The Blindboy Podcast - The Psychological impact of Poverty with Dr.Katriona O Sullivan

Episode Date: August 30, 2023

Dr. Katriona O Sullivan is a psychologist whose work centers around the impact of poverty on a person's development. She works towards improving access to education for marginalized people. Her memoir "Poor" charts her journey as a child who grew up in extreme poverty to eventually studying in Trinity college Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Pon the brass cormorant, you staunch anyas. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. It has been a busy few days, a busy few days for myself. I've been on the road, I'm back touring. I hadn't done a gig in four months because I needed time to finish my book. And now my book is done, it's completely written. I'm back on the road doing gigs. I was in the Cork Opera House. Had a wonderful time there and a magnificent crowd. And then I went straight on to Dublin to do a gig in Vicar Street. And I'm a ferociously worn out boy as a result. Because gigging, gigging is magnificent fun. I adore it. But it's also kind of overwhelming.

Because I'm standing out there in front of an audience of a thousand people. And the adrenaline rush from that. And the joy of it is magnificent. But it takes hours to switch off then after that. So I'd be off stage at eleven. Get back home to Limerick. At maybe two or three in the morning. And then I just don't sleep.

There's too much excitement after the gig. You feel giddy and then your brain decides when it wants to turn off many hours later. But I do have an absolutely magnificent guest for you this week. I spoke to a woman called Dr. Katrina O'Sullivan. She's a psychologist. She teaches developmental psychology. And an area of interest for her is the impacts that poverty and marginalization can have on the human brain and the human personality. And Katrina herself, she's got a book out at the moment. It's a bestseller called Poor. And it's a memoir of her life. Because Katrina grew up in debilitating poverty, surrounded by addiction and marginalised by society. So what you get with Katrina is not just an expert, not just an expert in psychology, but someone whose practical expertise is filtered through a lens of lived experience. Katrina also is someone who very much believes in democratizing academic information.

When she speaks about psychology she speaks about it in a way that anybody can understand. She doesn't use language that's meant for other academics to exclude people. She speaks about psychology in a very human way, a very open human way that emphasizes humor, self-compassion, vulnerability and storytelling. self-compassion, vulnerability and storytelling. And Katrina was my guest in Vicar Street last night. And it was a fucking powerful gig. It was astounding. There were about 1100 people there. And the collective energy of the room was 100% focused on Katrina's words and Katrina's story.

And there was a beautiful mood in the room. And there was this real feeling of community and a kind of a meditative contemplation. So that's what this week's podcast is. I want to share that chat that me and Katrina had with you. I want to give you a little heads up because there's themes in this podcast, themes around trauma, addiction and abuse. But having said that,

because Katrina is a professional, she speaks about it in a way that's mindful of the safety of the audience. So I'm just flagging that with you in case you're like, I'd rather not listen to a podcast that contains these themes today. But ye know yourselves from listening to this podcast. Anytime difficult issues are spoken about in this podcast, it's always handled with humanity, compassion, intelligence, understanding, empathy, and with people's safety in mind.

intelligence, understanding, empathy, and with people's safety in mind. So what me and Katrina speak about is poverty, the impacts of poverty on the human brain, lack of access to education and opportunities for people who've been marginalised. And something Katrina is really passionate about is trying to change, trying to change the system in Ireland around education. Not just changing the system in terms of improving access to education, but also asking questions such as what is a teacher and who gets to be a teacher? We didn't chat about it on stage, but backstage

we bonded over a book that we both loved called Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire. It's a book I intend to do a podcast on at some point, but it's a revolutionary book about education, really. Paulo Freire argues that the education system is used as a tool of oppression. system is used as a tool of oppression. He argues that education in Western countries exists just to reinforce existing power structures and to encourage in students a sense of passivity and submissiveness towards power. And some of that shines through in Katrina's words in this podcast, especially when she speaks about education. So without further ado, here is the wonderful conversation I had with the magnificent Dr. Katrina O'Sullivan.

Hello. How are you? How are you? Is that mic okay for you now? Is it comfortable? Is it okay for everybody else? Yeah. I deliberately get us uncomfortable seats. That's great. Keeps us awake. But it everybody else? Yeah. I deliberately get us uncomfortable seats. That's great.

Keeps us awake. But it's true. Yeah. I'd be doing gigs and the seats are just too comfortable and you forget that you're up on stage. I do that in lectures as well. Do you? No.

The universe, no, I don't. But sometimes they give you like a proper... I did a gig up in Mullingar, right? And I was interviewing... He was a fellow who used to be in show bands and he was about 76 and like he fell asleep in the middle of the podcast seriously fell asleep up on stage I was very worried I didn't think he'd fallen asleep at all but he had such was the comfort of the chair that I'd provided so these are a nice middle ground I know when you're a woman of my age you You need a bit of cushion underneath the

arse. Fair play. Just can I clarify something before we go on? I know this accent sounds Brit. The context of the hairs. Okay.

But it's Katrina O'Sullivan, just to clarify. It's fully Irish. It's green when I bleed. That's the first questionullivan just to clarify it's fully Irish it's green when I bleed that's you know that's the first question I'm going to ask you because anyone

any Irish people I knew who grew up in England yeah had a very hard time coming back home just with the accents yeah

did you go through that as a kid I still I still get it now like my very good friend who's here now in the room, Holly. So we went to England to watch Hamilton. And we got on the British Rail.

And her husband works for Irish Rail. And I was like, oh, my my god the trains are amazing here and she in England and she was like how fucking dare you see you come home the real Brit comes out but yeah moving back here

because we were back and forward all of our lives and we grew up we're an Irish family in England like we grew up in this multicultural community in the heart of england in coventry and there's irish we all stood we all stayed together and then there was scottish and jamaican and asian everybody we all mingled and then you come back to ireland and you're in temple bar at two o'clock in the morning and someone goes, see you. 700 years or 5,000 years, I can't remember, but you're people.

And it's like, oh, for fuck's sake. But yeah, so it can be hard. It can be hard, yeah. There's a good point to it, though, because nobody knows how common I am. So like, apart from the amount that I swear so no one knows really you just released a book called poor which is a memoir yeah and if can I synopsize your story for you you can try I'll try my best um in your own words you you experienced extreme poverty as a kid yeah and now you you went and did a doctorate in trinity

college yeah and that is a journey which society says is impossible yeah and now you've kind of dedicated yourself to going well if i can do it how can we improve the system so that someone else who had was marginalized by poverty can also access this type of education? Yeah, so I grew up... We weren't working class. So we talk about working class people. I come from what we call in academia the underclasses. But I would call it social welfare class or criminal class. So I grew up with a family.

Both my parents are heroin addicts. Most people in Ireland have experienced alcoholism in their family at some point or another but in my case unfortunately both my parents were heroin addicts so what that meant was like extreme poverty like I didn't have breakfast in the mornings I pissed the bed and wasn't washed so I go to school smelly and yeah so the vulnerability that that brings and the trauma that exposes you to is really horrible and it's not unique to me there's 670,000 people in Ireland currently living in yeah poverty like poverty there's people using food banks but in my case yeah I wrote my memoir

my book because I was really lucky I feel really privileged actually to have grown up poor it's given me insight and it really helped me

to understand a lot of humanity but I was really lucky that I was poor in a time in Ireland where there was loads of money there was the Celtic Tiger

so I lived in Summerhill in Dublin One for years and I was a lone parent single parent i was on social welfare had a little cash in hand job talking about irish rail i actually was a cleaner in connolly station two hours a day the fucking dirtiest kip you've ever seen in your life and um sorry dave um if you're here from irish rail but i i yeah like I was on the pig's back like that was the goal like to get your book to get your rent allowance had a little flat but I was like frustrated and I was lucky that in at the time there was loads of money it was late 90s

2000s loads of money in the state and when there's money it kind of trickles down to the poor people and they try and save us and make them like them and so when I was I was desperate I used to go down to this community place in Summerhill lovely fella Joe Dowling used to go down have a fag cup of tea I'd be like Joe is this it and he just referred me to like so I got free counselling firstly in Sheriff Street that was great and then I met what type of counseling was that at the time like would you know now looking back i do now but at the time it was funny because it was free and it was in the church in sheriff street and i i mary was her name i actually think she was one of the people that saved my life because i used to go in and i used to be like

mary i fucking hate my mom and dad and they never they never did anything she'd be like I know it's it's awful and you're an amazing person and then I go in Mary I love my mom and dad and I really want them in my life and she's like I know and you're an amazing person and now I know that was humanistic approach but at the time like she was I know now because of psychology but Mary was just this woman who just affirmed me all the time intrinsic work the whole intrinsic work it was just like you're valuable your views are valuable and the mad thing was like I was all over the fucking place like I couldn't hold down a relationship I couldn't hold down a job I couldn't pay my bills I was like nothing like I am today

would you would you have been an emotionally reactive person at that time? Yes, I still, I still am a little bit of a, if you follow me on social media, sometimes I can be a little bit emotionally reactive, yeah, I have to, I have to keep it in, I've all, but I think like, one of the benefits of coming from where I come from, is that we're all like that, like I loved, like in our street, if someone did something to you, you say, see you, you fucking prick.

And you'd have a fight with him and then it'd be gone. Like, but now, like where I work now, like in middle class life, nobody says fuck all. So like,

I can hate someone or like they annoy me and they don't say anything to each other. So like, I would have been. It's passive aggression. Yeah, but they'd just be like, oh, yes, that's fine.

Or, yes, that's fine. But they don't say it. So like, I would have been emotionally reactive. Obviously, I had a lot of trauma. And that really made me really fragile. And I didn't trust. I was constantly on watch for people to let me down. And it was defensive. But emotional expression, I think that's one of the gifts that I got from being poor.

Like I speak my mind. So when I got the opportunity, so like I lived in town. And one of the things that changed my life, so I met a girl one day outside Penny's. I was doing my little bit of shopping on a Thursday after I got my book. I met a girl outside pennies and i was 20 21 and she was like i'm in trinity college and she's from town as well and she's a lone parent and i was like fuck off i only knew people who rub bikes in there now they rub laptops but back now they rub they they rub bikes i didn't think they let you in but like one of the skills that i bring with me from my community was like I've balls like I know how to advocate now I would be advocating with the social welfare or social services or the guards but I knew how to speak for myself so I like used that skill much straight over to Trinity College at the time she told me about this course

the Trinity Access Program and I knocked on the door and I was like I'm great Karen told me about this course, the Trinity Access Program, and I knocked on the door, and I was like, I'm great, Karen told me about this program, please let me in, and so, yeah, emotional reaction is in me, but at that particular time, when I went to see Mary, I definitely, it definitely affected my capability of maintaining relationships, and I constantly chose the wrong man, it was just unavailable men, and I remember I used to be in with Mary telling her about all my my hope my kids are going to listen but my sexual exploits and one day I was like looking down so I always used to look down I hate looking in her face and um I noticed her shoes and they were like these really black boring shoes and I thought nuns wear shoes like that. So I looked at her clothes then, and this was like six months in, and I was like, Mary, are you a nun?

And she was like, yes, Katrina, I am. And I'd like talked about fucking anal. I'd been like, I don't know. I'd been like sleeping. I talked about everything, abortion. Oh my God, I was like, fuck. And she was like, it's tight.'re totally fine, like you're totally fine she went complete person

centred, there was no judgement human beings are in this room yeah, beautiful oh, fair play to her she's a parker Christianity right there oh yeah, she did but I think that is Christianity yeah, it is, yeah, of course but it is, that's Christ that is Christianity. Yeah, it is, yeah. That's the real Christianity.

But it is. That's Christ to be doing that. But it's true. It's the real one. It's true. It's not the one everyone's experienced. 100%. But it's supposed to be non-judgment, caring, loving, accepting.

And she was just so wonderful with me. And she didn't try and convert you over to the old bread the old haunted bread oh I have a I remember my granddad was a proper catholic you know proper he went every single day and he was a proper catholic in the sense that he was giving and loving and like he used there was a traveler when we used to knock on the door every Friday I didn't know the story back then because it was different in England with travelers you know we we didn't have any negative views in England with travellers. But it's different here. It shocks me how bad... Socially acceptable racism.

Yes. This woman used to knock the door every Friday to my grandad's house in Clontarf and he'd give her an envelope and he'd just give her money and I'd be like, what's that? Don't say anything. He was a Catholic. He gave to charity. He was kind. I used to have to bring him to Mass

because he was fat and old and he couldn't drive himself. And whenever I'd sit down and Mass with him, every day he'd go. And every day he'd say, don't take the bread, don't take the bread,

don't take the bread. Like, I'd fucking get a set on fire because I wasn't a Catholic. Do you know what I mean? You weren't allowed. No, I wasn't allowed. And then I was in the Rutland Centre once. I was in the Rutland Centre in treatment,

and they did mass. And because everyone was taking the bread, I took the bread. And then I was like, shit, I shouldn't have took the bread. So I went to the toilet and spat the bread down the toilet. And I was like, shit, I spat Jesus down the toilet. So I was in group then. I was like, I spat the bread down the toilet.

And they were like, yeah, but you robbed people too. So it wasn't so bad. The bread, yeah. Maybe that's what was wrong with me, that I wasn't a Catholic. You didn't get baptized? No, my dad was too lazy.

He would like to say, they would like, my dad, when he used to be drunk, he'd be like, oh, it's because I had a bad experience in, he went to school here, you know, the Christian brothers, but it wasn't. They were just too fucking lazy. They were stomped out of their head all the time.

They didn't feed us, not alone, baptize us. I did have a children's Bible though, because I got it from the secondhand shop and I used to read it every night. It surprises me how little Irish people know about the stories in the Bible. Yeah. Like, Ruth is a fantastic story. What's the story of Ruth? I don't know that.

So, Lot is this... Oh, my God. I can't believe I'm speaking about religion here. But Lot was... There was this bad city, really bad city. You know the way there's always bad cities in the Bible? Sodom and Gomorrah. So, there was...

Yeah. And God came and said to Lot, Lot, we're going to burn the city and you need to leave, take your family, but don't look back.

Anybody looks back, it's obviously a good thing, like don't look back. So they all left and Ruth, what did she fucking do? She looked back and she turned to salt.

She turned into a pillar of salt. Yeah, yeah. But i had that book and so maybe uh yeah christianity might save me a little bit when anyway what i'm noticing here and i love it is so you're speaking a lot about painful traumatic things but you're doing it the whole time with crack and humor yeah how important is crack and humor and playfulness for you when you're speaking about something that's weeks it's something i think about a lot is is how we're expected to be solemn we're expected to pretend this seriousness yeah and

when you pretend this seriousness it just makes people nervous yeah but if you allow humor and playfulness in you can actually be really serious about something and give it a lot more respect than if you do this fake solemnity thing yeah I think what's most important is just to be yourself I think I'm really lucky to have a good few years of recovery in terms of like therapy and I don't know if I hadn't be if I wasn't healed as much as I am whether the crack would be there I was always cracked though like my whole family were cracked like and in my book like I write about that you know addiction and poverty like we're great people like it's fucking great people in the heart of Dublin or Cork or Limerick even, Kerry.

Do you know what I mean, though? There's so much complexity. This idea that poverty and trauma is just so fucking sad and dark, it is that, but there's also lightheartedness and fun and love and warmth and music and all these things. And so, yeah, I think maybe I'm healed a bit enough to joke and laugh about things there's some things i'm really serious about though and i don't take shit i don't take prejudice and i don't let people away with saying mean things or big things that are bad but i also think in order to like communicate my story it is important to do it in a way that's accessible to

people and i do that with lectures in psychology. I always try to find ways to reach the audience. I think a good teacher, a good lecturer, is a person who takes their knowledge and is able to translate it in a way that it's accessible to people. Effective communication happens in the language of the receiver. Yeah, exactly. And so having a bit of crack is just part of who I've always been

and it's got me in trouble by the way I'd imagine so especially in school yeah um having something I'd like to know about is when you began your journey right of academia learning about psychology learning about developmental psychology yeah how did it feel for you to be learning about this stuff and the impact of we'll say poverty and trauma on a child's brain and then for you to look back on your own childhood at the same time yeah what was that dual experience like to go oh I'm reading about me here there's some it one thing about uh college and academia is like we are we write and in ways that is very subjective like it's not accessible so like I'd be reading about trauma but it's written in a way that's really scientific so in some ways it wouldn't hit me but there would be times in lectures so I remember one

lecturer come in and he was a great guy he's really charismatic and he and he's like I'm going to teach you about risk and resilience today and he's like before we begin I want you all to write down any risk and protective factors you may have had in your life and he gave a few examples you know like rich family good community you know maybe I don't know you got bullied or something and so I'm there and I'm like risk risk risk risk I'm writing and the girl sitting next to me I never forget Amy beautiful person she was like I cannot think of one risk and I'm like it really fucking hurt me but like what was that hurt like I knew I was different so like you know people who so people who do psychology are generally high point students so they're generally 550s and to get high points in

in school you have to be generally privileged you have to be able to pray play pray pay and supplement your education you have to be in a good school in a good community generally maybe go to a private school and so what happens then you've got this concentration of kids that are really privileged you probably haven't been through the shit I've been through like I guarantee no one in my class had a brother in prison a sister in homelessness a kid on his own and so like it was really magnified to me how different I was and how different my experience was. Previous to that I was walking around with a lot of people who'd been through shit as well, because we all lived in poverty together,

we were all corralled into the same community. And then I'm in Trinity and all these kind of posh kids, and that's hard, like, because I'm like, oh, that's really sad, I feel really sad for myself. But then there was another part, there was this other part of me that was like, I was getting firsts. Like, that's an A, if you didn't go to university which is fucking deadly because I'm but so there was these two sides of me in university there was this part of me that was

really aware of the trauma and the sadness and all the things and they were talking about risk and resilience and then there was this other side of me that was realizing how intelligent I am because I'd been taught all my life that I wasn't like school taught me that I was stupid I left I finished at 15 I didn't get an exam my my school teachers just expected me to finish secondary if that and I didn't even do that so all of that was internalized to this like stupid girl who was like gonna be a cleaner at best or maybe a hairdresser so I'm in Trinity and I'm like all this learning all this stuff and I'm like really sad for myself but then there's this other piece going you're actually fucking deadly you're a brilliant so

like I had these two like shared experiences but in terms of the psychology it really taught me about parenting like attachment theory when I learned about attachment theory, it made me want to be a better mother in my life. I want to make sure that the kids had that security. And he explained a lot. So yeah, Trinity and psychology had its mixed feeling. But we, in academia, we make it inaccessible. So you don't feel it you don't

actually feel it unless someone talks to you in a correct way or they teach you in a correct way um one thing i'd like to hark back to there is when you spoke about we said that the pain you felt when that person beside you didn't have any of these risks yeah and you're feeling this pain for you as a child basically and i relate to some of that myself because so i didn't grow up with poverty but i i'm autistic so my experience at school i i ended up in the type of classroom where the person beside me would have experienced the type of poverty that you're describing yeah and we were all put in the same thing yeah so me who's autistic another person who might have been experiencing abuse someone else who's really poor dyslexia and everyone is thrown into one class where it's you're just told you're all thick and I know you're good for nothing

and even when the career guidance person would come in, we were kind of told to just nudge towards quitting. Yeah. You know, that kind of nudge. Yeah. I remember the career guidance counsellor saying, you don't want to be accountants or any of that stuff. Don't mind that stuff that they're doing up there.

And it was just a way to get us to quit because we were bold. Because what else are you going to do like my identity in school became I'm really good at being bald I'm fucking brilliant at being bald and acting out yeah because school was hell for me but something that I have difficulty with when you said there about the pain that you felt when you look back for me i try all the time to go to young me child me and to have compassion for that child and it's really fucking difficult because i know because i've had moments like that too yeah where like i'd have loved to have done fucking like i

did psychology i got no leave insert i got no leave insert so i managed to get in on an access thing when I was a mature student. But I write books now. I'd love to have studied fucking literature. I know. Not a fucking hope was that there for me. I know. Because I didn't get a leave insert.

And when I'm writing books and I meet other people who went to Trinity and studied literature, I do feel pain for young me who could have done it. And I have difficulty. The journey that I'm on is learning to hug young me. Exactly. How are you finding that journey? That, yeah, the book, I dedicate the book to seven-year-old me. And it's hard because I know that there's periods,

there's parts of my life where I was definitely, there's a stamp on me at that point in my life. So I experienced abuse. When you grow up in a family like mine, when you're vulnerable and you're poor, people, perverts and bad people, really see you as uh easy target and so lots of kids who grow up and it's one of the reasons i wrote my book because i wanted to like contextualize what poverty can do it's not just that you don't have enough food like it makes

you vulnerable to all these things and affects how you feel and see about yourself so see yourself and feel about yourself and it can be through abuse be it sexual emotional or in school but them things then you have to spend a lifetime trying to recover from them and and like you there's that seven-year-old there's a seven-year-old girl in me and all the women here and and the men who like I was this bright like now bright vivacious really pretty girl who like had so much expectation and hope and wonder at life and all of a sudden that was taken from me it was already affected by the fact that I would find my dad with a needle in his groin overdosed but then I was abused and I was taken and the total innocence of me was taken away and I and and then the

expectation in education is for you to go in and perform like everybody else now the school knew so you we know like I know as an educator when someone's struggling and the school knew and the expectation was for me to perform it like everybody else despite the fact that we had no money no food and everything else and so like the lot there's a lifetime of recovery you're being judged against the person who's getting hot meals and two parents work and a hug and a tutor if they need it and a and a clean bed and yeah and um so but in terms of that seven-year-old like I have to like you know I've been in therapy for 10 years nearly like I see a therapist now on a regular basis because I want to love her like I want to go I have gone back to her and said you know you've done nothing because the unfortunate

thing and I learned this from psychology is you have a very immature brain as a child like a little kid and your world you're the center of your world and so if bad things happen you're the center of that and your natural natural response to that is it must be me yeah so like I've spent a lifetime going it must be me and then what happens is sometimes and I talk about this in the book there's this concept in psychology or in biology of homeostasis whereby your body looks to maintain what it's used to so if you're succeeding all the time your body and your whole psyche aims to just continue to feel that so you enter situations that merit that but sometimes when you've experienced poverty and loss and failure and

hurt, it becomes your natural status. Is it like a self-fulfilling prophecy? You search for things that don't benefit your growth. But there's no choice in that. So it's a nature thing. So what happened with me was, like, I would

have, like, my self-esteem was affected, my homeostasis. So like failing and being a failure and not feeling good were a natural position for me. And so I would continue to reproduce them feelings or enter situations that would. And so I've had to spend a lifetime trying to find that little girl again, like learn how to do a cartwheel again and feel okay about flashing my knickers I'm not going to do that here but you know what I mean like and tell myself quite regularly which is what I do like you didn't do anything you didn't do anything and then the other thing about I suppose um healing for me has been when I went to Trinity and became educated, the thing that

really, so my mom and dad were really ill. They were mentally ill. Addiction is the worst mental illness that you can have. The reason for that, I say that because there's so many that are bad, but it's the only one that you're blamed for. They're so judged. So like everybody in our life treated them badly as if they were choosing to ruin their own lives and they had no choice. And I can say that now with honest to God love. Like I know my mom wanted to get up and feed us every day and she couldn't because she was ill.

But the system that we grew up in, there were people in that system who had lots of privilege and lots of privilege and lots of ability to help us and they didn't and when I went to Trinity I'm going through all this process of like healing and growing and realizing I'm fucking deadly and then all of a sudden I'm like looking around and I'm like these rich people who have everything know know that the system is rigged. They know that kids like me are just being pushed to the wayside and they don't fuck all about it. And that made me so angry.

It still makes me angry because while I'm like the odd one out, there's millions of kids like me who are so talented and gifted who are just getting lost to abuse poverty neglect hate hurt and all these things so you know it was like actually re-experiencing it when I went into Trinity because before that it was all my fault I was fucking up I was the one who didn't make the right choice I failed school I was picking a bad fella I was picking the bad job. I didn't know how to change my life. That's what we're taught.

You can change your life. You can't fucking change your life unless you have shit. And you don't get shit unless people give you it. And so I went to Trinity and I was really hurt. Were you in therapy when you were having these reflections? Yeah. Did you have someone to go to and say, I felt this during the week.

I'm really angry about this um yeah i would what what was what i was looking so like in access so when you get into university the hard thing about it is is you become really separate from your community so like i'm i went to trinity i was hanging around with girls from summer hill we're all having a fag drinking tea and then i'm in Trinity after a year, and I'm like spouting fucking political theories, and my friends are like, what the fuck are you on about? We don't care. You know, so there's this distance, but I was

lucky that there were other people who were going through the transformation at the same time, so we kind of like formed little groups, so lots of my friends are former access students, so students who come from poverty who've been through education and we have our little like rants with each other I suppose yeah so the reflections would have come from but actually the reflections would have come from

the fact that I was getting educated because education makes you feel and think differently and like made my brain think about things and connect things differently so like previously I'd be like I'm a mess I've made bad choices like real basic I'm a mess I made bad choices I should have done better then all of a sudden you've got these lectures teaching you about sociology and the way the world works and I'm like oh well then it's not maybe it's not me maybe it's the fact that I was fucking placed in the council house and we weren't given any supports and we went to a shit school and the teachers fucking hated us and some of us got hit by the teachers and the social services were terrible and then I was like oh so this isn't me so like I think education made me wake up and see it differently um do you find a lot of push so what you're speaking about there

is a very expensive solution because you're talking about to put resources back into the community at the earliest and that's very expensive like one of the things that pissed me off during the week there was um the fucking armed guards in Dublin. Like, fuck off. You know what I mean? It's such... It's just like a little solution that keeps a certain type of person happy and doesn't address any of the

marginalization as to why is that happening? Do you find that pushback a lot in the job? Because you've done research and you're someone who wants to bring what you're researching into policy. What type of pushback a lot in the job? Because you've done research, and you're someone who wants to bring what you're researching into policy. Yeah. What type of pushback are you getting?

Oh, well... And what happens when you speak to... If you speak to a politician, and they just don't have any context whatsoever for what you're speaking about, because they grew up with money? I think the thing is, when you have a doctorate,

that gives you a passport to have conversations so if I was just still on my lone parent book no one's going to be listening to me but the fact that I'm a doctor and I'm an academic and I work in a university it gives me like the ability to have conversations and so like I use the privilege that I have to ensure that I can have these conversations and also so people can't deny so when I wrote my book I wrote about myself as a child and when I talk about this stuff I talk about my experience as a child and like a politician can't deny yeah abuse can't deny neglect from the states to a person yeah and especially a person who's strong like I am but also has the academic ability to make an argument and generally like I like I've been

really successful in my in my work because I think I have that kind of ability to bring my personal experience as well as the academics with it and so but there are people who just I met a woman one day she said to me when the book came out i was and she said oh i read your article it was amazing now my husband now he's not into that poverty stuff do you know what i mean like but like and we did have a girl and we were renting a room to her and she was a lone parent she left it in a right mess and we won't be doing that again so you know like don't get me wrong what point was she making she was saying i was deadly but because i was behaving okay and her husband wasn't really

into that you know so the i do come across i you know what people don't really share their prejudice who are educated they don't really share it openly um it only happens in times where so say for example in the university, I'm trying to get a program. I need to be careful. I might lose my job. Trying to get... Fuck it, anyway.

As long as you all buy my book, I'll be fine, okay? But I'm trying to get a program for gender inequality through, you know, and a program for poor girls in gender who don't have access to science and like it's i've men like standing up saying there's no issue men have the issue men it's a problem for men and would be biased against men to do stuff for women and like they're very academically sound in their arguments is this the equality of opportunity versus equality of what is this jordan peterson goes on with this oh my god don't talk about him i know but unfortunately i have to

on this occasion yes equality of opportunity versus equality of outcome yes so jordan peterson says everyone should have equality of opportunity not equality of outcome but if you say equality of opportunity it assumes that everybody is on the level playing field. Exactly. And it's not the case. No, exactly. But I, so I experience bias, yeah, and I use research. So I've actually got a system to get past people

who are actively prejudiced, in my view. I mean, I just don't think there's any excuse to be ignoring poverty and allowing kids especially nowadays to fail in education or communicate to them that they're not very good through our education system and that's what we do the leave insert particularly yeah we just tell kids you're a fuck up you're a failure you're not good enough just for life yeah you don't get a leave cert and you are fucked for life that's the message that I was clearly given and there's kids

who are in particular communities who won't get a good leaving cert as in like good 600 points because they don't have all the resources that these kids do and they walk around them

with this belief about themselves that actually predicts then the jobs they go for the jobs they think they're suited to it's really frustrating so anyway and that's the internal script yeah I fight with people though in my job in an in a nice way and like I said they're so middle class they don't say fuck all to you I'd be like you can't say that you can't say that publicly that's

wrong like you're offending me. And they'd be like, oh, yeah, I'm sorry about that. Didn't really, you know. So there's a, but there's a method to try and make changes. And like for me,

like I just focus on, right, I wrote my book. It was really costly psychologically for me to write my book because I'm telling the world I was abused. I had an abortion. I had loads of sexual partners.

Do you know when you write something down and you get it out for you to have to go through your life like that and to write it down the process of that was that difficult for you to do on an emotional level? It's really weird Or was it cathartic?

It was beautiful and horrible all in one So I worked with Penguin came to me and asked me if I'd write my book and I was like yeah and then they just send you off and so I was like I was born on

how the fuck do you do this? I'm used to writing science papers so anyway it was cathartic but what was amazing was I was given this amazing woman to work with Lisa who's an editor and freelancer and we like she so I wrote loads and sent it to her

and then she was like that shit that shit no one's interested in that I remember writing loads of stories about Trinity she's like nobody cares about your Trinity stories I was like I fucking care she's like no well nobody else will read that but what was amazing with her one particular thing is that like I believed so I got pregnant at 15 and and was homeless and was I had my son in a mother and baby hostel and um I when I was writing about me at that age was really hard on myself and I remember I used to send her voice notes of like the stories and she'd she'd type them and send them back to me sometimes and I remember saying to her like she she came back to me one day she said she was very hard she's here them back to me sometimes and I remember saying to her like she she came back to

me one day she said she was very hard she's here she said to me um I'm not fucking writing that about you and I was like oh what do you mean she's like you can't say that about yourself wow and I it really helped me and feel sad because you know you talk about seven-year-old me there's always there's also 13-year-old me there's always there's also 13 year old me who's like standing on a street judgmental towards yourself really hard like i made a mistake i broke my life i fucked it up and like she she could see the whole story all of it together and if you imagine like your life is like a tapestry my life was like this tapestry i was seven i was three there this tapestry. I was seven. I was three.

There was addiction. My parents, I was seven. Abuse, abuse. Going into care. And then pregnancy. Fifteen. Joy riding. Robbing.

Getting arrested. So all the robbing and arrested and joy riding and all the shit with fellas and everything. I was writing about that as if it was me. I was bad. So I'd gone from this vulnerable little girl who'd been traumatized and hurt to this 15 year old who just got pregnant and fucked up her life and Lisa was like I'm not letting you say that about yourself and that was beautiful because it really made me stop and go was that my fault did I have a choice and I didn't have a choice I wished I'd had a choice I didn't have a choice I just I'd had a choice I didn't have a choice I just went

with whatever was fucking happening and all this brokenness was inside me and I was just trying to navigate that the best way I could and being cool and robbing cars and smoking and taking drugs and all that was trying to like heal this fucking broken feeling inside of myself and you found a sense of identity I'm guessing guessing, in being that person. Yeah, I did. But also it was escaping. But the book process aligned the tapestry. So it was like the lot...

So I always wrote about this thing about being on the beam. That's it. Like my friend used to say, when you're on the beam in life, you just feel fucking fully good. You're happy. And I imagine like there's a beam that shines through your whole life

and there's things that can happen that can just break the full light flow and like when I had you know thought sorry when I thought about myself at 14 the light was coming through and it was just a dark patch and when I wrote the book it was like they just allowed me to just see all of myself in complete on the beam fully and I was like I'm actually all right with me I didn't do anything wrong like I'm a fucking great person I'm a survivor I've done everything I could to raise my kids and be better and I really didn't have a choice and that was beautiful from writing the book and I'll be always grateful that I wrote it he respected now it's the fucking bestseller.

Fair play. And it's going to be made into a movie. Fuck off, is it? Yeah, it is. Fucking brilliant. Fair play. It is, yeah. Wow. But irrespective, honestly, irrespective of that, I am so, like, for myself, for my little me,

it's like I can look back and see 13-year-old me in our shell suit with a little fucking hair up and a perm going, I'm here, it's okay. And then seven-year-olds is standing behind her doing her little fucking cartwheels going, I'm here. That's amazing. Congratulations. That's astounding.

Yeah. I'm here. That's amazing. Congratulations. That's astounding. Yeah. Something, when you mentioned there about,

you know, when you were a teenager and you were joyriding and making these decisions that weren't in your own self-interest, like, you said there that you didn't have a choice. Could you explain the psychology of what's going on there for someone who doesn't have a choice could you explain the psychology of what's going on there for someone who doesn't have a choice yeah so i suppose i imagine if you imagine the world is your potential in terms of your brain and how it can function and all the decision making that you can make and like there's the front of your brain that really is involved in planning and

in planning and making good decisions the bit of your brain that really is involved in planning and in planning and making good decisions the bit of your brain that says don't have a beer on a monday night because i've got work in the morning and some of us have loads of and like when you're poor and your nutrition is bad and you're not you're not looked after correctly and you experience trauma sometimes then pieces of your brain don't function in the same way and so like but also if you imagine like my stimulation my cognitive capability was limited to like this is the world you live in the rest of the world I didn't have any insight into so I'd never met anybody who went to university didn't know anyone who lived in a posh house didn't have any apart from people on the tv

so like i'm basically functioning on like what i see around me in my community and what i see around me is poverty addiction being cool you know being defiant you you take what you can and so i mean in terms of psychology how could I have decided anything else yeah the worst part about becoming educated and realizing that is that the people are empowering our governments it be in whatever country they actually know this because they're taught this in education but for me I was just, like, living day to day. And that's generally what you do when you're poor. You live day to day, you survive.

And, like, I'm living in a community where, like, if you're, like, I couldn't go outside and say, I love Shakespeare. The fucking slagging I'd get from the lads at the end of the day. So, like, you're in this community where I was just, like, everyonebing cars everyone was smoking hash and you were just in that and there was no like reasoning where I shouldn't do this the only thing that was there in me was I I love to read I always read my dad blessed me with that like he was an avid reader and he taught me to read so and I did love to learn so like I did have this kind of like pull in my teens between

being a good girl and going to school and doing well like I wanted that because I liked the learning but I also had this stronger pull towards like what I was used to and what was I I was socializing into which was like you gotta imagine like my my family we sold drugs in our house so like I'd be answering the door and selling drugs to people like you're not fucking like speaking about political theory when you're selling a bag of you know speed to someone at the door so like there was no choice in it what I'm trying to say and my and my reasoning was primitive I don't mean that in a bad way a derogative way but I didn't have any other choices and so yeah so I just end up doing surviving day to day i've been really

concerned from a psychology point of view as well like you gotta remember the trauma and the poverty really affected my self-esteem like and how i felt about myself as a human being remember that seven-year-old girl who thought she was bad because everything bad was happening so that voice is really loud and and I'm really fragile. And so escaping and being cool and not having to be normal or have normal conversations was just the way it was. So I think there was no other thing that I could have been involved in than crime and standing around teenage pregnancies and stuff like that. We're going to have a little break

so you can have a piss and a pint. And then we'll be back out in about 15 minutes. Is that all right? Dog bless. Let's have a little brief ocarina pause now. And you're going to hear some adverts. I'm in my home studio this week. I'm not in my office.

I'm in my home studio, which means I do actually have my ocarina this week. So I'm going to play my ocarina. And you're going to hear some adverts, because I don't want you getting a little fright. I don't want you getting a fright from a loud advert. I play the ocarina gently, because it's late at night. On April 5th, you must be very careful, Margaret. It's a girl.

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game and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com. Pretty high pitched. Apologies to any dogs. Disappointing ocarina, I'll be honest. I need something with a bit of a bassy or notes. Way too high pitched. But look, there were some adverts there. 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 Boy Podcast. If you enjoy this podcast, if it brings you solace, joy, fun, distraction. Whatever it is that has you listening to this podcast if it brings you solace joy fun distraction whatever it is that has you listening to this podcast please consider paying me for the work that i do because this is my full time job this is how i pay for so i rent out my office so i pay all my bills this is how i earn a living this is what i do all the time and this is how I'm able to deliver a podcast each week. Through Patreon support. 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. Listen for free. Because the person who is paying, is 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. Patreon.com forward slash The Blind Boy Podcast. It also means I'm not beholden to advertisers. I'm an independent podcaster. I get to make

podcasts about whatever I want. I don't have to worry about how many people are listening. I don't have to worry about being popular. What I got to worry about is, am I delivering the best podcast? Am I delivering to you something that I would like to listen to if I wasn't me? Am I being passionate each week? Am I speaking to guests who I genuinely want to speak to, people whose opinions I care about, people whose viewpoints I want to give a platform to, as opposed to bringing on a guest because I don't know, they're popular right now and it'll bring in a lot of listens.

I don't want to do that. Just some live gigs coming up. If you're at Electric Picnic this weekend, which is a big festival in Ireland, I am at Electric Picnic. I'm doing a live podcast at Electric Picnic on Saturday at 7.30 in the evening on the Ah Here Now stage in the Minefield Arena. So if you're a podcast listener, if you listen to this podcast, if you're a 10-foot Brenda or a sweaty Emmett, come along to my live podcast. Come along to it because the thing about doing podcasts at festivals

is pricks can show up. And I don't want any pricks showing up. People who heckle. People who heckle and be gowls for the sake of it. That's one of the shitty things about doing it. Any type of speaking event at a festival. So I need all the ten foot brendas and perpetual declans to show up and get your seats in the tent because they'll close off the tent when the tent is full and then if there's any gowls they're outside the tent. So come along to that if you're at Electric Picnic. This is my I've been gigging Electric Picnic every

fucking year since 2007 I hate festivals nothing against festivals it's just to me a festival is just a big loud field it's just a big

field a big field full of thousands of people with multiple competing noise sources pointing at my head. And then with Electric Picnic specifically, wasps. I've spoken about this before. Electric Picnic, it's at the start of September, end of August, start of September. It's right in the middle of wasp season. So I'm up on stage and then a wasp flies into my mouth or a wasp gets caught in my bag. When I go to electric picnic, the first thing I have to do is that if I have the plastic bag on my head, I have to make sure that

I can't drink beer, can't drink any sugary drinks. Because if I get sugar or beer residue on the lip of my plastic bag, I just get followed around by wasps. And I'm up on stage interviewing someone, and there's a wasp interested in my face. I think it was Electric Picnic 2017, and that was the gig. That was the gig where the wasp actually did fly into my plastic bag the wasp flew into my plastic bag on stage and then I punched myself into the face to get rid of the wasp from my bag

but nobody in the audience knew that's what was happening and they're just at the gig and blind boys punching themselves into the fucking face for no reason then the year the year after that who was it the year after that then I was backstage and I met David O'Doherty lovely man comedian very funny man I had him on this podcast I met David O'Doherty lovely friendly wonderful wonderful man. And I went up to chat to David O'Doherty. Backstage.

And he was with a friend of his. And he introduced me to her. And at the moment that he introduced me to her. I think a wasp flew onto my point. I just screamed into her face. I screamed into her fucking face. And ran away. And no one understood why it had happened.

And I looked mad rude. I looked rude and odd. You see the wasp can go into my bag so it's not just about being stung it's about a wasp being trapped between my face and a plastic bag so it's a different situation for me. So I'm really looking forward to doing the gig. I love gigging at Electric Picnic. That's why I've been doing it since 2007. I just don't like the bits around the gig. Where it's a field full of people. Multiple sources of noise pointed at my head. And wasps.

And then what happens? Tormented by wasps. And then I'm smoking a load of cigarettes. Smoking a load of cigarettes I don't want to smoke. Because when you are being attacked by wasps and then I'm smoking a lot of cigarettes. Smoking a lot of cigarettes I don't want to smoke because when you are being attacked by wasps smoking cigarettes is puffing the smoke out of the bag because when I smoke a cigarette with the bag on the cigarette smoke comes out of my ear holes and my eye holes and I can create like a cloud of smoke around myself and then wasps won't go near me.

But it means chain smoking. Cigarettes I don't want to smoke. So come see me at Electric Picnic on Saturday. If you're around, please. Friday, the day before Electric Picnic, I'm at another festival in Birmingham at the Masley Folk Festival. I don't know what the wasp situation is there in Birmingham.

I don't know. So then, I think my other gigs are sold out. I'll just plug my English tour. English and Scotland tour. London, Manchester, Liverpool, Coventry, Edinburgh. Edinburgh's sold out. Alright? A lot of those tickets are gone already.

But London, Manchester, Liverpool, Coventry, Edinburgh, that's in November. That's my podcast slash book tour. Then I'm in Belfast in the waterfront on the 18th of November. And then I'm back in Vicar Street on Sunday the 19th of November for my official Irish book launch. So there you go. All right. Also pre-order my brand new book of short stories that's coming out in November. Topographia Hibernica.

You can get signed copies of that. And buy Katrina O'Sullivan's book. Poor. If you've been enjoying Katrina's chat so far, go out and get her book. It's on the best. I think it's been number one bestseller non-fiction in Ireland for like 17 weeks. Fair play to her.

So back to the chat with Katrina and in this part of the chat this is where we speak about education and the education system. How are you? Did you have a nice piss in the pint? Yeah? One day I'm gonna walk out with my bag not on by accident. I have to make sure it's on all the time. I have to keep touching my head. I was shocked by what you look like. Don't describe it to them. He's really handsome. Oh, thank you very much. You are.

I thought you were hiding it because there was something wrong. You're actually a big fine thing. It's actually, this is the mad thing because we were speaking about my autism diagnosis backstage, you know,

and one thing I realised, I've been wearing this bag since I was 16 years autism diagnosis backstage you know and one thing i realized i've been wearing this bag since i was 16 years of age you know and now i'm in my 30s and only when i got diagnosed with autism that i realized what the bag was about like i want to do podcasts i want to write books i love this job but what I don't like is that if I didn't have this fucking bag right and I went on to the late late show think of the amount of small talk I'd have to do the next day in Dunn's yeah you know I know seriously and that to me is is actually quite frightening um I I love having conversations like I'm having right now but if i'm in a supermarket and someone comes up to me and wants to talk about the weather one thing i'd like to ask you about

and this is something where i find this bag quite useful so like i'll speak about mental health loads on my podcast and i'll i'll really speak about my vulnerability because that i always find the best way to speak about, if you're open about the things that you're terrified about yourself, then that can establish a trust with other people. Yeah. And if I didn't have this bag

and I was out having a pint, people would come to me and they'd be very, very vulnerable because of something I said during the week and I couldn't provide that person with an environment of safety. Do you worry about that? No, like I'm happy for people to speak to me

about their vulnerabilities. So like I feel really privileged when somebody, I feel like I'm capable of holding a space for somebody who wants to share something with me. If it's really, so I had a situation recently where a woman just completely, she'd just read my book, obviously, so I'd just finished it, and my marriage broke down, and I was abused as a kid,

and it's affected my whole life. And obviously, like, when you've experienced abuse, like, people just talking about it. This is a stranger a stranger yeah just trigger it can be triggering you know emotionally you you've kind of got to mind yourself a bit but I also was like you know I know how to respond to someone like that I know I was like I'm really really privileged like you I'm really glad you felt safe enough to say that to me and i would recommend that maybe have you been to therapy and thought about talking about that if you can see its effect in your life and so i really don't mind it i feel privileged like the one thing i love

is being sent messages about the book and people like it comes in two two types one is like thank you so much it's all the majority is women some men which is lovely as well but the majority of women saying thank you for speaking so openly and honestly and but then there's also people like I was arrested when I was 13 for robbing a pair of red shoes and I didn't do it I didn't run in the shop put on a pair of red shoes and run out I didn't I swear but this policeman arrested me arrested me three times actually used to try and get me in the back of the car and bully me a little bit and asked me to grass on my brothers

and their friends and stuff. Oh, he was plotting you against your own family? Yeah. Oh, my God. And I got an email from him. And the email said, I'm really, I read your story. I don't know if you remember me

I did remember him because he was gorgeous as well he was he was bleeding, oh my god and he was only 19, I didn't know so he sent me a message and he said I'm really sorry for the way I treated you and your family he said I was 19

I didn't have a clue and in my career I've learned not to be so judgmental or whatever and uh I just want to say like I never saw in you I knew there was always something in you but I never saw this and I'm really delighted to see your life is amazing how did that feel oh I was I cried and was also, I wonder if he's still good looking. No. I wrote, yeah, I wrote back to him.

I actually wrote back and said, you know, thanks. I remember you and I remember you trying to get me to grass on my brothers. And I wrote from Dr. O'Sullivan because he didn't address me properly. I don't ever use doctor only with the Littlewoods catalogue but for him I was like, yeah, this is fucking doctor here. Not the red shoes robber anymore. But he, yeah, so he came back,

sorry I should have addressed you correctly but he just said I'm really sorry, I didn't know. And that's lovely. So I've had loads. I had another guard message me privately and say, I'll never, ever see the world the same again after reading your book.

Ah, that's class. And then teachers, so many teachers. Yeah. Because I wrote it for teachers. Two teachers changed my life. That's what I wanted to speak to you about. Like you mentioned in the book about, and this is, I had the same experience.

For me, I think back to one or two teachers who believed in me when the rest of them were calling me a little shit and how hugely important that was for me but also

and some of the questions I had online lots of people who had a tough time in school have that one experience but how do we move beyond as a society relying upon that

relying upon that one teacher who is compassionate and human and who puts the effort in there's something sad about that too yeah there's something sad about where this one exception do you get me yeah like can you speak about that yeah so the inconsistencies in education is something that i research and i'm really passionate about trying to change. So, like, how we recruit teachers and who we recruit to be our teachers needs to change. So, like, fundamentally here in Ireland, like, we do have...

Like, you can go to secondary school and you can be in a classroom here with an amazing English teacher, and an hour later, you can be with an absolute wagon of a religion teacher or someone who just does not care like the reality is when you're privileged or when you come from a family where there's care and love and there's finances if you have a bad teacher your family can supplement that so like if you're a bad math teacher all the parents talk about it in the mammy's group

and they all go oh miss smith is terrible and then they buy a tutor and they sort it out and the kids survive and then they move on and they get a great leave insert but if you're in a poor school a dash school or disadvantage and you have a bad maths teacher or that can fuck you for your life you can be fucked forever because your family doesn't actually know or doesn't understand the system or doesn't have the money to supplement so like from my point of view it is not and i do talks all the So from my point of view, it is not... And I do talks all the time in school, and I'm like, it is not acceptable for any teacher to know that some teachers are bad,

and that you've got a bad teacher in your school. You need to challenge that. That's my view. But also how we recruit teachers. The first thing is, why do you want to be a teacher? Not because you have a fucking history degree and you've nothing to do with it like you should do become a teacher because you care about the future of children the one thing about teachers is this when I talked about myself as a child if you

imagine I I'm walking around with a lot of darkness in here like I was you know there's loads of darkness because of what's going on I'm in school and I'm thinking is my dad going to be arrested will he be alive will the police be there like we're visiting him in prison my mom's prostituting herself this is the stuff that i'm navigating and so there's a lot of darkness in here and teachers have the power to actually to light you up like and so i had two teachers miss arkinson firstly first day of school i walked in and she was like because in england they always call me fucking catriona i'm so annoying my name's katrina just because it's got a k i don't understand but she's straight away she's like katrina hello and she's from she's

from ireland she's like another a little irish girl and immediately like I'm suspicious, but also this teacher, she fed me every day. No shame. Wow. She fed me every morning. So she knew. She knew. You couldn't miss it. Like I smelt of wee.

Like it genuinely was that kid who had nits. But she also taught me how to wash myself. Oh, wow. She brought fresh knickers in. And I had a little bag on her desk and took me in the bathroom one day and gave me Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday knickers. And she took me in and she, a little bag on her desk and took me in the bathroom one day and gave me Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday knickers. And she took me in and she, it was not, and I felt ashamed because I knew she knew I was pissy because they all called me

pissy, the kids. But she made me feel like I could do something for myself. And then there was Mr. Pickering. So when I went to secondary and I was that bulshy girl who didn't give a fuck, who threw stuff at teachers, this teacher, he didn't let me. He didn't let me. He made me want to learn. That teacher who loves his subjects and he's reading the English and I'm like, oh, I want to be cool, but I love this.

And he went above and beyond. You don't want to let yourself down by messing in his class. Yes they're great ones them but one so I was brilliant at English I was bringing I love books so I read and I was good and I'd always read out loud for him and he would I knew the stuff like I could feel the stimulation in his class and I felt like I wanted to please him and when I was 14 like my parents were piss heads then so they went from the gear to the the drink which happens you know which was worse give me a heroin addict any day over an alcoholic and I I went one day it was parent teacher meeting and um the door knocked on my house in the evening Mr Pickering that was his name at the door and I opened the door and

I'm like hey sir I'm like shit I'm in trouble because you weren't supposed to bring anybody to the door don't bring the police the wag man whatever and uh he says your dad there and I said yeah so my dad went to the door and I'm standing behind the door and he he says to my dad um hey Mr O'Sullivan I was hoping to see you tonight at parent teacher meeting my dad's like oh yeah I was busy and he said um I just wanted to let you know your daughter's amazing wow she's really intelligent and you should be ashamed of yourself for not supporting her and yeah and uh i was listening and like i must i actually grew two feet i think in that moment but that dark there was a light placed in there and like that light didn't just go when he was gone that stayed with me my whole life like teachers have the power to change how you feel about yourself forever and the thing about Mr Pickering is I left school then a year later pregnant he actually died

he didn't see this he didn't see the impact he had and sometimes teachers I think forget that it's not just about learning maths and English and leaving certain points like you have the potential to transform how a child feels about themselves and views themselves and I think we need to make sure that every classroom has a person in it that knows that rather than this inconsistency and especially for poor kids because we don't have the other things to protect us so like that six hours in a day is fucking pivotal it's either going to shape us or fuck us basically so i think it's really important that we really consider who teaches us and how they teach us

and there's amazing teachers out there i i've met the most amazing teachers in this journey don't get me wrong i'm not slagging them. But the ones that are bad, they need to get the fuck out of the profession and we need to get good ones in and keep them in. There was something beautiful you said there about the ability of a teacher to light up the person and I

couldn't stop thinking about... We were chatting about Kyle Rogers backstage. And Kyle Rogers' theory of the human self is... Humans grow organismically. We're like... The way that a plant will move towards light, a human will naturally move towards the light of the best version of themselves, nice things

love, but if that human is trapped in a closet then they won't find that light but compassion and love and respect can help us to get that light within us and that's what those teachers did exactly

when you speak there about you know, we need to get that light within us and that's what those teachers did exactly um when you speak there about you know we need to get the bad teachers out and we need to find an environment where the right people are going for this job how do we do that well how does that happen and is there a model where it's working yeah so there's a brilliant model in finland there's a brilliant model the audit comes up great so they're doing every single time I could bring someone on for housing and I go where is it going well no well up in Norway yeah they're doing it well yeah everything right no they're not because they do have a high rates of suicide as well okay don't get me wrong they're not doing everything right but the reality

is they interview teachers so they interview them so we don't do that you just make an application you don't even have to say you. You can hate kids and become a teacher in this country. I think there's a few. I know, yeah. But, like, so, like, we need to think about, we need to think really meaningfully about how we recruit and ask them why they're doing it. So, like, for me it would be is care, like, evaluate their care,

their capacity to care more than their grades and then the other issue is like diversity in teaching so i i ran a program called turn to teaching which was about trying to make teaching more so there's a lot of groiners and roshins in in in primary education nothing wrong with groiners and roshins love you if you're here but like there's a lot of people from Galway and Sligo and sometimes Clare who aspire to be primary school teachers. And their parents are often

primary school teachers. The only country really 80% of our teachers have a family member who is a teacher. Well it's nurse, doctor, priest, teacher. But it's not like that in other countries. So it's very elite here in Ireland. We have a very inherited, teaching is inherited and so is guards. It's mad.

And so like we don't really check that that, like just because your man was it, would you be good at it? And so we definitely, and then the diversity piece. So like if we're, we expect it's very high points, 500 plus to become a teacher for something in DCU. So like what you're getting is this high concentration of a certain type of person same in psychology who so what happens is you get like a group think in the group yeah and their belief about human behavior human potential education

it's all the same because they're all like coming from the same background and they've all succeeded from the same background so then their expectation of kids is based on that. And we don't really teach teachers about poverty. They don't learn about social inequality at all, really, in teacher education. They do one placement in a DASH school. But imagine Roisin from Galway, who had a lovely, lovely, lovely life,

fucking in the middle of Ballymun. And the kids are like, I met a teacher last week. She said, when I went to school, we used to stand up and say a prayer and everyone would stand up and say a prayer. And you'd say, say your prayer and they'd all stand up.

And she said, then I went to Clendorkan and I tried to get them to stand up. They're like, fuck off. So like, basically what happens is the teachers, it's not their fault necessarily because they're not being taught, but the teachers are being thrown in

as in-dash placements with kids who have concentration of poverty and issues of whatever and they're like reinforcing this idea that the teachers already have about them.

So what we need to do is really educate people, that's why I wrote my book, about poverty, about how it manifests in the classroom. Like kids don't want to sit on their ass for six hours when they're fucking traumatised.

They may need to go to the back of the room. They might need movement. They might need to paint and learn that way. Where does play therapy, music therapy, things like that come into this? Yeah, well, I mean, I think it comes in... Like what you have to do in terms of therapy is find what works for the individual. Particularly kids who are unable to express.

So young kids particularly respond well to play therapy, for example. It's a really good way of trying to get kids to resolve or express themselves. Outside of words. Outside of words. It's really, really great. And we, you know, we lack so much funding for them things. It's really tough. Well, there's also a cultural attitude that, like, art for me in school wasn't just something I was good at.

It was something that made me feel emotionally regulated. And I was told every day that art wasn't a real subject, that this is messing. This isn't, do you know what I mean you have to there's real subjects and there's fake subjects and that then gave me a lot of shame around this thing that I love doing yeah but now I look back and I go that was me managing my mental health through painting and drawing yeah and listening to music I suppose there's more that we can do around creative stuff it's weird because the head of the national like I've like going to an art gallery feels like really weird to me it's intimidating and it's weird because the head of the national like i've like going to an art gallery feels

like really weird to me it's intimidating and it's art galleries and the art world yeah is exclusive and intimidating the same way that academia is yeah it's this forced solemnity that pushes you out what we have here you have to be real smart to understand this and if you don't get it you're stupid i know that ridiculous. It's a fucking plaster of Paris on someone's dick. I know. With a lot of big words beside it. I know. And it only services capitalism.

I did like the vaginas one now, the plaster of Paris is of all the women's vaginas. And then they tried to get the women to identify which one was theirs. Well, that's participatory art. That's good. That's where you bring people into it. And then they got their husbands

in and they didn't have a fucking clue. Sorry. But, yeah, so art, the National Gallery, actually, when the book came out, they got in touch and I have a meeting with them. I'm not slagging them. I have a meeting with them because they want to be, they want to get more diversity

into the gallery. And I'm like, how the fuck? I've never even been in. Like, you know, it terrifies me, but they've asked me if I'll meet them, and I'm shitting. I'm hoping that they don't fucking get a painting out and start asking me to analyze its background.

But you know what? Laugh at it. Laugh at it. Like, here's the thing. Galleries are very like churches. Yeah. When you go into a gallery something like the tate you know a modern art gallery the one thing you're not allowed to do is laugh and people walk around

galleries in this silence and you know what the silence is when people walk around galleries they look at the art and they go inside their head i haven't a fucking clue what this means and i'm gonna be real silent because I'm terrified that the person beside me thinks I don't get it. I know. So I'm just going to be quiet. I know. Like I'm in a fucking church.

I know. But that's there. All that does is service capitalism. I know. If you can get these paintings and these objects and create this fear around them, then it's like, that's why it's worth that much money.

It's fucking bullshit. Laugh at the art. There's a thing in, so when we talk about how you get kids to change their class and become more middle class, there's this thing called cultural capital. You've probably heard of it, right? Hipsters. Hipsters are the

bankers. Hipsters are the stock market people of cultural capitalism. That's what they do. But the thing about it is, one of the things that cultural capital is, is visiting art galleries. So there's programs in universities that takes poor kids to universities to make them more middle class.

And it's so fucked up. Because like you said, you can't just go from no art experience to like all of a sudden understanding what this is it's so awkward it's like the other thing is like that thing of like dress dress to impress or something yeah it's like we can't actually have our own art and express that art like graffiti or whatever or piss artists do you know like we can't actually, though, express ourselves in a way that suits our community.

You have to go and be part of this community. Now, when I was a kid, we did go to the one, the Matchstick Men one. And what was amazing... Oh, is that Lowry? Lowry. And Lowry was like... And what was brilliant was that...

He was a working class artistic painter. Yeah, it was working class. And we heard the whole story. So when we went to see his art, I was like, oh, this is cool. This man is like a fucking miner. Like he was living in the mines or whatever he was doing. And if you don't know Lowry's paintings, he just used these really simplistic paintings.

It was just people on the way to work in Manchester and Birmingham. And you had all the towers and everything. And it was also, he's called a naive artist in that the way that he drew was naive. But that makes it accessible. You're going, I could kind of do that. This seems simple. This guy isn't trying to tell me that he's better than me. Yeah.

And I'm conscious when I'm speaking. You said it when we're outside. There are probably people in the room who are really privileged. And there's people in the room that are from summer hill or whatever who get what i'm saying like i have no problem like i would have loved to grow up middle class like i fucking how man if i had food every day imagine how deadly i would have been do you know what i mean like realistically if i'd have had everything like i did great with nothing so imagine what i'd been so i've no problem with people who have stuff, who have privilege.

My problem is when it's accrued and kept for yourself. And like when it's used. The hoarding. The hoarding. And then people don't use that privilege to try and make it a bit fairer for people like me who really didn't have opportunity, really don't have opportunity.

So I'm conscious that I'm like slagging groinier from Galway. fairer for people like me who really didn't have opportunity, really don't have opportunity. So, you know, I'm conscious that I'm like slagging groinier from Galway. Hopefully groinier from Galway is not in the room. I've no problem with rich people, privileged people, teachers. My problem is, when you don't use the privilege that you have, it might be even just in a conversation with another person who says

something bad about a traveller, or uses the term knacker it might be that or it might be actually going and fucking electing someone who isn't prejudice and bias so my issue isn't, I don't have issues with middle class people, I love them

I work with them and I have friends, my issue is always when you're not making it fairer for people like me because we die Have you heard of um gabber mate's argument where gabber mate speaks about trauma but he looks at the elite as also traumatized individuals just a very different trauma to the trauma of poverty see one of the things that really bothers me in modern society is the way we throw around the word trauma yeah like people like break a nail and say they're fucking traumatized yeah and like so i teach

about trauma you know there's like there's definitions of trauma in psychology that talk about like rape abuse murder witness in it vicarious trauma whereby a family member member may have experienced the trauma and you relived it with you but there's specific definitions of trauma so every like trauma can happen to any walk of life but the truth is it's more likely in poorer communities

and so yeah so I agree with him that there's definitely trauma but in terms of the proper definition of trauma when I was talking to Sharon Lambert about this, Sharon says there's big T's and little t's. Yeah. And that's how she differentiates it.

What words would you use to describe... When you hear the word trauma being thrown around at everything, what other words are there for something that definitely isn't trauma, but it's unpleasant? It's unpleasant. Okay. You can't do that on twitter though i'm unpleasanted by all of this so no a difficult you know like don't get me wrong like there's difficult like bullying for example like bullying or being rejected yeah having a

difficult or falling out with friends or having a fight with somebody there's definitely and like suffering i think is a good one suffering is a good one there fight with somebody there's definitely and like suffering i think is a good one suffering is a good one there's like but there's actual so i i did a newspaper interview recently because there's some people who who claim that trauma is necessary to like be successful in life yeah i heard the right it's just absolutely the cia say that that the cia's official line i'm serious. The CIA's official line within psychology is successful people are people who have had the right amount of trauma.

Well, that's not true. It's the CIA now, so their goal is like... Yeah, yeah. But the reality is trauma kills people emotionally. So if you've heard of... You can count the amount of trauma. So six or more, basically, are fucked in your life know, there's, you can count the amount of trauma. So six or more, basically you're fucked in your life. So like there's, so there's lots of stuff. So owning

trauma, there's no harm in saying I had a difficult experience. I experienced bullying. These things can actually encourage resilience sometimes if you come through them, but like real trauma actually causes significant psychological harm and it's very difficult to recover from and if you have more than one trauma it can be really really hard to recover from it so like and when you say psychological harm do you mean like it can impact how the brain grows or the nervous system or this is what i teach in the body yeah so like it affects our memory first it affects and there's a really the oldest part of our brain is the is is the most important bit it's the bit that tells us to eat to shit to have sex to do all the things

that we need to do to survive but when we have trauma and it also tells us when we're under attack so it tells us like run the fucking lion is going to get you but so when you're traumatized you get a flood of chemicals in your brain okay and the flood is in that fear section and it's in your hippocampus and your memory and in the frontal part of your brain. And that flooding in the fear center makes it hyperactive. So what happens is you have a deficit in the memory bit. So first of all, you have this hypervigilance. So you're on guard all the time. This is me. As a like, you're on guard all the time. Like, this is me.

You know, as a child, I was, like, awake. I knew everything that was happening in a room. I still kind of do, which is unfortunate because there's loads of people here. But, like, it's still a thing in my brain that I'm, like, aware. I'm waiting on the danger. But also, the memory piece is, like, we can misinterpret threats so small signs of threat become big signs of threat so like if someone like turns their face to you or is in a mad mood with you trauma can make that seem as if it's a bigger emotional issue and that's actually biological

biological and very difficult to heal and so trauma in itself changes our biology. And there's loads of evidence for that and makes people really aware of their environment, really afraid a lot of the time. And that fear affects everything. So IBS, your stomach turning, your heart pounding, high blood pressure, all of that is affected from having trauma. Because that piece of your brain that's really fundamental to survival has been flooded and changed because of that trauma and then the memory pieces so our memory piece when we've had the trauma a shock a really scary thing happen our memory part is changed as well it becomes like it filters the environment for fear and scary stuff and so like you can turn your face at me and all of a sudden I'm like,

he's going to attack me. Or my memory is warped. And so there's these biological basis of trauma that are very difficult to heal. You can heal them. But also I think when people just say, I was traumatized, it fucking diminishes people

who actually have had to live or do live with the consequences of trauma. So, like, it would be great if people just educated themselves a little tiny bit about what trauma is so that we can just be mindful of people who actually are surviving or are trying to heal. Like, I suffered a lot of trauma in my life, real trauma, and it bothers me.

Sometimes I'm on Instagram, I'm like, she fucking says that again. I'm going to teach her what fucking trauma really is. And I can't because then you turn into this bitter kind of person and I don't want to get into battling with influencers on Instagram. I'll do it just privately. So she's a cunt. I fucking hate that one.

Mute, mute. Yeah. So, yeah. A lot of what you're speaking about there, is this like recent science? Because I know from even saying there that the psychological impact of trauma can manifest itself in how your tummy behaves.

Yeah. Like a few years ago, that was seen as holistic and airy-fairy. Is this now being accepted within psychology? Are people waking up, whole up, the whole body, the mind and the body connected? Well, I think in psychology it's different too. So in terms of medicine, it has been accepted.

So research has shown that people who've been through significant trauma are more likely to have autoimmune diseases, disorders, or more likely to have autoimmune diseases disorders or more likely to have ibs even though there's loads of questions but loads of like gut issues are related specifically and that's not like you know some fucker selling like some yogurts online to fix all your gut issues this is like neuroscience that's looked at brain function of people and looked at biological you know disorders and connected the two so there definitely is evidence and whether it's accepted or not there's

so much so like in terms of it's all very inconvenient for capitalism everything you're speaking about like it is like yeah because you're talking about people's diets you're talking about people's like the powers that be don't want this. They want something more simple that can be solved with a pill. Yeah. We all want something. Like, I went years after my mam died. When my mam died,

I really wanted a solution to what was wrong with me. And so, yeah, like, we all want a need. I think that's natural, though. Like, when we, I know there's capitalism. The path of least resistance. There's capitalism, and there's the fuckers who make money out of it yeah but then there's also humanity and like we want it's we want the simple answer always like the hard answer is too it's

hard so like it's our natural biology to to make things make decisions as quickly and easy and efficiently as possible. So, like, the simpler solution is sometimes to look for the pill rather than necessarily going to... Or the blame. It was them. It was them over there. They did this. Or to go to therapy for fucking 10 years and try to resolve the complex trauma.

So, like, the pill may be the easier answer, but I wouldn't diminish medication either. Of course, yeah. Because, like like people genuinely, I really believe people need to find their own way and like find their own solution. So I'd never judge anybody for looking for answers in whatever way they do.

I do judge like corporates or industry or governments that make money out of poverty or try and manipulate us. But individually, I think we all have to find our own way but in terms of trauma itself it is so hard to recover from it and like I am one of five and like so here's me in this this wonderful place I'm a PhD I've three kids they're happy healthy are married like the most success I have in my life is that I love my husband and he loves me. That's my success. PhD, fuck it, who cares anyway?

The reality is that I'm able to stay married and I'm able to love and be loved. And, like, then I have the five of us. There's the rest of us who are all just in this path of, like, despair. Some are doing okay, but, like, my brother and my sister, prisons, homelessness, kids in care, like it's really sad what trauma can do to a whole family and a whole person. And you inherit it sometimes.

My mom was traumatized. So was my dad. So poverty, trauma, it actually continues and is inherited. And without intervention and support, I don't know how it ends for people. Do you know anything about epigenetic trauma? Can you speak a bit about that?

I don't know anything about that. No, but I mean, you don't. You're not allowed to talk about it. No, no. No, I do. In terms of like, in terms of your family. Like literally, when you spoke about inherited there, there's not just learning behaviors behaviors but how people's genes are

changed yeah so this is so this is the type of research now that's so i i think we used like there we don't we cannot map the genome we haven't fully done it we cannot say in like no one can say that my trauma was inherited that's epigenetic because it's very difficult to separate your environment from your genes so like remember i'm born from my mom was traumatized and she was lived in poverty alcoholism abuse and her and everything else and she gave birth to me there is no way to separate my environment from my genes okay so we invite we definitely I definitely have inherited but the the idea that my genetics has been changed based on her genetics that is way beyond what science has found as of yet it's still there is theories on it but in terms of separating your environment from your

biology it's so difficult to do and we have really innovative methods in terms of like we do twin studies we do twin studies we we we've tracked kids who are identical versus uh die die zygotic twins with monozygotic twins who are adopted and we do our best to say there is some so for example alcoholism we know that like firstborn so firstborn sons of alcoholics react differently to their first drink than non-sons of alcoholics. So they have worse biological effects. So they have a worse hangover, it takes them longer to recover in their first drink, their experience of their first drink. So studies like that that say, oh, there's definitely some genetic piece to this. But that might be because they've experienced all this trauma and they may have had a biological reaction from that.

So it's very hard for us to say genes, causes. We do know, though, if you grow up poor, your kids are likely to grow up poor. And you're likely to die of suicide more than somebody who's not poor, have heart disease, go to prison, fail in education, be in a low-paid job. So we do know them things, and poverty does predict poverty. Irrespective of whether it's genes or social, it's still predicting it.

Long answer. Sorry. Sorry, yeah. Unfortunately, we've got the Vicar Street curfew. I could chat to you all night. That sounds a bit weird, though. What? You've spoken with so much compassion

and just from authenticity. The authenticity of your words, I felt every bit of it, you know what I mean? And everyone did in the room. This was such a beautiful, wonderful night. Thank you. I just want to say, Dr. Katrina O'Sullivan, thank you so much. Thank you.

That was magnificent. Thanks to you, lads. Thank you. This is the Blind Boy Podcast. Have a lovely night. Dog bless. So that was my chat. That was my chat with

Dr. Katrina O'Sullivan. I thoroughly enjoyed that. It was real long, but I couldn't edit any of that out. Her words were too impactful. I loved every fucking second of that.

And I hope to have Katrina back on again her book is called Poor, you'll get it in wherever you get books I'm going to be back next week with a hot take with a hot take about something

I've been reading a lot about Greek mythology recently and I might start delving into Greek mythology but in the meantime rub a dog, genuflect to a swan, moan an otter. I have to do my kisses quieter. I always sign off with a couple of kisses. And last week someone complained that the specific pitch of my kisses was making them feel violently angry which is called misophonia

misophonia when certain people can have intense emotional reactions to certain sounds and this one man was just I love your podcast but I can't deal with those kissing sounds. And he wanted a trigger warning before the kissing sounds. And I said it wasn't necessary. I always do the kissing sounds at the end of the podcast. And when I don't do the kissing, some weeks I forget to add kisses at the end of the podcast. And I get a couple of emails from people who are experiencing a feeling of abandonment. So if you don't like the sound of my kisses, just turn it off at the end. Just turn it off at the end. It'll be grand.

It's hard to keep everybody happy. Dog bless. Rock City, you're the best fans in the league bar none tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation night on saturday april 13th when the toronto rock hosts the rochester nighthawks at first ontario center in hamilton at 7 30 p.m you can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game and you'll only pay as we play come along for the ride and punch your ticket to rock city at torontorock.com this is an advertisement for the equalizer 3 which is coming to cinemas on the 30th of august in anticipation of the third and final chapter of the equalizer we're celebrating by channeling our inner Robert McCall,

otherwise known as The Equaliser, who's played by the true action film GOAT, which means greatest hero of all time, Denzel Washington. So I joined up with the wonderful Mr. Scrobius Pip from the Distraction Pieces podcast, and we had a little chat what would we do if we were the equalizer and we were being attacked by the mafia all right scrobius pip are you excited

for the equalizer 3 i am i am i re-watched the uh the first two recently in the build-up and it occurred to me if you like there's a thing in tv and there's a thing at the moment of tv daddies you are you familiar with this i am not so so it's it's particular actors who have a daddy vibe ah so yeah i'm wondering who's going to be the tv daddy that comes out of the equalizer three that's denzel denzel denzel it's gotta be Denzel isn't it he is very paternal there's a like I would like bad news delivered to me by Denzel

Washington yeah if someone has to deliver bad news he just he has that I'm calm there's a crisis

happening but I'm in control Denzel just has that yeah and Pip in your recording studio right

like if you were the equalizer yeah and like the mafia broke into your studio what how would you defend yourself well i've i've i've got a lot of i'm a massive child blind boy you talk a lot about the um extended um kittenhood or childhood of of kind of our generation of people i've got a lot of art toys. And some of these art toys are chunky. So behind me right now, I'm leaning back. I've got this crucifix made by a guy called Riker

that's actually a stormtrooper on a cross. And the crucifix is made of parts of the Death Star. So that was my first instinct as a weapon. And then I looked along and I realised that me and Riker, we made a 12-inch art toy of me. So clearly I'd grab the 12-inch toy of me and batter them and defend myself, in case I can't say batter them.

You would defend yourself with it with an effigy a smaller effigy of yourself it had to the confusion that's like a weird dream that's like a dream that's like the mafia broke in and what did you do i beat them with a smaller version of me or me or me and my mates have always argued if you're ever in real real trouble and you can't like you know you're not that tough strip naked because yeah because nothing scares a man more than a naked man so i just think to really throw them off just have this toy of myself as my defense mechanism what would you use how sturdy is an ocarina what i don't think so an ocarina i'm not very good. I'm not very good at fighting or anything physical.

I mean, I would have to distract them with interesting facts. I love it. If the mafia came in, I'd have to. I'd hit him with big ones. Like there's a town in Pennsylvania called Centralia, and it's been on fire since 1962. Wow. There you go. I mean, that stumped me instantly see that pause there like

so even if someone's coming at me aggressively if you say to somebody yeah there's a town called centralia in pennsylvania and it's been on fire since 1962 i don't care if there's a gun pointed at my head that person has to go no there's not there's a fire and it's like yeah yeah a mine shaft went on fire and now the population of centralia is is only five people and it's been on fire since 1962 like you just you can't be aggressive when someone hits you with that that's amazing i deal with the mafia mindfully i'd use mindfulness on the mafia if I had but it's got me thinking I'd use my stammer I've got a stammer that freezes people so I can throw throw that at them that always kind of um makes people confused and empathy as you said there draws out empathy so

I think that'd be a good at least distraction tactic to to calm the situation I think I genuinely think it helps in my podcast every now and then because because it it adds that empathetic um feeling from your uh the person that you're talking to so yeah i'd weaponize my my um this fluency that'd be a quite interesting action film actually pip i mean if you have an action film but the the hero isn't someone who uses violence, but someone who uses facts and a stammer. Yeah. I'd watch that. Let's make it happen. But if you'd like to see a decent action film, then go and get sweaty with Denzel Washington.

The Equalizer 3, which is in cinemas on the 30th of August. Thank you. you