, Blind by Boat Club, I have a little pinned story at the top. And you'll see a link in there of where you can pre-order the book. Also, I asked my book company to make me a custom URL. So if you go to topographiahybarnica.com, that should also give you a link of all the different ways you can pre-order the book including internationally. Also this week I have an audiobook coming out which I'd forgotten about but my book company just told me it's coming

out. So I've two collections of short stories already, Boulevard Wren and The Gospel According to Blindby. And I never released these as audiobooks because the book company I was with at the time, I don't think they had the infrastructure to release audiobooks. So this new publisher I'm with, they are releasing my first two books as audiobooks and one of them comes out this week. And it's called small bones in a fist now i will put links up to where you can buy this on my instagram or whatever it's an audiobook and it's a mixture of there's gonna be two of them and it's a mixture of stories from my first two collections called small bones in a fist it's not just an audiobook of me reading my short stories. Also for each individual story, I composed a score.

I composed a piece of music to act alongside and underneath the story. So loads of you have been asking me for audiobooks of my first two collections. One of them is going to be available this week. Now some of the stories on it you will have heard on this podcast, just to be clear with you. So some of the stories on it you will have heard on this podcast. But there's other ones from my second collection which are new and haven't been heard. So it's up to you if you want to buy it or not. And also my new collection, Topografia Hibernica, when that comes out in november there will be an audiobook also whether i compose a custom score for that

i don't know because it took me fucking six months to do the last one why did i compose a custom score i think because i can my brother i think it was said it to me at the time he's like if Roddy Dial was able to compose music he probably would as well and it's like that's a good point so because I can compose scores and compose music why not incorporate that aural art form into the written fucking art form of writing a short story and mix the two of them together to create a new piece of art for the crack okay contractually obligated gig announcements so i don't get sued august the 26th of august i am in the cork opera house for cork podcast week that's gonna be good fun then on the 28th of august i'm in vicar Street, up in Dublin. Vicar Street is always amazing. Come along.

Then on Friday the 1st of September, no, the 9th of September, Friday the 9th of September, I'm in Birmingham at the Mosley Folk Festival. Then, Saturday the 9th of September, I'm in the Pavilion in Dun Laoghaire. Can't wait to go to Dun Laoghaire. What else have I got? Billion in Dun Laoghaire. Can't wait to go to Dun Laoghaire. What else have I got?

Belfast, the waterfront on the 11th. Oh man, I'm shit at maths, man. Hold on. Waterfront, Belfast, the 18th of November, 2023. Come along. That would be amazing. Right, we're nearly 50 minutes into the fucking podcast and I've only answered one question and described a dream.

Hayley asks, am am I gonna make more music so yes as you know over I went a bit mad over lockdown we all went a bit mad over lockdown over lockdown I had this project that I was doing on the live streaming website twitch

where every fucking Thursday for two years, I wrote and produced songs live to the events of a video game. And it was tremendous crack. It was very intense. I think I wrote about 400 fucking songs. And I haven't done that since December, I think.

And I listen back to some of the songs, especially if I have a bit of Baldy, and I go, fuck it, some of these aren't bad at all. So once this book is finished, I definitely think I'm going to go back to Twitch and start doing music again, because I love it, but the process of it is very draining.

It's very draining for my brain it's like spending an hour on twitch writing songs really intensely and being in intense flow for like 90 minutes it's like it uses all my creativity for the week so I can't also write and do that and it's different parts of my brain the musical part of my brain and the writing part of my brain are they're kind of two separate compartments and musical creativity is quite bodily it's very abstract very feeling based whereas writing creativity is is cognitive that involves thinking and I need to give the music part of my brain a rest if I'm to engage the writing part and vice versa so I really I cannot wait

hopefully hopefully like by July I'll be back on Twitch making music and making songs I'll see what I might do something different this time but I'm really looking forward to it and also if I can find the time I'd love to get all those songs that I made on Twitch and kind of whittle them down to maybe 90 songs or something

and edit them a bit and master them and put them all up on Spotify as a huge album as just this weird fucking lockdown project where here's an album of 90 songs but every single song you hear was literally made up on the spot. I'd love to put that type of project out because it's just, it's odd. And the work is there, the music is made, I just have to find the time to

edit it and master it and get it into a shape that I'd be comfortable putting out Scanners was asking would I be interested in doing an episode where I do more guided meditations like if loads of ye wanted it of course I would I'm not a

professional expert meditation giving person but a simple mindfulness meditation is so simple I think I'd get away with doing it if people liked it and people wanted it I spoke about meditation a few podcasts back about the benefit of mindful meditation and in particular diaphragmatic breathing

and how it can help us to emotionally regulate and be calm and there's something I should have mentioned at the time. And it only came to me after the episode. But. Here's a wonderful example of mindfulness meditation. And we never call it this. Irish people in particular. We all grew up praying to Saint Anthony if we lost something.

Even if you're not into fucking religion like i'll do it even if you if you don't give a fuck about religion if you don't consider yourself catholic if you lose something today something usually something important right i'm talking a bank card a set of keys when you lose something and the loss of this thing causes you great stress because it's like fuck me where's my bank card is it down behind the couch or did someone steal it and now i have to cancel it you know that anxiety that you get when you've lost something important and you're looking everywhere. Usually as a last resort, most of us will say a little prayer to Saint Anthony. I know I will.

I'll get to the point where it's like, I don't know where the fuck my bank card is. I really don't want to cancel it. Bollocks. I've searched everywhere. And then I go, fuck. Okay, I'm going to have to say a prayer to Saint Anthony bollocks and I hate doing it because I know that it's superstition and I'm not religious but if I can't

find my bank card I'm gonna say a little prayer to Saint Anthony and then I do I don't know any prayers to Saint Anthony but I just go Saint Anthony please please all right I don't ask you for much I know you know I don't believe in you that much but please for fuck's sake Saint Anthony I'm just asking you please can you find my bank card I'm begging you please Saint Anthony and you do it and then lo and behold ah there it is there's my bank card it was there all along and then you find it and then you get that feeling afterwards where you go fuck man maybe this religion shit is real because like I just prayed to Saint Anthony there and I found my bank card it tends to work quite a bit and when it does work it makes me question my beliefs to be honest and then I started thinking about it

differently when you lose your bank card and you lose something that will create high stress think about your body in that moment so you're legitimately worried and it's rational to be worried because you're in a threatening situation you've lost a key or you've lost a bank card and the consequences of this are quite negative so your anxiety rises naturally and you're searching all around the house and you're focusing on not necessarily finding the card like when you go i've checked the flower pot I've checked under the couch and you've gone to all the usual places and then you're like fuck I do not know where this is

when you get to that point then you start entertaining the what ifs ah fuck what if someone's nicked it now and they're after buying a lot of plane tickets am I going to have to go with the fraud department ah fuck what if I've lost this key and now I'm locked out of my gaff am I going to have to go with the fraud department oh fuck what if I've lost this key and now I'm locked out of my gaff

you start to go to the what ifs and you start to think of worst case scenarios and the thoughts and thinking of the anxiety process kick in and then what happens is your cortisol levels in your body rise without knowing it your breathing is fucking shit

you're breathing in a shallow way your heart is beating fast and you're a person who's experiencing anxiety while looking for a thing you can't find when that happens emotion has taken over your body and emotion is now driving your thinking process. You're not searching for solutions. You're scanning your environment for threats. Because you're experiencing anxiety. And then you pray to Saint Anthony. And when you pray to Saint Anthony, you're engaging in a type of mindfulness meditation.

When you pray to Saint Anthony, you have to think in quite an abstract way you're appealing to a grateful gratitude side of yourself you're trying to appeal to something higher than you some greater meaning and asking a deity to help you find your bank card when you engage in that process your breathing naturally will slow down because you're praying to Saint Anthony and then you come out of that and all of a sudden there's your bank card but what happened there has nothing to do with Saint Anthony what happened is you've just simply allowed better oxygen into your body your cortisol levels are down your emotions are more regulated you're not experiencing anxiety

and fear and because of that the card was there all along you just kept walking past it and looking over it because you were thinking about what might go wrong rather than truly mindfully searching for it in the area so that's what that's what praying to Saint Anthony is. That's a mindfulness meditation. It takes you out of emotional thinking into calm, emotionally regulated, mindful thinking. And then all of a sudden,

ah, it was right under my nose all along. And I found it because I was calm. That's mindfulness. Praying to Saint Anthony is a very crude type of mindfulness that we do when we find ourselves in a natural state of anxiety. And mindfulness and mindfulness meditation and the consistent practice of mindfulness in whatever situation you find yourself in, you're doing the same thing. If I wake up in the morning, something that can be triggering for me is my email inbox. You know, you get up in the morning, I have to search my email inbox and I'm going, oh no, what could go wrong in here?

What are people asking me to do? What bad news am I going to receive? So I open it and there's like six emails and they're ones I'm going to have to respond to not particularly pleasant not something I enjoy just the boring part of my job and some of it might involve conflict disagreeing with people

it's just the shit I have to do if I'm not grounded around my inbox in the morning I start to experience anxiety and I start to go I don't want to deal with that right now. I'm going to put it off. I'm afraid of what might happen. So then I don't respond to any email. I let it snowball. And then it's the next day. Now I have twice as many emails to respond to. I have a bunch of emails I should have responded to yesterday and I didn't. So now

I've actually created a real problem for myself now I experience anxiety because I'm worried about what might go wrong and I've created like a self-fulfilling prophecy for myself and it's a cycle but if I open my email in the morning I take ownership of the fact that I'm about to open my emails now and you know what this is like this is going to be a little bit anxiety inducing so now what do i do before i open my emails i fucking ground myself i sit down i do diaphragmatic breathing in through my nose and then i feel my tummy expanding and now i'm emotionally regulated the emails are still as threatening as they always were, but now I'm emotionally regulated. So when an email comes in that's slightly annoying, I'm not overestimating how stressful it is. And what do I do? I fucking respond to it there and then.

I just write back there and then, and then the problem is solved. As opposed to putting it off procrastinating and then creating actual problems so i'm praying to saint anthony in that moment but i'm not praying to saint anthony i'm just fucking breathing something is triggering me and now i'm going to breathe and emotionally regulate and reduce the stress levels in my body and deal with what needs to get dealt with and that's mindfulness in action. In a stressful situation. So using mindfulness in a stressful situation can be a bit more difficult. But like I said, the Saint Anthony, we do that anyway.

Praying to Saint Anthony is engaging mindfulness in a crisis situation. But if you want to get good at mindfulness, practice it when it's pleasurable this is why I'm always saying about this time of year practice the mindfulness on a walk go out for a walk and just make sure that when you're walking

mind your breathing in through the nose feel your belly expanding so you know that you're getting full diaphragmatic breathing and then just look at everything don't just walk past the tree really notice the fucking tree and look at it and look at the leaves and the stems

and a bird that might be on it and listen to the sound that that leaves that that tree's leaves make and try and notice if the leaves of that tree sound a bit different to the leaves of the other tree and all you're doing is completely and utterly living present in the moment experiencing your environment as it happens to you in the here and fucking now as opposed to not noticing any trees because you're worrying about what might happened or what has happened

before worrying about the past and worrying about the future it's quite possible you can easily go on a lovely fucking nature walk lads and just fuck it up for yourself like when i was over in vancouver a few weeks back like i'm gigs, so gigs can be stressful. You're putting on a show, so a million things can go wrong. So it can be a stressful situation. So I'd get up in the morning in Vancouver, in this wonderful new place, and I'd go for a jog down by Coal Harbour. Just this beautiful, gorgeous park and wildlife and clean air. And these wonderful mountains in the distance that are capped with snow. Mountains I've never seen before in my life.

And I did a run one morning. And it was an hour long run. And I came back and I couldn't remember any of the fucking run. I had ran past mountains higher than I'd ever seen before with snow on the top, and didn't notice them because I was worrying about what might happen at the gig that night. Worrying, will the sound be okay?

Will the lights be okay? I hope my guest turns up on time. And like, didn't notice a beautiful run. So that's the opposite of mindfulness and that can happen easily you go for a lovely walk for yourself you've made a decision to go for a walk for your own mental health and you might as well have sat at home and scratched your fucking bollocks mindfulness is the opposite of that it's the active conscious choice to say i'm walking now and all i gotta do is notice everything around me don't have to react to it you notice everything around you and it starts with your breathing it starts with in through the nose feeling your tummy expanding nice slow

natural breathing getting all that air into the lungs and then walking along and going, look at that tree, look at the bark on that tree, look at that one particular leaf, look at the shadow that that leaf casts on the ground, look at those blades of grass, what am I smelling there? And noticing it the whole time so that that's what you're only focused on and it's real it's easy to do that when there's aesthetic beauty around you so there's your practice it's real simple and if you practice that then when it comes to a stressful situation like emails or someone at work who's who you don't click with or someone you have conflict with then you can engage your mindfulness and your breathing in an actual stressful situation

where you really need it okay i think that's all we have time for i didn't even answer a question there i just answered a question that i wanted i that was just a ramble i answered a question that I wanted to... That was just a ramble. I answered one question about carrot cake in this entire podcast where I was asked 500 and something questions. But sure, it wouldn't be a Blind Boy podcast if I didn't do that at this stage, would it? Alright. Rub a dog. Kiss a swan.

Walk over a worm. Genuflect to a fox. I'll catch you next week. You're invited to an immersive listening party led by Rishi Keshe-Hirwe, the visionary behind the groundbreaking Song Exploder podcast and Netflix series. This unmissable evening features Herway and Toronto Symphony Orchestra music director Gustavo Jimeno in conversation. Together, they dissect the mesmerizing layers of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, followed by a complete soul-stirring rendition of the famously unnerving piece, Symphony Exploder, April 5th at Roy Thompson Hall.

For tickets, visit TSO.ca. Thank you.