The Blindboy Podcast - The History of Whales who wear dead salmon as hats

Episode Date: April 10, 2024

The History of Whales who wear dead salmon as hats  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Run to the mountains, you crumbly Ultons. Welcome to the Blind By podcast. If this is your first podcast, go back to an earlier episode to familiarise yourself with the lore of this podcast. You might notice something slightly different with the sound this week. A few people who listen to this podcast in their cars, or their vans, and there's one mad cunt. He listens to this podcast.

He's a fisherman. And when I record this podcast, I don't imagine an audience. I'm aware that there's like Jesus, nearly a million regular listeners. I'm aware of that. But when I record this podcast, it's just me.

It's like an internal dialogue. It's an external expression of the internal conversations I have of myself all the time. But there is this one listener that I sometimes think of. So it's this fella who's a fisherman, and he goes out onto his trawler by himself in the morning, like real early, like four in the morning, and goes into the blackest, silent depths of the Atlantic Ocean off the west coast of Ireland, and he plays my podcast on giant speakers to the barren ocean at like five in the morning. And I do think about that listener and I appreciate that listener who's broadcasting my voice over the dark sea, bothering a conger eel

on a big set of giant speakers. But some listeners who listen to this podcast in their car, of recent, have been saying that there's too much bass in the podcast, that my voice can be a little bit too boomy if you're listening in a car. So I've adjusted some settings on my microphone this week so that my voice is a little bit more crisp rather than boomy. I'd like to think that this crispness will shiver the meniscus of the Atlantic. There's actually a slight bit of an echo there, let me, let me fuck with something here. Let me play with that and now there should not be an echo.

Let's see here what I have. Now that's much better, now that's nice. That's nice and crisp and not too boomy, not too bassy. Also lots of you were inquiring as to why I haven't read out any poetry, any poetry that had been submitted by Hollywood celebrities recently. And it's true I haven't done that in a couple of months. So this week I think I'm gonna read you a little poem. A piece of prose that was submitted to me by Hollywood actor Liam Neeson and this poem is called Beauty Routine at the Zoo by Liam Neeson. I smeared a mouse in toothpaste and let it crawl inside my mouth. It died behind my tongue and then I cried when it fell out.

So I dug a hole in clay and shaved my face upon its grave. A mouse's tomb will soothe your skin because its natures razor blade. And I moisturised the herons. Took a sauna with a swan, awashed the gibbons with my fists beneath a winking blood-red sun, worshipped at the roots of the petrol dentist. I am the breeze that chills Brown Thomas, the fungus among us, crimping the Christ follicle.

I am the bareback otter, poised to shrivel the devil's eyelash. Beauty routine at the zoo. And so I swim the swamp with lizards, use my washcloth on their bums. I exfoliate their kneecaps and they pluck my eyebrows with their tongues. Beauty routine at the zoo. Beauty routine at the Zoo, Beauty Routine at the Zoo. Thank you so much Liam Neeson for submitting that piece of prose.

I loved your voice over work in the Japanese animation film Ponyo. That's the most bizarre Liam Neeson role I've ever come across. There's a Japanese animated movie made by a studio called Studio Ghibli and this movie is called Ponyo. It's very difficult to describe this film because it's kind of mad. It's brilliant, it's fantastic.

It's a Japanese it's fantastic. It's a Japanese children's animation movie about an underwater princess who can turn into a goldfish when she's on dry land. I think it's based on Japanese mythology. I strongly advise you watch it. Watch anything made by Studio Ghibli, the Japanese animation studio. They make wonderful wonderful films. But in this movie Ponyo, there's a little underwater princess and she surfaces to our world and turns into a goldfish on dry land and then a little boy carries her around in a bucket but back underwater her father is like this weird underwater prince, this underwater king. He's a dandy with flares and long hair who's voiced by Liam Neeson for some fucking reason. When I saw this film for

the first time and that character presented themselves I did not expect Liam Neeson's fucking voice to come out of their mouth. A very strange and jarring choice of voice actor for that role. And Liam Neeson's character, this underwater dandy, he's very upset because his daughter is missing, his goldfish daughter is missing. So he goes on this mission as a strange long-haired underwater Dandy to retrieve his goldfish daughter. Ironically it's the plot of Taken but years before Liam Neeson made Taken, the Taken series is probably what Liam Neeson is best known for. I think I've only seen one of them, they're a bit silly.

It's Liam Neeson as an ex-CIA fella and his daughter keeps getting kidnapped. I've watched Taken. There's something about it I don't like. I think it's directed at absentee fathers. It's directed at men's rights activists, I think. Like, you get the impression that it's a film about women's safety, because his daughter gets kidnapped. You think it's about women's safety. It's not.

There's this covert undertone of, this is what happens when women don't let fathers see their children, you bitches. There is a certain type of very bitter da, and they don't have access to their kids, and there's probably a good reason for it. And you can spot these bitter das, because they usually say things like, I can't see the kids because that bitch won't let me see them. And they tend to have a narrative of blame and accepting no personal responsibility whatsoever. Those men do exist and I think that's who taken is for. That specific type of bitterness appears to be a driving force in the narrative of Taken.

Now if you are a da, and you're separated from your kids, I'm not shitting on you. This isn't about you. I'm talking about a very specific type of very bitter, angry, deadbeat da. You can find them on Facebook. And they tend to be American.

I've no doubt they exist in Ireland too, but the loudest ones online tend to be American. And you can spot them because of very bitter, vitriolic outbursts of blame that make most people go. I can tell by the way that you're behaving that there's another side to this story that you're not letting us know about and that energy does permeate Taken. I've only watched the first one. I've only watched the first one. I don't think I'm able for the second one but in that wonderful

Japanese animation, the children's animation, Ponyo, Liam Neeson plays this underwater dandy who's searching for his last daughter. It's the plot of Taken but much more imaginative and compassionate. I absolutely adore Studio Ghibli. They're Japanese, Japanese animations. Most of them were made by a fella called Hayao Miyazaki. A lot of them were made in the 1980s. I think they're all on Netflix. But what I adore about Studio Ghibli animations is, right first off, they're hand-painted.

The ones from the 80s anyway. They're hand-painted, so they're aesthetically beautiful to look at, especially the backgrounds. But the storytelling is phenomenal and it's very different to Western storytelling. In particular, how they're directed towards children. There's a real empathy, there's a real understanding of how children see the world and how children process emotions that's present in the narrative of Studio Ghibli films. In particular, my favourite is one called My Neighbour Totoro. If you have children you should watch it with your children but it's equally rewarding for adults too. And not in that post-Toy Story way. Like after Toy Story came out in 1998, there was this explosion of big children's animations

that parents could also enjoy. It was a way to get parents and children spending money coming to the cinema together or buying DVDs. And the way that Disney and Pixar post-Toy Story started to make cartoons that appealed to both adults and children was usually through double entendre. Like you'd be watching Finding Nemo and there's a joke there and the kids laugh at it, but then the adults laugh at it because it's a joke about a titwank. Now I've never seen Finding Nemo, I don't know if there's any titwank jokes in fucking

Finding Nemo, but that's...I've seen animations aimed at kids, and there's jokes there for the kids, but if you're an adult you know that the joke is also for adults. It's like a little subtle dirty joke. With, I find with the Studio Ghibli animations, they can be appreciated by both adults and kids. Not because of double entendres or double meanings, but because of a way that it portrays the human condition that you can look at from different perspectives depending on your age and maturity. What I adore about this film, My Neighbor Totoro and a lot of other Studio Ghibli films, but the film is about how a child reacts to major change and it does it with such a wonderful empathy for

a child's perspective of themselves and the world. It doesn't talk down to kids or tell a moralistic story. The story is told in a child's emotional language, it explores the limitations of a child's emotional capacity to deal with heavy change in their life and how the child will retreat into fantasy and imagination when the stress of their life becomes a bit too much. My neighbor Totoro, it's about these two little girls, a sister who's like eight, and a little girl called Mae who's three,

and they suddenly move to a new house in the countryside with their da, and their mother isn't around. And on the one hand, from the child's point of view, the film is about these two little kids moving to this new house and finding all sorts of wonderful fantastical monsters in the house. But on the other hand, it's revealed that their mother is off in hospital and she's sick. Now we don't learn anything about how sick she is, why she's sick, what's happening, we just know the mother's in hospital and also that the community and

the adults around the girls are very helpful and supportive to them because of this. We don't know if she's gonna die, we don't know if she does die, we just know the mother's in hospital and at no point in the film does she return. And instead of explicitly showing the stress of that on the little children, we the audience are protected from any upsetting information the way that a child would be protected. Like their father is clearly moving to a new house with his two daughters and his wife is sick in hospital, but we never see his sadness, we never see his stress. It's not even suggested or hinted.

There's no shots of him crying alone in his room because we, the audience, are protected. The way that a parent would have to perform the emotional labor of hiding their sadness from a tiny little child but within that gulf, within that lack of information, like really mad things will happen like a bus will just turn into a giant cat or the little girl Mae goes off into the forest and meets this giant cuddly teddy bear type character called Totoro where she finds comfort and that's not a spoiler warning

It's not like Bruce Willis is a ghost at the end of the sixth sense It's just if you if you were to watch Neighbour Totoro as a little child, it's this wonderful fantasy about moving to a new house, exploring it, exploring change, and these fantastic creatures and worlds emerge. But if you watch it as an adult, you get to see. This is a film about two little kids and their mother is seriously ill and these little kids don't have the emotional maturity or complexity or language to deal with any of that pain and change and fear, so they fill in all those gaps with fantasy. And it's so profound, it's like a piece of literature.

It has the complexity that a piece of literature has, and it doesn't follow the Western pattern of storytelling. It has so much more ambiguity. And the two little girls, they're waiting in the dark on their own, waiting at a bus stop, because every evening their dad goes to visit their mother in the hospital and comes home on the bus.

And the bus arrives and the dad gets off. And you're there as the viewer, as the adult going, well, is the mother dead? What happened? Is she gonna come home? You don't get an answer. The boss turns into a giant 12-legged cat, and as the viewer, you have to just sit with that. And if you're an adult, you're uncomfortable. You're uncomfortable with, what the fuck do you mean that's the end of the film? A boss turns into a 12-legged cat? And then if you're a child you're like what an excellent end to the film a bus turns into a 12-legged cat. Amazing

But it's the perfect ending. Of course the bus turns into a 12-legged cat Because the story is told through the emotional lens of a three-year-old What do you mean my mammy is gone and is sick and I'm never gonna see her again? What does that mean? What is death? What do you mean people go away forever? What's forever? I don't know what it means to be alive yet because I'm three. I don't like how this feels. What's the name for this feeling? Bizarre surreal fantasy is the only language and coping mechanism that that child has. And that's why a bus turns into a 12-legged cat.

And then the uncomfortableness of that, as an adult watching it, who requires answers and certainty and a feeling of safety, it forces us as adults to hug our inner child. It makes us confront and reflect on times in our childhood when we didn't have the language to deal with pain that was beyond our comprehension and it handles it beautifully. It just handles it in such a poetic way. A film that closely attempts that is labyrinth. That film with Jennifer Connelly and fucking David Bowie, where Jennifer Connelly loses her little baby brother and then goes off into a fantasy labyrinth. It deals with those themes, but not with such a studied representation of the human condition. And there's wonderful complexity to that writing.

My neighbor Totoro, if you haven't seen it, I think it's on Netflix. As you may have guessed 18 minutes into this podcast, I'm on a bit of an unplanned ramble this week. I was going to answer some of your questions. I asked Instagram for questions this evening and I got so far 455 questions so I'm gonna try and answer them. Helen asks what do you think about Arcawhales having different hunting cultures? So yes, Arcawhales are very fascinating creatures because they appear to display a sharing of cultural knowledge which is something we view as exclusively human behaviour but Arca whales, they have a number of behaviours which demonstrate communication and culture. So scientists have studied how certain pods of Arca whales hunt and different communities of whales,

pods of whales, they share knowledge of how to hunt certain species. So like in Antarctica, they push seals off icebergs. So if an arca whale sees a seal, they push the seal off the iceberg and then they kill it. But this behaviour isn't ubiquitous to all arca whales. It's a certain community of arca whales near Antarctica, and there's other orca whales in different parts of the world where they hunt seals as the same animal and they don't knock seals off icebergs. So some scientists reckon this suggests that it's less instinct, something that's innate

to the whale, and more a specific set of skills, like Liam Neeson and Taken, a specific set of skills that whales can learn from each other and share using culture and language of some description. Last year in 2023, around the Mediterranean, out of nowhere, Arca whales started attacking boats, like civilian boats. Now they'd never demonstrated this behavior before, and it's become a cultural trend amongst Arca whales in the Mediterranean that they're attacking boats. Scientists have looked at it. Their hypothesis is that a single traumatized Arca, who was in a critical moment of agony,

attacked a yacht. Other whales saw it and said, fuck it, let's copy that whale. And it appears that Arca whales in the Mediterranean are, they have a culture of attacking boats now. It's a trend. Arca whales have been seen grieving. And not only grieving, they have unique, like, grieving customs depending on the pod. If an Arca mother loses its newborn calf, its little child, it will push the lifeless child around the ocean for some

time before leaving it go. Scientists call it the Tour of Grief. In Australia, for about a thousand years, one particular population, a pod of Arca whales, used to hunt other whales with humans. So indigenous people were hunting whales and then these other orcas would come along and help the humans, let the humans know where the enemy whale pod is, and then the humans would reward those orcas with cannibalism. They'd cut the tongues off the enemy whales and feed them to the helpful whales. Indigenous people call it the law of the tongue. And by far, for me, the most fascinating example of whale culture, for me, is

what's known as the Salmon Hat Trend. So in the Pacific Ocean, in the 1980s, one particularly dominant female whale, like the Beyoncé of whales, she started wearing a dead salmon on her head for the laugh, like just swimming around with a dead salmon on her head like a hat, a salmon hat. And then all the other whales started copying this influential whale and now all the whales in this area of the Pacific in the 1980s wore dead salmon hats and then it just stopped Just stopped stop being fashionable like fucking skinny jeans. The whales just said fuck that I'm not wearing a salmon hat anymore

That's old shit and that's fascinating that suggests a sense of identity a sense of self self-esteem an idea of fashion community that's very complex thinking Ella asks what are your feelings on the autism assessment I think I answered this before. Me personally, an autism assessment would have been very helpful in school. Receiving it as an adult, it's not hugely helpful. But also, I'm growing slightly uncomfortable with being very publicly autistic. Like the criteria for autism diagnosis changed about, I think, five years ago. And as a result, you're seeing more and more people being diagnosed as autistic.

More previously, these people might have been referred to as Asperger's. But I'm personally wary of being a spokesperson for autistic people because I'm fucking flying it. I have a wonderful life and I can't possibly speak for other people on the autistic spectrum who might have severe difficulties, real severe difficulties around sensory issues, meltdowns, being nonverbal. I don't want to take up that space and then have neurotypical people thinking, she's applying by his autistic, look at him, he's flying it. I was diagnosed under the criteria of the Diagnostic and Statistics Manual, the DSM. Being gay used to be in that manual.

Up until the late 1970s, being gay was in that manual as a diagnosed mental disorder. And then culture changed. Culture changed and said, hold on a second, there's nothing wrong with being gay. What's wrong is homophobia. That's the bit that's wrong. And the person who diagnosed me as autistic in accordance with the DSM, they even said to me that a time will probably come where I won't be diagnosed with anything. The way that I am won't be seen as a disorder. Because I sure as fuck don't experience it as a disorder.

But it would be. It would be very, very stressful. And I'd be a very upset person if I was in a different environment. I'm fortunate enough to have the autonomy to define my own environment and what works for me. I don't work in an environment that would require the consistent emotional labour of socialising, like an open plan office or a public face and service job that would require me to perform a lot of emotional labour around small talk and speaking to people frequently. If I was in that position, then I'd have severe mental health difficulties. Like those whales that are attacking boats.

The scientists are saying that this is a trauma behavior. The whales that live in the Mediterranean Sea do not live in an environment that is conducive to the health of a whale. So they're miserable and they're fucking attacking boats. Is that a disordered whale? Or is the environment disordered? I'm sure those whales don't want to be attacking boats at all.

They want to be down in the sea, having crack, wearing salmon hats. What would I be doing if I was a neurodivergent person under the pressure of a highly neurotypical environment? Addiction, depression, anxiety, agoraphobia, risk of suicide. So I'm self-employed, I get to spend huge amounts of time on my own, exploring my innate unstoppable curiosity as my job and that then facilitates my capacity to be mentally healthy. What has been the main benefit for me of receiving a diagnosis? It means that people have to be a bit kinder to me

and more understanding around what are perceived as eccentric behaviour. For example, I'm nearly 40. I wear a plastic bag on my head because I love writing, I love making podcasts, I like making TV, I love being an artist. But the conditions of this capitalist society dictate that in order for me to be an artist and share my work, the public, in order to earn a living, then I must also engage with quote-unquote celebrity and notoriety. So I wear a bag on my head so I can just do the creativity part and then minimize the overwhelming emotional labour that would be required of me to be recognized on the street, we'll say. But that makes perfect sense to me.

To me, that is a really sensible thing to do. But you know what I found out last week? There's a writer, I think he's American. There's a writer in America who's also autistic and also wears a bag on their head, completely independently, for the exact same reasons, called Chuck Tingle, where like two whales wearing salmon hats.

I just wanna make art, but I also have to do magazine interviews, or go on the radio or TV, in order to earn a living from that art. So I just wanna avoid the being recognized in the street thing, because that's quite unpleasant for me. So bag on the head, that's what works.

That makes some people fucking furiously angry. If you've ever fucking seen me on telly and then you've read the comments on Facebook or Instagram afterwards, people fucking hate me. Some people who are very very neurotypical in their outlook, they get so angry. They see it as almost dishonest that I don't want to participate in notoriety. They're insulted that I'm refusing to take the place within the hierarchical structure that's allotted to a person who appears on the TV or the radio or whatever the fuck. It's called stupid, immature, take the bag off you fucking idiot, I can't take you seriously

with that bag on, cop on to yourself, you're embarrassing yourself, you're embarrassing your community. It's viewed as eccentric, attention seeking, dishonest behaviour. Before my autism diagnosis, especially as I get older, it was actually hard to defend. It was very hard to defend. But now that I'm publicly autistic, those people are going to have to just back off. They have to go, he's not harming anyone, just leave him be weird. Just leave him be weird. And the thing is, it's not weird. It's the most rational thing to do.

How many times have I got proper famous people on this podcast? What's the fucking first thing they all say? You lucky cunt, I wish I had a bag on my head. No variety is the irrational bit. You want to be sitting on a train, and a stranger decides they're gonna take your photograph because they saw you on the telly? Who the fuck wants that? Neurotypical people who have no experience of it. That's who wants it.

They want it massively. In fact, culture is driven around chasing that type of fame. And narcissistic people who have it and really, really love it. To me, it's dysfunctional to want that. The other thing that the diagnosis is helpful for, and this is outside of my career as blind boy, and just regular everyday life, where I'm a normal person

with people who I know in real life. So I'm an eccentric person. Everyone who knows me says, it's either I'm mad or I'm eccentric. Not in a bad way, not in a harmful way, just he's fucking mad, he's eccentric. Most people like this about me, it's entertaining. It's fun to be around.

The thing is, I don't have control over it. I don't know why I'm eccentric. I don't really understand. It's probably shit like, I don't know if I'm getting a haircut and I do feel like doing small talk. I'll start speaking about the salmon hat trend. I'll tell the barber,

did you know about a population of Arca whales who used to wear dead salmon on their heads as hats? Some people go, wow, that's fucking interesting, tell me about that. I love those people. Then there's other people who go, what the fuck are you talking about that for, you weirdo? Or worst of all, it's not that deep buddy. Every Nora de Virgin person will tell you that that's infuriating because it fucking is that

deep. Whales wearing salmon as hats, as a cultural trend, is very fascinating, worthy of our curiosity and can tell us something about nature and the human condition, so it is fucking that deep. But the issue with being eccentric and not knowing why you're eccentric and not having control over being eccentric is this. Everyone is a little bit eccentric as a teenager. When we're teenagers we get piercings, we fucking dye our hair mad colours, we have kooky personalities. This is part of being a teenager when we're trying to understand our sense of identity and figure out who we're going to become as adults. So everybody is eccentric as a teenager.

It's attention seeking behaviour. That's perfectly normal for teenagers to do. For a teenager to dye their hair a mad colour or act a certain way, to seek attention, that's a normal way to project bright colours out to people around you and then read what's being reflected back and get a sense of who you are. And neurotypical people tend to leave that eccentricity behind as they get to about 18 or 19. But when you're neurodivergent, you don't.

So now you're 20 and you're still eccentric. You're 25, you're still eccentric. You're 30, you're still eccentric. It can be perceived as deliberate attention-seeking behavior. You're showing off. You're looking for attention. That can cause you to lose a lot of respect because it's perceived as immature teenage behaviour. But when you're neurodivergent it's like, honest to God I'm not looking for fucking attention, if anything I want less attention, I want to be left alone. I promise you I'm not looking for attention, I don't even know what it is I did or said that makes you think that.

So for me in my personal life having a diagnosis will hopefully, will allow people to reframe my eccentricity as just a part of who I am rather than me looking for attention. But most people, to be honest, most people that I know, my eccentricity has always been offset by creativity. So they'd say, he's mad, but also he's fairly accomplished as an artist. So he's just one of those mad artists. Like that was the narrative that my family would have of me in a really, really supportive way when I was growing up. He's a mad artist.

Like my dad would say that when I was 15, 16. My dad would completely celebrate that I was eccentric, 16. My Da would completely celebrate that I was eccentric or mad. He'd say, of course he is. That's a sign of his creativity. Look at Salvador Dali. Salvador Dali used to walk around the place with an aardvark on the end of a lead.

You can't be creative like that and then be normal. And what was really helpful growing up was, my family doctor, my family doctor was the writer of Flannar Bryan's brother. Flannar Bryan, of course, is my fucking hero. Most likely neurodivergent in some description. Miserable man, roaring alcoholic, but also deeply eccentric. But my da and my ma are hearing stories about Flannar Bryan's madness and eccentricity in his personal life. They're hearing it from his actual brother, who's the family doctor and was a good friend of my da's.

So when I was a teenager, being eccentric or mad or whatever the fuck I was doing, my da would say, just like Flannar Bryan, that's the creativity, that's a sign of your creativity. And looking back, that was hugely helpful. That was hugely helpful. Because they weren't saying that in school. Like, being called a mad artist, that wasn't shameful or painful, because it was framed as something to be celebrated, as an indication of a unique mind. And personally, I'm kind of more comfortable

identifying as a mad artist than an autistic person. So that really is the only benefit of an autistic diagnosis for me. School, whole different story. I would have been offered support. I wouldn't have been labelled as horrible at a young age. I wouldn't have been expelled. I wouldn't have been thrown into the worst classes. And I probably would have gotten a young age. I wouldn't have been expelled. I wouldn't have been thrown into the worst classes. And I probably would have gotten a leave insert. I'd gotten a leave

insert and this would have allowed me to have much greater options to explore my curiosity in college. I still deeply regret that I didn't get to study literature or study science or have more options. I had no fucking options. I had one option. Do a PLC course and get 600 points in your art college portfolio to make up for the leave insert you don't have. And that's what I did. And it worked out alright for me.

But it's shit to just have one option. Okay let's do a little ocarina pause. I've answered two questions, that's not bad. Let's have an ocarina pause. I'm in my office, there's no ocarina. So I'm gonna hit myself into the head with issue 94 of the Dublin Review. I've hit myself into the head with the Dublin Review before. The Dublin review is a little Irish literary journal full of essays and short stories. We have a lovely tradition of literary journals in Ireland. Small, professionally run publications with a high editorial standard that publish writers. Every single question answering podcast I do someone asks what advice

would you give to someone who wants to start writing. Here's some advice. Submit your writing, your essays, your short stories to one of the many literary journals in Ireland. Submit your writing to the Dublin Review. Submit to the Stinging Fly. Submit to these publications, not to get published, to get rejected. Get rejected so much that you will not experience the feeling of rejection as something negative, and you will understand it as an essential facet of being an artist.

And the more rejection you get, the more feedback you'll get, the more rejection will feel completely normal. You'll understand failure not as a bad thing, but as a thing that must happen, that has to happen, and that will happen. Failure will become a thing that you don't fear at all. And then when you're right,

you're no longer fighting the fear of failing. You'll become more courageous in how you write. You'll stop trying to copy people. You won't write because you want to write something good or something bad. You'll write for the sake of writing. You're like a firefighter who practices around fire every day. Flames are just part of your job, they're not scary anymore. When you can write, and the fear of failure isn't present, you'll find

your unique voice. Your unique voice as a writer. Then your writing gets better, you keep submitting, there's less failures and you start to get published. So that's some advice if you want to become a writer. Go and get rejected by every single literary journal in Ireland. There's no such thing as failure if you try. The only failure is doing nothing because you are scared to try. Every rejection, every failure, informs a future success. So I'm going to hit myself into the head with issue 94 of the Dublin Review, which I haven't had a chance to read yet because I just got it.

You're going to hear an advert for something. I always regret hitting myself into the fucking head with this book. It's not heavy enough. It's just light enough that it whips. It's actually painful. I'm gonna headbutt it rather than hitting myself into the head with it. Better. Much nicer.

There you go. You would have heard an advert there 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 the blind way podcast. If this podcast brings you mirth, merriment, entertainment, joy, distraction, whatever the fuck, please consider paying me for the work that I put into this podcast because it's my full-time job.

This is how I pay the rent for my office. It's how I earn a living. It's how I pay all my bills. The funding from my patrons is what allows me the space to fail so that I can fuck up over and over again and then deliver the best podcast that I can deliver every single Wednesday. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month. That's it. If you can't afford that, don't worry about it. You can listen for free. Because the person who is paying is paying for you to listen for free. So everybody gets a podcast and I get to earn

a living. Patreon.com forward slash the blind buy podcast. Okay let's plug a few upcoming gigs. It's April. At the end of this month, I've got my big tour of Wales, Scotland and England. Alright? I've got Newcastle, Glasgow, that's sold out I think. Nottingham, I think Nottingham is sold out. Wales in fucking the Cardiff Millennium, that gig I've got an unbelievable guest, I can't tell you who she is, but it's gonna be brilliant. I don't want to miss that gig there in Wales. Then Brighton. I dunno, is there tickets left for Brighton? There might be for Brighton. Cambridge, definitely tickets left for that. Bristol, that's sold out.

Then on the 1st of May, my biggest gig that I've ever done, which I'm still pinching myself about, Hammersmith Apollo, London 1st of May, come along to that. And then, I fucking forgot to announce this gig, but it's nearly sold out anyway. I'm in the Pavilion in Dunlairy in the 31st of May. Oh, it was a nice little intimate gig there in Dunlairy, but that's a small gig, so there's only a couple of tickets left.

Then in June, on the 18th, I am in Vicar Street in Dublin. You know I love my fucking Vicar Street gigs. I love Vicar Street up in Dublin, wonderful venue. Come along to that. And then Kilkenny then in July, on the 18th of July, the Set Theatre, two gigs there in Kilkenny. I'm trying to have a...I want to have a relaxing summer. I want to have a relaxing summer.

I'd love to start making music again. Maybe return to Twitch. I haven't made music in over a year and the music part of my brain is really bubbling up now. I found myself playing a YouTube video earlier on today. If you open a YouTube video and you press the numbers on your computer like 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, it can go to different parts in the video. And I found myself playing a YouTube video like a song to stimulate the music part of my brain.

Desperately autistic behaviour right there. That will get you lab labeled as eccentric very quickly. Play a YouTube video like a song by pressing the numbers on your laptop. Okay I'm gonna answer one more question. It's actually 3 in the morning here. My ma is gonna kill me because I promised her I wouldn't stay up to 3 in the morning recording the fucking podcast. But as you know I'm also making a documentary at the moment so I'm spending a lot of time on film sets. So I have less time this month to be recording the podcast.

So I'm putting all-nighters basically to get it out, which I personally don't mind doing. But my ma was giving out to me about not getting enough sleep. And the secretaries in my office were each coming up to me telling me I'm working too hard, which is never good. They don't know what my job is. I'm just a man who stays in an office. I told them my name is Vincent and I run a company called Bars Legacy Holdings. So this is a question I really want to answer. Jost Paddy asked, I recently found out that Eamon de Valera was a mathematician and invited Ardyn Schrodinger to be the head of the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies.

He accepted and did it for 20 years. So probably the most famous quantum physicist, Erwin Schrodinger, who's responsible for the thought experiment, Schrodinger's Cat, which is a mind-bending thought experiment about the nature of reality in quantum physics. If you want to really learn about it, listen to my podcast called Quantum Tarantino from about three years ago where I spoke to a quantum physicist about Schrodinger's Cat. But I'm gonna simplify it as much as possible. If a cat is placed in a sealed box and within this box is poison that may or may not explode, it means that the cat is both dead and alive at the same time in a

quantum superposition until such time as someone opens the box to observe it. That's a thought experiment, but scientists have done actual experiments since with quantum particles, which demonstrates that the behavior of a quantum particle can change depending on whether someone is observing it or not, which creates massive massive questions about the very nature of what reality is. Go to my podcast Quantum Tarantino for an expert in-depth analysis of this theory. But Irwin Schrödinger of Schrödinger's cat, very very famous, and he devised the Schrödinger's cat experiment, I believe, while living in Dublin.

So Éamon de Valera, famous Irish revolutionary in the IRA, became president of Ireland. Éamon de Valera was very handy at maths, very, very handy at maths, and apparently he had a bit of a hubris about him around his understanding of maths, very very handy at maths. And apparently he had a bit of a hubris about him around his understanding of maths and he wanted to rub shoulders with scientists. So Eamon de Valera invited Schrödinger to come and live in Dublin and teach in Trinity College. He lived in Clontarf I believe. So a lot of people don't know that. Schrödinger, the famous physicist, Schrödinger of Schrödinger's Cat, lived in Dublin for

years, founded like a school in Trinity College, was responsible for a wave of Irish quantum physicists. It's just one of those things that most Irish people go, no fucking way, really? Wow, you mean Schrödinger's cat? That was Dublin? He came up with that while he was in Dublin? No fucking way. And I was that way too when I found this out. I was really proud of it. And then unfortunately we found out since that Schrödinger was also a paedophile. Numerous victims have come forward. And while Schrödinger was in Dublin,

he was sexually abusing young people, especially young girls who were going to him for maths tuition. And even more shameful is, this was a known thing about Schrödinger and some universities did not welcome him because they were aware of his behavior and it would appear that Eamon de Valera effectively offered him asylum in Ireland. In the way that Ireland protected abuse and abusers in the Catholic Church it would appear that this same amnesty was given to Schrödinger and unfortunately a lot of people

were hurt as a result. And even in 2022, there was a lecture theatre in Trinity College named after Schrödinger. And then when this information came to light, students protested rightly, and his name was taken off the building. And I think, I think also his name was taken off a library in a university in Limerick, I think. So that's a bubble that I have to burst anytime someone says to me, did you know Schrödinger lived in Dublin? And then people will go, but can you separate the art from the artist? This isn't fucking art. You can still enjoy quantum super positions.

Because that's reality. That's nature. Schrodinger just pointed it out. Okay, that's all we've got time for this week. In the meantime, brush your teeth with a mouse. Take a sauna with a swan. Exfoliate the kneecaps of a lizard. I'll catch you next week. You You you