The Blindboy Podcast - The Mythology of Rain Smell on a hot day

Episode Date: July 15, 2025

An in depth look at petrichor and mid summer rain Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, I'm Sophia Lopercaro, host of the Before the Chorus podcast. We dive into the life experiences behind the music we love. Artists of all genres are welcome, and I've been joined by some pretty amazing folks like Glass Animals... I guess that was the idea, to try something personal and see what happened. ...and Japanese Breakfast. I thought that the most surprising thing I could offer was an album about joy. You can listen wherever you get your podcasts. Oh, and remember, so much happens before the chorus.

Greetings, you jangly Antonis. Welcome to the Blind By Podcast. If you're wondering what that noise is, there's an absolute deluge outside my window. Very very very aggressive rain. The sky is silver. Fat rain droplets. Violent rain.

Can you hear that? The type of rain that if you looked up into the sky you might acquire an eye injury frightening rain there's not much I can do about it I've got a tin roof here in my office if you've been listening to the podcast recently you know I've been having a fucking nightmare with sounds it's now it's quiet and it's quiet and down now that was phenomenal that was phenomenal rain that was that's that retribution rain there's seagulls outside my window pissed off ever seen a seagull pissed off by rain? I have. I'm looking at one now. I'm a bit annoyed actually I'm gonna open the window to see if I can get that the smell the smell of petri-car. Hold on.

We're barebacking this week lads. I didn't put on a limiter, I just opened a window. See there's been a heatwave in Limerick. Oh the wind is coming in. Yes I can smell it. Yes. I wanted to begin this week's podcast by, by, uh, fuck it, let's not hide anything. That was a magnificent torrent of rain that I just witnessed and record and ye heard. And I opened the window there. It's been very hot. It's been very hot for the past three days. It's been 30 degrees. We don't usually get 30 degrees here in Ireland. If you're from a hot country, you're thinking

30 degrees, who gives a fuck. We're not accustomed to this here in Ireland. We don't know what to do with ourselves. It's very distressing when we get 30 degree heat. We're not built for it in any way shape or form. And I just opened my window there so I can get that smell. The smell called petrichar. is a floral a type of floral oily smell that the earth releases after a dry spell and when you're suddenly hit with rain it's like it's like the earth is letting out a sigh. There's a sense of relief to this smell. When you, when you, when you smell that oily petri-car after a deluge of rain,

you've got empathy with the ground for a little bit, you just kinda know. It's the soil going, thank fuck. Thank fuck. Because I was drying out there thanks for that and that's what that smell is I'm gonna close the window now I'm gonna turn my gate back on now so now we've got a little bit more silence. You'll notice the sound is clearer. The sky is suddenly blue outside. I fucking love a bit of rain in the summer I do.

And now my office has been vandalized by the order of Petra Kaur, the rain is returning now you can hear it. We'll welcome the rain in. We'll welcome the rain in this week. I rushed to the microphone as soon as it began raining because I want to record in real time me smelling PetraCore. I'm utterly fascinated by it. It's like doing a line of nature. It's pure and utter life.

It's pure and utter existence. Vitality. It's what I miss. Like I was in San Francisco a couple of years ago for about a week and it was really hot and then I went to Los Angeles and I was left with a thirst. Not a thirst for drinking, a thirst for breathing. Like the air in San Francisco and the air in Los Angeles is very poor. There's not a lot of trees. After about three or four days in Los Angeles and San Francisco, there's an anxiety.

There's an anxiety with every breath that I'm taking. Something is missing. I'm longing for something. And what I'm looking for is what I just experienced right there. A big fat line of nature. That's what that smell is. Petrichar. That fresh, zesty, oily business. I'm trying to describe what that

smell feels like. It feels like I'm back being a sperm. I'm a sperm and I headbutt the outer layer of the egg just before I fuse with it for fertilization and that smell feels like the moment a sperm literally fuses with an egg. The spark, that little spark, that's what the smell of petrichor feels like when I do a big line of it like that. By opening the window with that fat rain, I knew by the go of that fucking storm, I knew by the look of that storm that it was going to give me a big dose of that. A big dose of that smell. I'm only seven minutes into this podcast, l's... Ye heard that rain. That was...that's the most powerful rain that I've seen so far of 2025. That's real.

That's summer business. That's what that is. And right now as I look out the window, the sky is blue, the rain is gone, and it's incredibly hot and sunny again. It's...the sun is fucking splitting the place. And the rooftops, the rooftops are steaming like victorious horses. Blue wisps of steam shimmering in the sun. And in another, in another seven minutes, if, if rain doesn't come again, which I don't think it will, in another seven minutes, the whole place will be bone dry. Fucking bone

dry. As if that never happened. And then straight after that you could have hailstones, you could have gigantic hailstones and you're freezing in a t-shirt. Do you ever share a flat with a fucking lunatic? Do you ever share a flat with a lunatic and you're there in the kitchen and then they walk into the kitchen and they're slamming doors they're banging away at the dishes they're really fucking pissed off about something fucking this fuck that and then they storm out of the room and you're thinking Jesus Christ they're pissed off I wonder did I do something wrong and then they come back into the kitchen, like two minutes later, all smiles, completely

happy, zero explanation or acknowledgement of the behaviour you just witnessed two minutes previously, all happy, absolutely fine, and you don't even ask them why. You just move on with your day. That's what the weather is like in Ireland. It's t-shirt weather now. It's very hot, very sunny and very dry outside my window. I wouldn't have it any other way. I enjoy the the drama of that, the fucking humor of it, the ridiculousness of it. I'll take that over. I mean nothing against Spain, but like, it's just the same thing all the time.

It's just lovely, perfect, sunny and dry all the time. I don't want that. I want my weather to feel like I'm in a house share with a lunatic. I want to be accused of stealing a battery out of the smoke alarm. I want the weather to come home from work, announce that they're a born-again Christian, and then never ever mention it again. I want weather that makes up lies for no reason. I want Augusta Wynne that tells me that it's cousins with the singer Darmid Kennedy. And Petrachar is the reward, the reward for all that chaos. Petrachar, it forces you into the present moment. You can't get a bang of that and not stop and notice it and then connect

with the feeling of just being alive, being present. Like I know there's Irish people listening to this now when they're in Australia or somewhere. Well not Australia now because it's winter over in Australia now, so you have a nice little bit of rain. But I don't know, if I have Irish people, you might be listening from Spain, or you're listening from Italy, where you haven't had rain in a long, long time,

and you're aching for that. You're aching for the freshness of Irish fucking Petra Car. What I adore about petrichar is It's one of those smells that makes me ponder the very nature of reality itself and how we perceive reality There's an idea in philosophy called Omwelt And it was coined by this German biologist fucking Jacob van Oijkskool was his name right and he came up with this idea of Umwelt

I could be pronouncing that incorrectly because I've only ever seen it written down. I've never heard it. It might not be pronounced Omwelt at all. But that in itself is like an example of Omwelt. So Omwelt is the idea that there is a physical reality. There is one physical reality. But different creatures experience reality differently because of their unique sensory experiences of reality. What I mean by that is dogs experience reality very differently to how you and I experience reality. A dog's experience of reality is determined very much

by their sense of smell, which is so profoundly different to how you and I experience fucking smell. There's no real way for us to empathize and understand what it's like to be a dog, to experience life as a fucking dog. Dogs are trained to sniff out cancer, diabetes, epilepsy. What is it like to live in reality when you can smell disease? Dogs utilise a thing called stereo sniffing. Now we have that a little bit too. It's the use of the left and right nostril to determine the location of a smell.

But dogs' ability to do this is unlike anything we could even imagine. And dogs can smell time. We use dogs to track people who are missing. To follow sense. To do things that we can't do. A dog can reconstruct a person's journey based on different intensities of smells. They can they can read smells through time. Dogs use an incredibly complex form of storytelling with their fucking noses and

and my language might might I can't even communicate this to you the limitations of speech but a dog can't read a book because I've got language I'm a human I live in a sea of fucking language very different and I doubt you could explain to a dog, you can't even fucking talk to the cunts. How am I going to let a dog know what it's like to read, understand or write a book? There's no way in, you just can't, you can't.

Would I get fully nude in front of the fireplace and start licking my testicles? Or screaming at the postman? Saying to the dog, no, screaming at the postman, that's a bit like writing, but licking your testicles, that's like editing. No! Because dogs don't understand metaphor.

Just forget about it. There's no way. But similarly, I'm very limited in understanding the complex stereo sniffing that a dog is able to get up to. The canine practice of arse sniffing, where dogs insert their noses in another dog's arse, that must be profoundly important. If their sense of smell is so good and they have to go right in there, that must be very, very important stuff. I have no way of understanding that.

Now dogs do have, they have a unique olfactory system and they have a thing called a vomeronasal organ, which is specifically, it's for smelling arses and detecting information in pheromones. When a dog sniffs another dog's arse, they're getting the full biography of that dog. Where the dog has been, the dog's relationships. It's a biometric scan. It's a biography. It's a lore. If I was nude and screaming at my postman, like a dog, and then I decided to run up to the postman and place my nose in his anus, that would be like me spending 8 hours on his Facebook page, going through all his posts, clicking

on all his friends and relatives, and farming a vast biography of this postman. Which might be a good way to explain Facebook to a dog. What is reality like when smelling someone's arse is like spending 8 hours on their Facebook profile? Language and empathy fails me. This is unwelt. This is unwelt. There's a shared reality, a concrete reality, but different creatures experience it very differently depending

on their senses. The rain is back. The rain is back. let's open the window. I'm waiting for it. No, not this time, not this time. I only got the Petra car, the first bit of, wait. The first bit of...wait... Not really. I have only the freshness of rain, which is beautiful, but not PetraCore. Not this time. We got that 15-20 minutes ago with the first deluge, but not this one. Not this new bout of rain. I'm just getting freshness of rain. Bees can see in ultraviolet. Bees have UV vision, right? Ultraviolet light. They can use it to detect nectar,

see what flowers are fucking the best ones to go into. A bee experiences reality very, very different to me and you. They see an ultraviolet light. I've no way to understand this, to empathize it. I'm using the... I'm doing the best that I can using language. But again I can't explain language to a fucking bee. This is Omwelt.

Um... Snakes. Snakes see Snakes seeing infrared. A completely different experience and perception of reality to me and you. Salmon. Salmon can use smell to sniff out the river that they were born in. Fucking miles away a salmon can sniff out its birth river. I can't stick my nose into the air.

sniff out its birth river. I can't stick my nose into the air and smell where the maternity hospital was that I was born in. I can't sniff out my maternity hospital. But I can use language to tell you that I was born in the Limerick Maternity Hospital. And I can use those words and you can listen to it and you and I can have a shared idea of what the Limerick Maternity Hospital is. It's designed in a modernist style. Apex Twin was born there too. You see the salmon, the salmon is using its nose to sniff out its Barth River, which is phenomenal, like holy fucking God, you mean there's a salmon on the other side of the world and it can smell the river it was born in because it needs to return there to spawn? But I've just used words and language to tell you where I was born, and I can use words and language to get back there if I want to. That's unwelt.

All these different creatures existing within an ecosystem, but having completely different sensory experiences depending on what benefits our survival within that ecosystem. Bees need ultraviolet. They need ultraviolet to identify flowers. We need language and words and systems of communication for things like culture. A really famous example is sharks can sniff out a drop of blood from several miles away. So if you just put a drop of blood into the sea, a fucking shark will smell it miles away and will come and get you. And that was, that was popularized, I think, because of Jaws. I can't even imagine that. I can't, I don't, I can't imagine what it's like to smell under the sea,

and to be able to smell blood from that far away. That is mad. What must that be like? But here's the thing. That smell, Petrichar. The oily wonder. The, the, the, the, wonder. The line of nature that I sniffed when I opened the window, that smell that we all know after it rains. A human being's sensitivity and ability to smell that is 10,000 times more powerful than a shark's ability to smell blood in the fucking water. And I'm not pulling that out of my hope. That's research that was published in the Journal of Nature Microbiology in 2020.

We human beings were, I won't say tormented by that smell, but that's the little spectrum of reality that we exist in. That's the umwelt. We are freakishly, extraordinarily sensitive to that smell, the smell of petrachar. What's that about? Something about that smell is essential to our survival, the human animal. Something about that smell is essential to our survival. Now petricar, it's not just one compound. Petricar is like the name that describes the experience. So when it rained outside there and I opened the window and you got it live of me sniffing that and going, holy fuck, and being really present with it.

That experience, that was the PetraCore. It's a beautiful word because the word wasn't, it wasn't actually coined until the 1960s. A chemist, a chemist called Isabel Joy Baer, she was Australian. She was the first scientist to go, the fuck is that smell? What the fuck is that smell that occurs after it rains? And can we find out what it is? So she did a lot of experiments with soil and with rocks and managed to replicate the smell in a laboratory

to replicate the smell in a laboratory and then she named that smell Petra-Kar. And for me the name she chose is just as brilliant as the research she did. Because so Petra means stone but Ikar is from Greek mythology and Ichor is the blood of the gods. It's this incredibly precious fluid that that's in the veins of gods in Greek myth and it's why humans can never defeat the gods and Ikar is toxic to humans too. So if even if a human was to fight a god in Greek myth and cut them, if the Ikar got on the human it would kill the human. But also Ikar was used in Greek myth to give life to inanimate objects. And one of my favorite stories around this ichor substance is the story of Talos.

So this story was written down nearly two and a half thousand years ago in a book called Argonautica. Right. And that book is, it's an epic, it's an epic story about Jason and the Argonauts, right. Who are just these, they're heroes and they sail all around Greece in search of fucking the golden fleece, okay? But one little

episode within this book is the story of Talos. And what I adore about the story of Talos is you could nearly argue that it's the first ever science fiction story. It's the story of Talos is It's very similar to Blade Runner. So Talos is a fucking robot effectively. He's a giant bronze guardian of the island of Crete. So Jason and the Argonauts are in their ship called the Argo and they're after getting the Golden Fleece. So Jason and the Argonauts are in their ship, called the Argo, and they're after getting the Golden Fleece. I'll deal with that in a different episode. It's near the end of their epic journey.

And you think everything's over, and the lads are after getting the Fleece, and then they decide, fuck it, we'll go to... we'll go to Crete to chill out, because this ship is in shit. So as Jason and the Argonauts... Sorry, that's their seagulls going fucking ape shit in the background.

I don't know if you can hear them. They're really bastards. So Jason and the Argonauts are in their ship and they're about to approach the shore of Crete, this island, Crete, okay? But... of Crete, this island Crete, okay? But on the island of Crete it's being guarded by Talos. Talos isn't human. Talos is, I suppose what you'd call an Android. Talos is a robot made out of pure bronze designed to look like a human being. Massive now, like a huge bronze statue. Massive, designed to look like a human being. And he was forged by the god of craftsmanship, right?

But the thing is, he's this big bronze robot that looks like a human. But the gods put a single vein containing Ikor, the blood of the gods, into Talos' ankle. And this made Talos move around as this bronze statue, this robot, this android. Ikor, the blood of the gods, is deadly to humans, but it can be used to make inanimate objects come to life. So that's the deal with Talos. And Talos is programmed to do one thing and one thing only, and that's defend the island of Crete because Talos isn't a human, Talos is an android, an automaton and as Jason and the Argonauts ship starts to approach Crete and the ship is in shit as well so they really have to get to Crete because the ship's gonna sink so they must get to the island of Crete but they can't because the bronze

android Talos is throwing rocks at him. So Jason and the Argonauts are like, we're gonna have to defeat this giant bronze android. So they throw spears at him, they do everything, nothing is working. How are we gonna defeat this robot? But then, on the ship with the Argonauts, right, is a woman called Medea. Medea was like a poet, a poet or a sorceress. And Medea looks at this giant robot defending the island and she starts to think I know that that robot is is not a living creature I can see that it's made out of bronze but it's defending the island it's moving and she thinks

I wonder does that robot know that it's alive robot know that it's alive. I wonder does that robot think that it's human? She goes to Jason and she says, listen, stop throwing spears at the big robot. I've got an idea. And Jason goes, all right, work away. So Madea starts to try and talk to the robot as he's defending Crete to try and talk to Talos and she gets inside his head and starts asking all these questions about his fears and you know, what's it like being there on the island? Do you not get lonely? Why are you defending the island? Why? And Talos is like, well, it's my job. This is my job to defend the island.

And then she says, well, what, what, like, what, what happened if you were to stop? And then he goes, I can't do that. I could die. And then she goes, oh, you're afraid of dying. You're afraid of your own mortality. Like a human, you're afraid of dying. You're afraid of your own mortality. Like a human, you're afraid of dying. Talos, the android, is like, yeah, I'm afraid of dying. This bronze robot thinks that it's human.

And then Medea looks at Talos' ankle. This big, huge, android, fucking bronze statue. She looks at his ankle and she says to Talos, you see that there on your ankle, that vein, that vein of Ikhar, the blood of the gods. Now Bedea, she's smart. She's really fucking smart. She can see, she knows by looking at his ankle,

that there's a vein of Ikkor, the blood of the gods. So she's going, alright, I see what's happening here. The gods are after getting a bunch of bronze, which is rocks effectively, it's just metal, and they've put their blood into it, Ikkor, in this vein, and that made this robot come to life. That's what's happening here. Okay, so if I can get rid of that ichor then the robot's gonna die. So she says to Talos,

the big Android robot, she says to him, if you take that vein off your ankle you'll have immortality. That's what's holding you back. The gods are lying to you. They're lying to you. Take that out and you will live forever. And Talos goes, really? Yeah, I promise. So Talos goes and he does it. He takes the vein out of his ankle and the ichor, the blood of the gods, drains from his body and goes into the soil and then suddenly Talos is just a bronze statue. The life is gone. And I adore that story, I love that story that's written down 2,500 years ago and that there is

that science fiction. It's not magical, it's not fantasy, it's whoever wrote that. It's probably an oral story from Crete that got absorbed into Greek mythology when it was written down. But whoever wrote that, they're thinking about the possibilities of technology. They're looking around them and they're seeing statues, statues made out of bronze, and they're going, this statue looks like a human. What next steps are needed to make that statue a living thing? What is it? I've seen dead bodies. What is it that makes a corpse alive? What is that thing? What is that thing that makes life happen?

What is that spark? And then they've gone one further and they're thinking of the ethical implications of making artificial life. If I could get a statue, give it Ichor, right? The blood of the gods. And now I have a robot, an android, a human figure that I've made that appears to be alive, an artificial intelligence. What if that artificial intelligence begins to develop emotions and knows that it's alive and is afraid of dying and has desires and needs and becomes human effectively?

Ethically, what does that mean? So that story there is fucking science fiction and the reason I said it's so similar to Blade Runner is Talos the android thinks that he's human. Thinks that he's human and his humanity in the story is defined by the fact that he's afraid of dying He's terrified of dying and that's the plot of Blade Runner the plot of Blade Runner Which is set in the past now of 2019 But Blade Runner is about androids trying to find immortality because they're afraid of dying that they're programmed to die

But anyway, that's what makes the name Petra Carr so beautiful. And why I think that the choice of that word, kinding that word, is just as important as the discovery of what it is because Petrachar means the blood of the gods gives life to rocks. When it rains on the earth and we get that smell and we as humans respond to that fucking smell, you don't know what the fuck it is, but you know it's something good. It's something good when you smell that. It is the smell of life.

It's...you're doing a line of nature. And that's Petrichar. The blood of the gods, the rain, hits the ground and wakes up the stones. It imbues the stones with life. A marmoration of starlings darkened my window with a shadow there as I said that. It's evening time now. Darkened my window with a shadow there as I said that It's evening time now the Sun is is coming down and the The fucking the starlings are out for their evening marmoration flying around the place talk about fucking um belt and

Starlings those starlings that I'm looking at now outside my window flying above in the the air. First off starlings see in ultraviolet light. Secondly, like those starlings right now what those starlings are doing, they are doing their marmoration. They are synchronizing their movements to create the shape of a giant bird of prey. Fuck it, they're talos. The starlings are talos. So when you see the starlings in the air, like a shoal of fish, I've spoken about this before, but they are literally trying to make themselves look like one giant bird. A big giant bird. Why? So they can scare off their predators.

Now the sad thing here in Limerick is that their predators don't exist anymore. The hawks and the ospreys that prey upon those starlings are extinct, but they do their marmoration anyway. It's almost like a religious ritual at this point. So the starlings can all synchronize together to form a giant bird. They're not using language, they're not talking, so I don't know what that mechanism is that allows them to synchronize like that. And then the other thing with starlings is

they're migratory birds. Seagulls are going ape shit on the roof now that I'm bigging up the starlings, literally banging rocks on the fucking roof, whatever they're doing. But the starlings, right? Because they're doing but the starlings right because they're migratory because the seagulls aren't enjoying this do you hear them starlings because they migrate halfway across the fucking

world they have magneto reception right solings can, I don't know whether they see it, whether they hear it, the Earth's magnetic field. Starlings are sensitive to the Earth's magnetic field, and that's how they navigate. And even more complex than that, and this is evidence-based. In a starling's eye, there's these things called crypt crypto chrome proteins, okay, in their retinas When when that's hit by blue light It splits the light into two unpaired electrons, right? That are quantum entangled Starlings have like a quantum computer in their fucking eye and this allows them to read the arts's magnetic field. And we don't even have technology that can do that yet.

What is it like? What's it like to be a starling? What is the experience of reality like to be a starling when your fucking eye has a quantum computer that's sensitive to the art's magnetic field. The magnetic field is out there now. I can't fucking see it. Like, what is the art's magnetic field? It's... So inside the middle of the art, there's all this liquid iron, the core of the art,

and this sloshing around creates this... magnetic field, completely invisible to me and you, because humans, we don't have eyes that can see the magnetic field, but it's there, and it's very important. And what the magnetic field does, it protects the Earth from solar radiation. Like, do you ever look at the Moon or Mars and wonder,

why is there fuck all there? Why is there nothing? Why is there nothing on these planets? Because they're sterilized. Solar radiation, the radiation from the sun, kills everything. It bleaches

the surface and nothing can exist. So the magnetic field that the starlings can, I can only assume, see using quantum physics in their eyes, that magnetic field protects life on earth. And without that magnetic field, the soil would be sterile. There'd be no life would be sterile. There'd be no life at all in the soil, but that brings us back to the petrichar. Where does the smell actually come from? Well like I said, petrichar is the name, it's the name for the experience of that smell, but what you're really smelling is it's a compound called geosmin. It's the earthy smell.

Geosmin is, it's what makes beetroots taste that way. Do you ever eat a beetroot and it's a bit sily? That's geosmin. It's present in certain vegetables have it. And geosmin, again, it comes from Greek, it means earth smell. And the aroma of geosmin, it's a huge component of petrichar. But geosmin specifically, that's the thing that we're really sensitive to, that humans

are very sensitive to. In the way there that, as I said, starlings have a way of seeing the earth's magnetic sphere, we can't fucking see it. It's there. We can't see it. But starlings live in a reality where this is very present and part of their existence. You and me, we can smell this geosmin. We can really fucking smell this geosmin.

It's produced by streptomyces, which are It's produced by streptomyces, which are... They're bacteria in soil, which behave a bit like fungi. Do you remember the podcast I did a couple of weeks back, where I spoke about the priest's grave? Up in Fermanagh, in Ireland, there's a little churchyard in a place called Boho, and in this churchyard is the grave of a priest, and in the 1800s this priest...the fuck was his name? Can't think of his name. This priest was a healer, and then local folklore emerged that the soil on his grave is a type

of folk medicine. That if you can take some of the soil from this fella is a type of folk medicine. That if you can take some of the soil from this fellow's grave, put it under your pillow, say a few prayers, it can heal illnesses. And that's just a folk tale. But then, microbiologists actually investigated and tested the soil on this priest's grave and it contains these streptomyces which are numerous bacteria in the soil and it's where we get a lot of antibiotics from and this this priest's grave up in the north that has very rare types of streptomyces that might help us in the future when it comes to antibiotic resistant bacteria. But anyway, there's hundreds of species of streptomyces. They are bacteria

that exist in soil. They help with decomposition. Like, if a plant decomposes and goes back into the soil, we know that that plant contains nitrogen, phosphorus, all of these beneficial chemicals. Well, the streptomyces, these bacteria, that's what helps to break the plant material down so that these nutrients return to the soil and fertilize, make that soil fertile so that new things can grow. That's what streptomyces do. A lot of them when they come in contact with fresh water, with rain, they release these aromas, these compounds, they release the geosmin, the thing that me and you can fucking smell, the petrichar, the petrichmin, the thing that me and you can fucking smell. The Petri-car. The Petri-car. The thing that I smelled at the start of this podcast when I opened my fucking window.

The smell that you know when I describe it to you, when the rain happens. After it's been dry for a while. It's these tiny bacteria in the soil, releasing this compound when they come into contact with fresh water. But why... If a shark can smell fucking a drop of blood over a few miles in water, why are human beings 10,000 times more sensitive to the smell of geosmin? It's what helps the human animal to find sources of fresh water. You know who else is very sensitive to the smell of geosmin? Camels.

Camels in the desert can use their noses to find an oasis of water from 50 miles away. We come from Africa, the plains, the grasslands. You've got dry seasons that last for fucking weeks, hundreds of miles away. There's a rainstorm and the ground soaks up that rain and now it releases into the fucking air, the petrocar, and that travels on the wind, again, hundreds of fucking miles,

and humans smell it and when they smell it they get that feeling of vitality oh my fucking god what is that and we seek it out and what you find when you follow the smell of the petrocar across hundreds of thousands of miles is you get everything necessary for human survival. You have a fresh water source. You have a fertile soil full of these streptomyces, these bacteria that give soil fertility. You have food grown out of the earth. You have animals that are eating that food.

You're doing a line of nature. That's what that smell is. It's, that smell is. That smell is, from an evolutionary perspective, it's everything that reinforces the survival of a human being and a group of humans. Fresh water, fertility, that's what it is. And it's especially strong after a period of drought like I said I'm here in Limerick it's been roasting for the past three or

four days really really hot everything is very dry and then that first rain hits and I'm overwhelmed by that that oily oily, earthy smell, fucking floored by it. You can't ignore it. I promise you, you have never once in your life, never once in your life have you ignored that smell, the oily smell after the rain. You always take a moment to clock it, and there's your reason why.

And I'm not a scientist, but I do know how to research. So nothing I've said here today isn't backed by, we'll say, rigorous sources. Okay, let's have an ocarina pause. I know it's 45 minutes in, it's good to have an ocarina pause a bit earlier. I just didn't feel like interrupting myself there. I enjoyed those tangents that that little hot take took and didn't want to interrupt it so let's have an ocarina pause now. I don't have an ocarina, I'm in my office as you can tell by the fucking seagulls. I have a little packet of chewing gums that

I'm gonna shake and then you're gonna hear an advert for some bullshit, all right? Hi, I'm Sophia Lopercaro, host of the Before the Chorus podcast. We dive into the life experiences behind the music we love. Artists of all genres are welcome, and I've been joined by some pretty amazing folks, like Glass Animals. I guess that was the idea, is to try something personal and see what happened. And Japanese Breakfast. I thought that the most surprising thing I could offer was an album about Joy.

You can listen wherever you get your podcasts. Oh, and remember, so much happens before the chorus. This episode is sponsored by the OCS Summer Pre-Roll Sale. Sometimes when you roll your own joint, things can turn out a little differently than what you expected. Maybe it's a little too loose. Maybe it's a little too flimsy. Or maybe it's a little too covered in dirt because your best friend distracted you and you dropped it on the ground. There's a million ways to roll a joint wrong, but there's one roll that's always perfect. The Pre-Roll. Shop the Summer Pre-Roll and Inf infuse pre-roll sale today at OCS.ca and participating retailers.

What's better than a well marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions and terms apply. Instacart. Groceries that over-deliver. Support for this podcast comes from you the listener via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast.

If you enjoy listening to this podcast, if it brings you distraction, mirth, merriment, entertainment, whatever the fuck has you listening to this podcast, please consider supporting it directly via the Patreon page. This is my full time job. This is how I earn a living. This is how I rent out my office. It's how I pay for everything. This is...this is...the Patreon is the reason that I have the time to do the amount of research I did for this week's episode to make sure that if I'm going to speak about quantum entanglement in the eye of a starling,

that I can spend a bit of time researching and making sure, is this legit, is this solid? Similarly, I can't just pull Greek myth out of my hole. I need to go and look at as many different translations that I can get my hands on, so I can tell the story to you properly. I write this podcast, and writing takes time and that's all possible because of listener funding. So 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. You listen for free because the person who is paying is paying for you to listen for free. Everybody gets a podcast. I get to earn a living. It's a wonderful model based

on kindness and soundness. Patreon.com forward slash the Blind By podcast. Please become a paid subscriber. And also, if you are becoming a new Patreon subscriber, do it in your browser or the browser on your phone. Don't do it via the iPhone app because Apple will take 30%. I forgot to plug my gigs last week. Completely forgot to plug my gigs. Had some very pissed off promoters reminding me that I forgot about this. I don't have many gigs coming up. I do have...am I at a fucking festival? Very shortly I'm at the Altogether Now festival, okay, if you're coming along to

that in Waterford. The Altogether Now. I don't even know what I'm gonna be doing it. It'll be good crack, whatever's happening. But if you see me on the bill at Altogether Now, come along. Come along to the gig, alright? My gig, gigs, September, on the 19th of September, I am up in Derry in the Millennium, right? The Millennium Theatre, can't wait to gig in Derry. I have a wonderful guest for Derry by the way. Vicar Street on the 23rd of September, that's a beautiful Tuesday night Vicar Street on the 23rd of September. That's a beautiful Tuesday night Vicar Street gig. Wonderful relaxing Tuesday evening.

If you're thinking, fuck it, I'm not going to a gig on a Tuesday. It's a live podcast. It's like going to the theatre, it's like going to the cinema. You could have work on a Wednesday morning, it's grand. Come along to a lovely relaxing Tuesday evening fucking live podcast. You don't even have to drink. And then... Oh, Sligo.

Throw this one in at the very last minute. Very last minute in Sligo. This is a tiny gig. I haven't been to Sligo in a couple of years. Small gig, very few tickets at this, the Hawkswell Theatre in Sligo. I haven't even announced it and somehow it's almost sold out already, okay? But if you're in Sligo and you want to come along to a live podcast, that is...what day is that? I think it's the 8th of October up in Sligo, Alright? God bless. I really enjoyed this week's podcast because I didn't intend this week's podcast to be

about the smell of rain above PetraCore. But when I opened that window, this is the beauty of creative flow. This is the beauty of creative flow. You gotta be playful. To write You've got to be playful. To write you have to be playful. You have to leave yourself open to anything. And when that rain started I just said fuck it press record, press record. You know that that petrocar is gonna happen because it's been dry. Press record and try and record the experience of smelling it,

which is a silly thing to do. It's silly and playful, but by doing that, I enter flow, and now the podcast just, it reveals itself to me. That's creative flow. And also with flow you get wonderful synchronicities. I wasn't aware that yesterday for instance was Saint Swithin's day and today in Ireland is Saint MacDara's day. These are both hugely important days when it comes to rain. Now don't be put off with the sanctity part, don't be put off with the fact that this is tied in with the feast days of saints, that Catholicism is involved. Fuck that! We know the crack.

Often when you have a feast day that's associated with Christianity it meant that there was a pagan tradition beforehand that people celebrated for a long time and anything to do with folk beliefs, mythology, quote-unquote pagan beliefs and the weather, there's usually a legitimacy to it, otherwise the stories wouldn't survive for as long as they survive. Like I mentioned before the Ocarina pause, that priest's grave up in Fermanagh, where

people were, you know, for hundreds of years taking the soil from his grave for its healing properties and then scientists test the soil and it turns out that it has bacteria that could save us from the next fucking pandemic. Yesterday was St. Swithin's Day, 15th of July. Saint Swithin's Day, if thou dost reign for 40 days, it will remain. Saint Swithin's Day, if thou be fair for 40 days, twill reign ne'er mere.

If it rains on the 15th of July on Saint Swithin's Day, then the legend holds that it's gonna rain for the next 40 days. Saint Swithin, Day, then the legend holds that it's gonna rain for the next 40 days. St. Swithin, he was a 9th century monk, Anglo-Saxon, over in, he was the Bishop of Winchester, that was it, he was the Bishop of Winchester in Wessex in the 9th century. When St. Swithin died, he made a very very strange request and the strange request was, I don't want to be buried inside the cathedral, don't bury me in a building please, which was the this is what you do with a fucking bishop, you put him in a tomb inside a church.

Saint Swithin was like fuck that, put my grave outside where the sweet rain of heaven may fall upon my grave. So Saint, which is beautifully pagan, I like that, I like that. So Saint Swivin was like, bury me outside, I wanted to rain on my grave. But after he died and his funeral was coming up, the new bishop, Ethelwald, right, was like, fuck that. I know it's his dying wish, but he's a bishop. You bury bishops in cathedrals. You don't bury bishops outside.

Like you have to realize, like Christianity was all about consecration. Physical spaces like churches were consecrated. There was no demons in here. and to be buried outside in nature it's a little bit pagan-y, a little bit too pagan. No, bishops get buried inside in churches. So the new bishop, Eithelwult, was like fuck that I'm not respecting your dying wishes, Saint Swithin, I'm gonna I'm actually just gonna throw you into the church. We're gonna bury you in the church even though you want the reigns of heaven to hit your grave. So on the 15th of July in 970 something, right? So over a thousand

years ago, 15th of July, the funeral happens. They're bringing St. Swithin's coffin into the church against his dying wishes and the funeral it pours down from the heavens. There's a 15th of July rain just like the one that I saw today. Massive fat fucking country drops of rain. One of them happens. Like I would not want to start to this podcast when I played that rainfall for you. I would not want to be outside in that. You heard it. I told you if you look up into the sky you could damage your eye. It was one of them. You don't see a lot of them. Well on Saint Swithin's funeral they got one of them and the funeral had to be abandoned. It's like the rain came down from

heaven and said this fella wanted to be buried outside you prick What are you putting him in the church for? Well God's rain said no fucking way and it kept raining For 40 days afterwards, so that's where Saint, that's what started Saint Swithin's day If it rains on the 15th of fucking July, it's gonna rain for 40 days afterwards Today on the 16th of July in Ireland, we've got Saint MacDara's Day. Saint MacDara was a 6th century saint from Connemara, I believe. I think there's a little island off Connemara called Saint MacDara's Island. He was a 6th century Irish hermit, right, who lived on this island off

Connemara and in Ireland he's the protector of fishermen. But in Ireland, today is the 16th of July, if it rains on the feast day of Saint Mactarra in Ireland, it's gonna rain for the next 40 days. So in England you've got Saint fucking Swithin or whatever his name is, that's yesterday the 15th, in Ireland on the 16th you've got Saint fucking Swythain or whatever his name is, that's yesterday the 15th. In Ireland on the 16th we've got Saint McDara. Two Christian saints, both of them with near identical legends of if it rains on this day, it is going to rain for the next 40 days. Most likely these are pre-Christian tales. This is myth, this is folklore, these are stories that the people of England and the people of Ireland had

before these saints, but these stories became Christianized to make them acceptable. Often feast days are old pagan festivals that just get turned into some Christian shit. I can't say that with certainty about these two specific feast days because I've looked hard for the evidence. I've looked hard. Okay, well Britain, St. Swith in his Anglo-Saxon, so you're talking 9th century, Britain was Roman at one point and in Greek and Roman culture you had a thing called augury which was like a seasonal practice of predicting the weather by looking at birds. It was like a magical sorcery thing. I'll do a

podcast on it at some point but with Ireland I don't know. I can't find any pre-christian myth around July 16th, MacDarras Day. But the stories are telling us, the stories are telling us the 15th and 16th if it rains heavily on these days it predicts more rain in the coming month. So what does science tell us? What actually happens around mid-July 15th and 16th? Well there's this thing called the Atlantic jet stream. Now it's not to be confused with the Gulf Stream. The Gulf Stream is is warm, a band of warm water. The Atlantic jet stream is, it's like a river of air in the atmosphere. But this jet stream tends to settle in the middle of

July and this impacts week to week weather. Whether it's gonna be sunny, This jet stream tends to settle in the middle of July and this impacts week to week weather, whether it's gonna be sunny, whether it's gonna be rainy. What's really determining this is the Atlantic jet stream and when it tends to settle around the 15th and 16th of July. Science tells us this, but before science, what have you got? You've got St. Swithin's Day and and you've got St. MacDarras Day, the feast days, the 15th and 16th of July.

Really interesting stories that can tell us something quite important that benefits our survival. And that's the beautiful synchronicity of this week's episode. I didn't know, I didn't know that yesterday was fucking Swithin's Day, and that today is St. MacDarras Day. I hadn't a fucking clue. I hadn't know that yesterday was fucking Sweden's day and that today is Saint McDarras day.

I hadn't a fucking clue. I hadn't a clue. Nature told this week's story. Nature wrote this week's podcast. I didn't know about these rain-specific feast days. And this is what, when I'm always talking about, and what I love about folklore and mythology, and I'm always saying it, what I adore about it is before writing, people held the stories in the landscape. When you couldn't write your stories down, your mythology, the land would tell you the fucking stories. And that's what happened this week. The rain told me the story. I know that sounds mad, but the rain told us the story this week

Like I what did I want to do this week's podcast then? the guitar player from limp biscuit followed me on Instagram and I Started listening to limp biscuit when I was 16 because I fancied a girl who worked in it in a vacuum repair shop And I started listening to limpkit to try and impress her because she was a Limp Bizkit fan and Wes Borland followed me on Instagram this week I was gonna talk about that

I mean I have to assume that Wes Borland is currently listening, he just spent the last hour listening to a podcast about rain. I have to now assume that. Why else is he following me on Instagram? That's all we've got time for this week, alright? Smell the Petra-car. Rub a dog. Genuflect to a swan. I'll catch you next week. Dog bless. Hi, I'm Sophia Loper-Carrow, host of the Before the Chorus podcast. We dive into the life experiences behind the music we love. Artists of all genres are welcome, and I've been joined by some pretty amazing folks,

like Glass Animals. I guess that was the idea, is to try something personal and see what happened. And Japanese Breakfast. I thought that the most surprising thing I could offer was an album about joy. You can listen wherever you get your podcasts. Oh, and remember, so much happens before the chorus. This episode is sponsored by the OCS Summer Pre-Roll Sale. Sometimes when you roll your own joint, things can turn out a little differently than what

you expected. Maybe it's a little too loose. Maybe it's a little too flimsy. Or maybe it's a little too covered in dirt because your best friend distracted you and you dropped it on the ground. There's a million ways to roll a joint wrong, but there's one roll that's always perfect. The pre-roll. Shop the Summer Pre-Roll and Infuse Pre-Roll Sale today at ocs. ahead and get started...... you you...... Thank you.