The Blindboy Podcast - The Silver Gonads of Santa Claus in the mouth of a Gelding Foal

Episode Date: December 21, 2022

A festive Christmas episode  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Release the geese, you feeble Stevens, and welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. If this is your first episode, maybe consider going back to an earlier episode to familiarise yourself with the lore of this podcast. I'm recording this episode in... I'm in my studio. I'm not inside my office. And I kind of... the sound is slightly different. I can hear it, you might not be able to hear it. I prefer the sound in my studio because I've got better sound panelling.

So it's quite a more damp, radio-like sound. I'm sure you're all a shower of busy bastards this week. Frantically Christmas shopping. Last week I got trapped inside my driveway because it was covered completely in ice. The weather was minus three and then it slightly thawed overnight and then went cold again and when I woke up my driveway was covered in ice and I got to a point where I seriously worried whether I was going to be trapped or not. You see I had to go. I had to go to the shop to buy my dinner. There was no way around it. I had to buy my dinner and then I thought to myself how the

fuck am I going to get across this driveway. There was about a centimeter of ice. It was as slippy as ice could be. I tried putting socks over my shoes. That didn't work. It was so slippy. The ice didn't have sufficient purchase to establish a physical empathy. With socks over my shoes. I would have slipped. I'd have been like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever.

If he slipped on the dance floor. It would have been like that. I couldn't get a takeaway. Because then if I got a takeaway the poor fucking takeaway driver would also slip on the driveway so I was legitimately trapped

and I started to freak out because I didn't know how to get around the ice couldn't pour hot water on it that'd make it worse the only thing I could come up with was table salt but when I googled it it said don't do that

and I could have unintentionally killed a slug so what I did is I got down onto my belly I got down onto my belly and I crawled across the ice it was only about 6 foot of ice, the road was fine

and I dragged my bicycle with it and I'm glad I did that it was a pleasure to witness the world dragged my bicycle with it. And I'm glad I did that. It was a pleasure to witness the world from a centimetre off the ground. I hadn't done that properly since I was a child. So that was nice. The humility,

the humility of it. The humility of having to crawl across a driveway while being fully sober. Really staring at tarmac, having a good old look at the tarmac because my eyeballs were a couple of centimetres away from it, sniffing the ground. I felt like I was two and a half years of age. But then as I crawled across the driveway, my body heat was like heating the ice slightly. So the front of me all the way down from my collar down to my shoes the whole front of me got wet but I didn't really notice it I didn't really

take much notice of it because I was crawling along the ground and I couldn't tell the difference between wet and cold so then I got up onto my bicycle and everything was fine but it was like minus 3 and after about 5 minutes of cycling I felt kind of strange I felt kind of stiff and the front of me was freezing in real time

the front of my fucking jacket not so much my legs a little bit, the front of my fucking jacket started to freeze in real time to the point that I felt slightly rigid. Nothing too much.

I could have broken out of it. I quite enjoyed it. But I was slightly rigid because the front of me was freezing. So I finally made it down to the shop. Went in and started to defrost. I defrosted in the vegetable oil in Aldi. So that was an interesting experience that I wasn't expecting at all.

So I was on television during the week. I was on, I'd nearly forgotten I was actually part of it. So Tommy Tiernan the comedian had a TV show on RTE1 called Tommy Tiernan's Epic West and it was fucking beautiful it was gorgeous it was a two part series

and it was about it was about the west of Ireland all the way up to Connemara as far down as Kerry but it's called Tommy Tiernan's Epic West And it was about the west of Ireland. All the way up to Connemara. As far down as Kerry. But it's called Tommy Tiernan's Epic West. And in fairness it's fucking gorgeous. It's wonderful and slow and visually beautiful.

You can see it on the RTE player. You can watch it over Christmas the two episodes and it's well worth it. And in fairness, the RTE player actually works now. The RTE player is, because I forget most of you aren't even in fucking Ireland now. RTE is Ireland's national broadcaster. It's like the BBC player. But for years, I mean like eight years, the RTE player famously just wouldn't work unless you were playing adverts. That was what made it so painful. The RTE player would play like five long adverts in a row perfectly and then the thing you're trying to watch it would just crash your computer or at once it used to turn my TV off. It was a piece of software that was so bad it used to turn my TV off.

I'd be using the RTE player on my television to try and see something that I made. To try and watch me on TV on something I made. And then I couldn't do it because the RTE player would turn my TV off. And then I'd end up feuding with the fella who designed it on Twitter until I'd block him but I have to say the RTE player actually fucking works perfectly now on multiple devices and it was I was fucking shocked the other night I'm not only was I able to watch the Tommy Tiernan thing live but I was able to watch it back without any hassle and it didn't play any adverts

instead of adverts it played this three minutes of this lovely calming sound I was hugely impressed so fair play to the RTE player so I was on Tommy Tiernan's documentary it was like a love story to the west of Ireland and it was very beautifully made and it had a wonderful slow pace

and it was visually stunning they put a lot of care into making it there was drone shots of Connemara and they felt like the paintings of a fella called Paul Henry, who was an Irish painter he used to paint the west coast and it felt like

that and I was thrilled with it but I do want to I want to critique television in general I don't want to critique this tv show or the people that made it because they did a fantastic job but I just want to critique tv as a medium and something that I won't say annoyed me but something that made me feel disappointed disappointed is it got to the part with me

and Tommy chatting, now I'd actually forgotten I was on the documentary, we recorded it like two years ago sometime over COVID, I got a shout saying Tommy's doing this documentary about the west of Ireland, will you come and have a chat with him? So we did. But when I looked at the TV show,

my conversation with Tommy was only about six minutes long and it was highly edited. Now, I don't have an issue with that. The six minutes that they chose was perfect. It was edited nicely. I make TV myself. I can see exactly why they chose the right bits to move along the entire show. That's not my issue at all. My critique is not a critique

of this TV show, a critique of the entire medium of television and how it's becoming so blatantly irrelevant. TV is dying on its arse. People aren't really watching television. It's dying on its arse as a medium because it's not able to survive within the infrastructure that's there. And here's what I mean. And this is what frustrated me. And I'm sure it also frustrates the people

who made the fucking documentary so I got a phone call Tommy Tiernan's doing a documentary about the west of Ireland, Kevin Barry is in it as well, would you like to come along and chat to Tommy about the west because Limerick is the midwest

so I said fuck it of course any opportunity to talk to Tommy Tiernan I always take it because we have great crack together so the TV crew who were all absolutely lovely people everyone was unbelievably professional everyone was sound fantastic

for the chat with me and Tommy they rented out a boat right we went to Killaloo which is this huge gorgeous lake just outside Limerick we rented a boat, we went out into the middle of the lake me and Tommy are sitting on the boat

they had two 4K fucking high definition cameras incredible microphones and me and Tommy Tiernan just spoke for, I'd say, 70 minutes. We spoke about art. We spoke about philosophy. We spoke about mental health. We had a fucking really engaging, decent conversation in this beautiful, on a fucking lake it was perfect afterwards I said to myself wow

I'd have loved if that was a podcast and the thing is that will never see the light of day 90% of that conversation that me and Tommy Tiernan had just ends up on the cutting room floor and that lovely conversation we had just got edited down into a six-minute piece that existed as a segment to push along the rest of the TV show. And that's not a critique of the TV show. I want to make this very clear

because I don't want to sound ungrateful. The people making the TV show, they're responding to a brief. This is what you have to do when it's put out on quote-unquote television. You have to make something that uses the language of television. But the language of television I think is fucking obsolete now. People are listening to podcasts that are three hours long. People are going on to YouTube and watching interviews that are four or five hours long. We don't want highly edited content anymore. We're existing in this golden fucking age where two people having an authentic conversation for an hour is what people want and it's what people

are going towards and the medium and infrastructure of television is stuck in the past. The visual language of television was written at a time when the competition was other television channels. So TV tends to be made in a way which is very heavily edited, terrified of having dead air and continually vying for people's attention. But that language isn't relevant anymore. It's clearly not relevant anymore. So what you get then is a lot of waste. And I think if the unedited conversation if you'd have treated it like a podcast, a very high budget podcast

it's on a fucking boat it's filmed beautifully, the mics are lovely, if you'd have just put up me and Tommy chatting with minimal edits me and him chatting about art and put that on the RTE player, it would have gotten millions of views.

It's like a wasted opportunity. Now, I guarantee you, the director of the TV show and the editor are nodding their heads in agreement with me going, yeah, we'd love to do that. Wouldn't that be great to also have that on TV? Well, you can't because of red tape. Tommy Tiernan's documentary would have been funded,

I'm guessing in three ways. Some of the money would have come from RTE. Some of the money would have come from what's called the Broadcast Authority of Ireland. I think some of the money came from the Tourism Board. I would imagine the entire two documentaries, by the look of them, the overall budget for that I'd say would have been probably 200,000 euros which sounds like a huge amount of money but TV is very expensive. You're talking about hiring a large team of professional people who are paid properly to work long hours over maybe six months from

shooting to edit. So when you apply for that budget, when a production company applies for that budget to make a two-part TV series, 60 minutes a pop, they have to adhere to these quite strict guidelines of what that's going to be. We would like to make two 60 minute episodes for RTE1 that'll be 200 grand then it gets signed off and then the job of the TV company is to shoot that get loads and loads of footage and then figure out how do we make this all work within two hours

so that it goes out on this old archaic medium called TV that has adverts in the middle and it just broke my heart because there would have been a number of really good interviews that Tommy Tiernan would have had in that show. I know that me and him had an amazing chat. I've no doubt he probably spoke to Kevin Barry for about an hour as well. They spoke inside in a cave. Like I've had Kevin Barry on this podcast, a very interesting person. Tommy spoke with artists. You have all this unbelievable content and then you can't use it

because the parameters for funding are rooted in an archaic model that isn't relevant anymore you can't go to the broadcast authority of ireland or to rte and say i want this budget i want the 200 grand budget that you'd normally have for a 60 minute tv show i want to take that budget still hire the same amount of people, no one's cutting any money, people still get paid properly. We want to take the money that's there and instead of making something that's relevant in 1995, let's use this money to make something that's relevant to the audiences that are consuming content now. Let's take the same budget and make something that operates within the language of the internet.

If we can film. Blind Boy and Tommy having a class conversation. For 70 minutes on a boat. If we can fucking do that. And it's nice. Unedited. Then let's fucking put it out. Let's put it out.

Because we know it would work as a podcast. You can't because that infrastructure for funding doesn't really exist. Even when commissioning does exist for make something just for the RTE player, so this is only put out online, or make something that's just on the BBC player, only online, you're still making a piece of television. You're still making something that uses television language. That's 20 years in the past. They're just putting it out on the internet. And it feels weird. So you go to YouTube instead. And that's why podcasts on YouTube are kicking the absolute arse off television.

Like I had this, my own series on BBC. Sure, that took fucking six months to film. I did this incredible interview with a fella who he was homeless but his homelessness was like a choice. It was an ideological thing. He found a field that was public land and he built himself a little hut and the hut had heating and the hut had solar panels. And he lived a comfortable, warm life with a full belly. Any bit of money he made, he made it from busking in the nearby town. But he lived this comfortable life where he was fed and warm and happy. And he didn't have to pay rent and he didn't have to get a job.

He just decided, I'm going to live in this field. But the police would come and tear down his hut because to live like that was illegal. And I had an incredible chat with him for about an hour and none of it ended up in the documentary. Why? Because the documentary was commissioned by the BBC to be a half an hour long with a certain budget and to adhere to the highly edited, fast paced language of television. And I can't legally access that interview that I had with that fella and put it online in its unedited form for an hour, because that's not what was commissioned. It has to stay on the cutting room floor.

And this is what's killing television. And the TV execs are going, what will we do? The internet is, everyone is listening to podcasts. Everyone's watching YouTube. Nobody's looking at TV. No one's even looking at the TV shows that we make and put on the internet. What's wrong? That's what's wrong. As soon as you commission something, the people that are creating it are forced into a creative

infrastructure that hasn't been relevant for about 15 years. infrastructure that hasn't been relevant for about 15 years and it's why my podcast is far more successful than anything I've ever made on television because like this this one episode that you're listening to now more people would probably listen to this episode than the combined amount of people that have watched anything I've made for RTE. Like I get more listeners on this than the average late late show which is the biggest TV show on RTE gets. It's the reason the fucking president was on my podcast because we were able to have a long-form conversation without any edits, without me needing to take on the role of TV presenter and keep asking questions and pushing things towards a certain direction and instead we were able to just have a fucking conversation

about what he wanted to talk about and put it out. It's the reason, it's the reason I don't like talking about anything to do with mental health on radio or television anymore because I can't to speak about something as complex and nuanced as mental health you need fucking space and time and that space and time doesn't exist on tv and radio when everything has to be snappy and condensed and an advert has to come in two minutes it's a broken model it's a broken model and i don't know why they haven't changed it and if they do change it and start commissioning things that are a bit more relevant to what people actually want i hope that they don't slash the budgets while they're doing it because like i said that chat that me and tommy had on the, it was like a really high budget podcast in its unedited form.

It's like it's what a TV budget could do if it embraced the mechanics of podcasting. But do get a look at that documentary, Tommy's documentary, Epic West. It's on the RTE player. And I want to make 100% clear again, this is me not, I'm not critiquing the documentary. I haven't been sponsored to mention the documentary for what it is within the language television, within what the brief would have been. It's fucking brilliant, and I reckon it'll probably get shortlisted for an IFTA, I reckon.

So this week, I'm going to chat about, I didn't intend to speak for 20 minutes about that this week I'm going to answer questions that you've asked me because I get so many on Instagram actually follow me on Instagram

blindbybogclub because Jesus Christ Twitter has gone to shit fuck me since Elon Musk took over in particular I've never been Jesus Christ Twitter has gone to shit. Fuck me. Since Elon Musk took over in particular. I've never been you know my thoughts on Twitter. I've never enjoyed Twitter because Twitter

promotes quite toxic negative behaviour. It's where people go to complain and begrudge. But if you're an independent fucking creator Twitter is fantastic for getting your stuff out there and making connections. So Twitter has always been a double edged blade for me where I desperately need it for my job. But in doing that, it means I also get harassed and can't walk away from it. But Twitter now has gone to shit. It's losing its feeling and sense of credibility because since Elon Musk bought it he's fucking making policy changes at a whim and it's becoming an unreliable place

Twitter used to be quite credible it's where journalists would post or where politicians would post it was a very credible place that's disappearing now important people are leaving important people are posting less. He banned

a load of fucking journalists last week just because he didn't like them. Like I literally think he spent 44 billion on something for highly personal reasons. I think Elon Musk hated the tone of Twitter.

He hated that it was a space where a lot of left-leaning people would critique him and critique billionaires. So he fucking bought it to shut him down. But Twitter is now becoming a place that I don't see. It's not very valuable for my fucking career. It's going that direction. And another thing I find troubling about Twitter over the past week is most of the tweets that I'm seeing

aren't even from people that I follow. And even more disturbing, I'm feeling targeted by an algorithm. Like, YouTube in 2017, just the fact that I was a man of a certain age meant that regardless of what videos I looked at they would always try and suggest Jordan Peterson videos or they'd suggest a video where it's like

such and such calmly dismantles feminism or 10 reasons why feminism is wrong YouTube in 2017-2018 was feeding me content that really wanted me to become reactionary and right-wing. I'm getting that vibe from Twitter now at the moment. I'm seeing tweets from people I don't follow on my homepage and these tweets are what I would consider to be within the manosphere and the manosphere is an area of the internet which is anti-feminism, anti-socialism, anti-equal rights, a few steps away from racism, toxically masculine content.

I'm seeing it in my homepage against my will. Nothing that I'm searching for or looking for would suggest that I need to see this content. It feels like being on YouTube in 2017. It feels like just because I'm a man of a certain age, the algorithm is trying to radicalize me and it feels deliberate and Elon himself said a couple of weeks ago that we must stop the woke mind virus which is quite a strong and alarming statement so follow me on Instagram blind by boat club if you have Instagram please follow me there because I have a feeling that's going to be the social media platform. That I'll be using from here on in. And everyone on Instagram is fucking lovely. And sound.

And no one acts like a prick just for the sake of it. But you ask me a ton of questions on Instagram. So I'm going to try and answer them. In this week's podcast. I got a beautiful question. From someone called Lito. And the question was. I'd like to know what you think.

The whole having your life together thing means I've been thinking about it a lot lately and it seems to be a lot of people think it means having a long term stable job a house and a family so that's a beautiful question there about the phrase

having your life together getting your shit together and this is a metric that a lot of us use to determine whether we feel like we're failures or not. Have you got your shit together?

Is my shit together? Is my life in order? Can I look in the mirror and feel do I feel like I'm doing life right? And depending on how we fit into what we believe having your shit together is, depending on how we fit into that, we'll tell ourselves whether we're a success or a failure.

The problem is, is that we use metrics that are not relevant to the here and now. They're more relevant to our parents' generation. So let's look at what we would consider, what we socially agree. Now, I'm not saying whether I agree or disagree with this myself, but what we collectively socially agree to be having your shit together as let's say age 30 we still kind of believe that at 30 you should have a full-time job in a career you should have a mortgage and you should have a family and if you have those things then you

have your shit together you're doing a right job you're doing a good. And if you have those things, then you have your shit together. You're doing a right job. You're doing a good job at being an adult. Why do we think that? Because that's what most of our parents had at 30. The world we live in today, post fucking 2008 recession, post pandemic,

the world that we live in today means to have those three things at the age of 30 now is kind of an unrealistic bar. It's quite a tough standard to set for yourself, which means there's a fuckload of people in their late 20s and in their 30s who feel like failures. There's people who've done all the right things or what they believe to have been the right things there's people with fucking PhDs who can't earn money from their PhDs there's people who've done the right thing

and they got the job, they got the career they're earning money but they don't own their own house because they're getting exploited through rent and they live in a shitty fucking apartment there's people in their 30s who don't have kids because they can't afford to have kids. There's people who did all the right things,

went to college, got a job in the thing they went to college in, but don't really have a career because full-time contracts don't exist anymore. Then you can bring gender into it. I don't want to speak for women, but I know as a man we were definitely raised with the social expectation

of get a job that provides for your entire family and then your wife doesn't have to work and if you do that your shit is together you have succeeded as an adult like very few people are doing that even in a family where both people would like one person to not work,

to stay at home and be a homemaker, while the other one provides all the family income. No one can do that. To even think about stepping in the door of a bank, to even look at a mortgage, two people need to be working. So the entire rubric for what it means to have your shit together is wildly out of sync with reality. We haven't updated it. We haven't really had the conversation about how we update that.

about how we update that. So now you have an entire generation who feel like a fucking failure. Now especially millennials. Millennials being from I think 27 is the cut off for millennial. If you're 27 up until 40

you're a millennial. So millennials have reached the age where we're supposed to have our shit together. And those parameters are defined by something that was relevant 20 years ago. Relevant. I said that like someone from the Navin. We haven't had that cultural conversation. And I've mentioned this a ton of times.

And here's the glaring example I always use. Millennials are still referred to as young people by politicians. Politicians are referring to someone who's 40 years of age as a young person. You see all the conversation, whether it's in the fucking UK or America or in Ireland. Young people can't get homes. Where are the homes for the young people? Well, now it's 2022 and young people who you're referring to, you're talking about people who are 35, 36, 37, not young people. Like when they say young people can't get a mortgage, do you think they're talking about someone who's 23?

They're not. They're talking about people in their 30s. But they have to say young people because if they don't, if they say adult or God forbid, middle-aged, and some people say 35, and I know you don't like to hear this, but 35 onwards is middle-aged. They don't say middle-aged. They refer to people in their late thirties as young people because to acknowledge those people as middle-aged or mid-thirties reveals a truly broken system.

So that's how I know we're not having that conversation. So we do need to collectively have a conversation around what does it look like to have your shit together? We can't say having a stable career, owning your own house and having a family in your 30s means having your shit together anymore because the majority of people who did what they were told who followed the guidelines of what you need to do in order to have your shit together by a certain age the majority of people who followed that instruction cannot reap the rewards of that effort because the system doesn't work like that anymore. And it's not fair to have that many people believe in themselves to be failures,

that they have failed now. I don't have that career. I don't have a full-time contract. I can't get a mortgage. I can't afford to have children. There's no point having children because I don't even live with my girlfriend. We're not married.

We can't get married because we're trying to get a house and I actually live with my girlfriend, we're not married, we can't get married because we're trying to get a house and I actually live in my ma's house and she lives in her ma's house because we're trying to save for a house. Now we're 38 and we're concerned about fertility. That's most millennials. That's the reality for most millennials. So it's not fair to define that as a failure or to say that's not having your shit together. Now me personally, I work hard on not allowing, we'll say any external circumstances to try and define my worth as a human being. Having my shit together for me means, am I living authentically? Do I have a good dialogue with my emotions?

Do I understand and know what I'm feeling? Do I like myself? And liking myself has nothing to do with achievements. Do I like who I am, regardless of my job or my fucking possessions? Can I try every day to be kind to every person who I interact with? Can I put that effort in?

No, I can't do that unless I believe that I'm a good person who's worthy. That's why I work on my self-worth first. Like I started off this podcast saying that, you know, I crawled over six feet of ice there, you know, and froze and defrosted in Aldi and cycled my bike. I'm sure my neighbours were looking out the window and said, that man's insane. That man doesn't have his shit together. He's crawling across ice. I don't care, because it doesn't hurt anyone,

and it was an authentic move. I needed to go to Aldi. And if I was worried about... Fuck it, I can't get down on my belly and crawl across six feet of ice in case my neighbours see me and think I'm insane. So I'm just going to stay in here and instead I'm going to eat biscuits for dinner because the shame of looking mad would be worse. No, I met my needs in the moment and doing so didn't harm anybody

and I don't care if I looked mad. Similarly, I know the older I get, the more bizarre the plastic bag on my head looks. The more it makes people cringe. The more it makes people in my industry take me less seriously. I don't care. I'm autistic. I need a really quiet, simple life. But I also want to make podcasts and write books and do gigs. And wearing a plastic bag in my head allows me to do that stuff without the stress and pressure of being noticed in public, which would

be very difficult for me as an autistic person. So the authenticity of that feels like having my shit together. Because what's the alternative? Don't wear the bag in my head and live an incredibly stressful life where going to the supermarket means being recognized or means having lots and lots of small talk with strangers, which as an autistic person is incredibly difficult. And then from that, I get terrible mental health issues or addiction issues. That would be inauthentic of me.

I'd be living my life in a way that doesn't work for me because I'm fearful of other people's judgment. What I'm trying to get at is, if you're looking at your life and you're saying to yourself I don't have my shit together. I was supposed to have a career by now. I was supposed to have I was supposed to be married by now. I was supposed to have a house by now. I was supposed to have a family by now but I don't have these things. I've tried so hard to get them but I don't have them. I don't feel like I have my shit together. It's no longer a realistic metric. But what you can have as a realistic

metric, what everybody can have is. Am I striving every day to live to be my authentic self? Am I living to meet other people's expectations of me or my expectations of myself. I think that's a realistic goal. It's a flexible, realistic goal for everybody to have, to center your sense of self-worth, to have that intrinsic sense of worth. If your worth is based on these external fucking Celtic tiger expectations about where someone in their 30s should be. If your worth is placed there, you can't achieve a sense of worth. It was fucking easier for our parents. You'd probably have what your parents had if you were doing what you're doing now then. Like my dad just had a regular job at an airport. My ma worked in Dunn's packing shelves. They got a mortgage from the council for fucking nothing, with fuck all interest.

Became homeowners and raised a family of six and none of us had to experience poverty. We had a secure, safe environment where all of our needs were met. We had a secure, safe environment where all of our needs were met. Now today, do you think a couple who fucking, one person's working in an airport and another person is working in Dunn's, two of them together could afford a house and have six kids? No fucking way. Forget about it. Not happening. Things were clearly easier then.

So we collectively need to figure out a way to have that conversation while not giving up. There should be affordable housing. There isn't affordable housing because of years of government policy that made it that way. Zero-hour contracts shouldn't exist. Being employed in your chosen career that you've worked really hard to get and having no job security because all they do is hire you on a contract every six months,

that shouldn't exist. Like my dad worked for Aer Lingus. He'd work at the ticket desk. Or if a flight was delayed, he'd sort those passengers out. But he had a pension. He had healthcare. He had job security. It would have been difficult to get fired.

He had a career. He could confidently say to himself, I will be in this job in 10 years time. I'm not worried about this job. Why? Because Aer Lingus at the time was run by the fucking Irish government. It was the state airline. It wasn't privatised.

It wasn't run solely for profits. My dad was a union organiser. The union existed to protect workers' rights. The union existed so that himself and his co-workers could have their shit together. So join a union. And if in your job there isn't a union, start one and never cross a picket line under any circumstances. But this sense of insecurity in jobs now today, this exists because of years of deregulation and privatisation. And what those things took away was the idea that an industry doesn't exist just for profit, but it exists to

provide services. And if you provide these services, you have a population who have their shit together. When everything moves towards privatisation, then it becomes about profit, and when that's the case, workers' rights go out the fucking door. Like I mentioned RTE, that's our public service broadcaster. Working in RTE used to be this really secure, safe job that would allow you to have your shit together. That's not the case anymore.

Look at what's happening with the health fucking service in Ireland. Why do you think the health service is so poorly run and so underfunded and the people who work there are miserable? Because policy wants to privatise it. They want to make it unusable so they say that doesn't work. Let's have completely private healthcare like they have in America. Teachers. There's a shortage of teachers in Dublin because teachers aren't being paid enough money to afford Dublin rent. Like why does no one have a fucking house? Because the entire infrastructure of housing has been moved towards the private market for profit. It's not run in the public interest so that lots of people can have their shit together.

It's run to make people rich at the expense of other people having their shit together. It's run to make people rich at the expense of other people having their shit together. Like I mentioned, my parents got a house in the 60s and the mortgage came from the fucking council. We believe it's in the public interest for people to have a house. So here's money for you to buy a house. You can pay that back to us, but we're not interested in profiting from it. Well, we are interested in profiting, but those profits aren't necessarily financial. We just think it's a good idea for society in general if lots of people have secure homes.

We'd like to make it really easy for you to have a house. That was Ireland. That existed. It was policy. That ended as soon as houses and property became something that you could hoard and profit from. These are all the reasons that vast swathes of the population can't get their shit together or feel like they have their shit together. So we can change what having your shit together means

while at the same time not giving up. And I do see the conversation shifting a little bit with the Zoomers, people under the age of 27. I'm seeing this emerging trend, you see it on TikTok in particular, where people are trying to say that you're not really an adult until you're 25, when your prefrontal cortex develops. I reckon this concept is becoming popular because

people who are 21 and 22, they don't want to call themselves adults. Because for them to acknowledge that they are adults means that they have to feel like failures. Because they probably live at home with their parents at 23, 24. And they were raised to believe that once you're 18, you're an adult. You go to college, you get the fuck out of the house. And if you're at home at 23 or 24. And they were raised to believe that once you're 18, you're an adult. You go to college, you get the fuck out of the house. And if you're at home

at 23 or 24, you're a failure. So I can see why there would be a cultural push towards moving adulthood to 25. So I hope that answers the question, Leto. Look at that now. 40 minutes in, one question fucking answered. No ocarina pause yet. Let's do the ocarina pause.

I don't have an ocarina, but I do have the grinder of perfectly legal herbs. So I'm going to grind the grinder of perfectly legal herbs and you'll hear an advert for something. 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 and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com. On April 5th, you must be very careful, Margaret. It's a girl. Witness the birth. Bad things will start to happen.

Evil things of evil. It's all for you. No, no, don't. The first omen, I believe, the girl is to be the mother. Mother of what? Is the most terrifying. Six, six, six. It's the mark of the devil.

Hey! Movie of the year. It's not real, it's not real. What's not real? Who said that? The First Omen. Only in theaters April 5th. That was the grinder of perfectly legal herbs, Paws.

Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page. Patreon.com forward slash The Blind Boy Podcast. This podcast is my full-time job. This podcast is how I earn a living. If it brings you solace, joy, distraction, whatever the fuck has you listening to this podcast, please consider paying me for the work that I put into it. If you met me in real life, would you buy me a pint? Would you buy me a cup of coffee? Well, you can, because that's all I'm asking for. The price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month. But if you can't afford that,

don't worry about it, because you can listen for free. Because the person who's paying is paying for you to listen for free. Everybody gets a podcast. I get to earn a living. It's a wonderful model. And also, I'm not beholden to advertisers. I'm fully fucking independent. I spoke at the start of the podcast about the issues that are going on with television and why TV and radio is so shit. And why a lot of podcasts are shit. It's because advertising fucks everything up. The second an advertiser comes in and starts to dictate content or starts to say I'm advertising on your podcast so I need you to get this many listens each month. As soon as that happens creativity goes out the window. When you don't have space to fail, you don't have space to explore. And when those are the parameters, you aim for mediocrity.

So please support this podcast on Patreon, patreon.com forward slash The Blind Buy Podcast. Share the podcast, like it, recommend to a friend and follow me on Instagram if you are on Instagram, Blind Buy Book Club and I have the blue tick blue tick also if you're thinking of buying a Christmas gift I have two books of short stories that I always forget to mention I have two books of short stories that I'm sure you could find on a bookshop somewhere

if you wanted to buy them for someone for Christmas just going to plug a few little gigs for the new year I actually had a gig in January that I completely forgot to plug I thought it was moved right and it's in

Waterford on the 21st of January I forgot about that completely so if you're in Waterford and you want to come along to that live podcast

on the 21st of January please do then the INEC in Killarney that's sold out that's sold out today Cork Opera House on the 15th of February

come along to that March Belfast, that's nearly sold out I'm in the waterfront in Belfast on the 4th of March, looking forward to that Wednesday the 22nd of March I'm in Vicar Street, that's going to be good crack

Friday the 24th I'm in Vicar Street in Dublin, going to be good crack too and what have I'm in Vicar Street that's going to be good crack Friday the 24th I'm in Vicar Street in Dublin going to be good crack too and what have I got in April Drogheda I'm in the TNT Theatre on the 1st and then I'm over in Canada Vancouver and Toronto and that's all I have

I'm taking it handy with the fucking gigs because I'm writing a book I'm writing a book at the moment. A new collection of short stories. That. I'm really looking forward to showing you. Because. My writing has.

Changed and developed. Over the pandemic. And over the time I. The time I took off from writing. And used that time. For reading and reflecting. Not even the reading. The time I took off from writing and used that time for reading and reflecting. Not even the reading. The time I spent making music on Twitch.

I took a break from... I've pretty much been writing books since 2017. Non-stop writing from 2017 up to 2020. And then I took a year off from writing to do music on Twitch and to write songs instead and to stimulate a different part of my brain and now I'm back writing I'm right back writing short stories

and I want to answer two writing questions that I was asked the first question was from April and April asked what writers do you read that makes you want to write well it depends on what I'm looking for when I want to reconnect with my voice

and my voice is like it's like the engine of the car it's like the engine that drives my writing when I want to reconnect with my voice I read Kevin Barry because Kevin Barry is from Limerick and Kevin writes with a very Limerick brain and Kevin's observations are very Limerick specific and the way that he uses words and turn a phrase. He writes with a very Limerick ear.

The most beautiful phrases in Kevin Barry's writing you will hear in a pub. You'll hear people talking like that in a pub and he will cherry pick certain bits of limerick conversations and turn that into the most beautiful prose. So when I want to reconnect with my voice I go straight to Kevin Barry. Kevin Barry for me is like a guitar tuner.

If I have a guitar and this guitar is out of tune, it doesn't matter what chords I make, it doesn't matter what scales I do, if this guitar is out of tune, I'm not going to be able to do what I need to do. So I'll tune this guitar and make sure that all the strings are in the correct notes. And if I do that, then I can move on to the next steps. That's what Kevin Barry's writing does for me. It reconnects me with my voice, because my voice is in the same pitch as his. When I want to reconnect with my imagination,

when I'm writing, like where my ideas come from, my creativity, I read Flann O'Brien or Virginia Woolf, or even a little bit of a fella called Ted Chiang because when I read Flann O'Brien, just the humour, the surreal fucking, the mad surreal specifically Irish humour, when I read Flann it reconnects me with what I love about reading in the first place. Flan O'Brien's work shows me the possibilities of where fiction can go and shows me that it can go wherever the fuck you want to go

and no idea is too ridiculous. And that's what Ted Chiang does for me as well. Ted Chiang is a bit like Flan O'Brien but without the humour. For Flan O'Brien I'll usually read like the third policeman. If I want to connect with the possibilities of prose then I'll read Virginia Woolf. I'll read a book like Orlando

or one of her short stories like Kew Gardens because a lot of people say that Virginia Woolf was autistic and how she sees the world reminds me of how I see the world she fucking paints with words

she's like someone who's painting and she's using a paintbrush but she's just doing it with words it's a type of limitless no boundaries visual exploration of what words can do and the images that they can create in someone's mind.

When I'm trying to think of scenes, when I'm trying to set scenes, I'll always go to James Joyce, in particular Ulysses, because Joyce is very cinematic in how he writes. Or a writer called Atessa Mashfeg. She's a contemporary writer. She's fucking incredible. I love her writing. She has a short story collection called

Homesick for Another World which is beautiful and people say her strength is in writing characters but what I love about her writing is how she sets scenes she will set a scene and you can smell it and see it and taste it

and then after all that if I have a draft done and it seems a bit scattered and I need something a bit more simplistic or logical or I'm about to begin the editing process where things are a bit colder

and more calculated and more exacting then I read Ernest Hemingway because Hemingway writes in a very direct and simple way but with a subtle tension where all the emotions are just bubbling underneath. And I'll also read fucking John McGahern who's like the Irish Hemingway who writes in a similar quite an exact, simple, deliberate way where the real story is bubbling underneath the surface.

Read a short story by John McGahern called The Key. McGahern reminds me of The Sopranos a bit. In The Sopranos the real story is always bubbling underneath. The real story isnos the real story is always bubbling underneath the real story isn't the characters actions

but the emotions that are driving the actions and fucking John McGarren is amazing at that and I strongly recommend a short story called The Key the other question I got about writing I can't remember the name of the person who fucking asked it but I'm going to paraphrase it

someone asked what advice would I give young Irish writers who want to get fucking published as writers well I ended up getting fucking published in a rather non-conventional way, well anytime I ended up doing anything in my fucking career it was always

not the conventional path, which I look back on now and I think that was as a result of autism um when you're trying to get into any scene artistically visual arts comedy whatever the fuck the traditional way to do that is to try and become part of a social group. Like I ended up in comedy in my earliest career, at the Edinburgh Festival and shit like that. I didn't start off the way that you were supposed to start off. The way that you were supposed to start off was

go to comedy clubs, do stand-up, meet other aspiring comedians, form a little circle, make friends, help each other out. That was off-limits to me because of autism. That's just too social for me. So what I had to do was, I'm going to make my own comedy and I'm going to put it on the internet and if it's popular then I can completely bypass all the networking stuff and just go straight to the gigs because the gigs will want me. So that's what I did and it worked. Now, the problem with that is you can end up being resented within,

we'll say, the comedy industry because it looks like you jumped the queue. Other comedians are like, who the fuck? Who are these cunts? Who are these rubber bandits? I've never seen them at a comedy club. I've never seen them doing tiny gigs. Who the fuck are they? Why are they headlining now? And I used to feel guilty over that. Now I don't anymore since my autism diagnosis, because I realise if I'd have tried to get into comedy, we'll say, through that networking thing, I wouldn't have been able to do it. It's not in my skill set.

Same thing with fucking books. How did I get a book deal? I got a book deal because I made a name for myself. Through comedy. And music. And TV. Until I got headhunted by book companies. Who were like we like what you're doing in this other medium.

Do you want to have a go at this? But again a problem with that even though I wrote my two fucking collections of short stories they were both bestsellers I proved myself. Still kind of treated

as an outsider because it's like where the fuck did this kind of come from? I've never seen him at any writers meetings. I've never seen him submit short stories

to journals. Who is he? He came from nowhere. He must have jumped the queue. Does he deserve to be here? I don't feel guilty about that anymore because like I said I'm autistic. I had to arrive where other people arrived using a completely different path because that path was off limits to me. But if you're an aspiring writer. And you're neurotypical. And you want to. Get published. What you got to do is.

You got to find your local fucking writers group. This is why people study creative writing in college. It's not just to learn how to write. It's to make connections. Because your classmates or your lecturers. And the people you meet. Are connections themselves. or will have connections. So use your social skills to involve yourself with people who have a shared fucking goal.

And if you're writing, submit your writing to as many journals as possible and familiarise yourself with rejection. Identify every single literary journal in the country, write some short stories, send them to all of them, send them to every single one of them and familiarise yourself deeply with rejection. Like the stinging fly, the Dublin Review, whatever the fuck, find as many of these journals and send your stories to them and understand the worst thing they can say is no.

They probably will say no. If I'm lucky, I'll get a letter with a bit of feedback, but keep doing it. Do it and do it and do it. And the more you try, the greater your chances of getting accepted into one. And if you get accepted into one, then you've got a short story published in a journal. And the person who says yes, the person working at that journal who says I like this story, I'm going to put it in the next issue, say thank you, meet them, try and get to know this person, make a new friend and if you keep doing that enough times, maybe an editor will say I'd like a book from you and submit your writing to competitions, try and win awards, You might win a prize.

You might get a bursary. You might get a grant. That allows you the time to write your fucking manuscript. Then you send the publishers. That there is the traditional route. And if you're neurodivergent. If you're autistic. If you don't have the emotional bandwidth for that amount of networking.

Then use the internet to publish your own work. Make work that becomes so popular that it can't be ignored and you're headhunted. None of this shit is easy but the worst thing that can happen is that you fail. And guess what? There's no such thing as failure if you try. There's no such thing as failure if you try. Because let's just say you write a bunch of short stories or you write a novel and you send it to everyone that gets rejected the fuck. No one takes it on board. Is that a failure? No. You've just created

something and that learning process is going to fuel the success in your future. And that process I described there, it's the same if you want to be a comedian in your future. And that process I described there, it's the same if you want to be a comedian, same if you want to get into the fine art world, want to get your work into galleries, music, you want to form a band, you want to get gigs. The traditional routes are quite neurotypical and they benefit people who have strong social and networking skills. And being talented, that has to just be a given. But having said that, some of the most talented people that I've ever met have done nothing because they were scared to try.

I know a lot of people who could have been something and they didn't because they were scared to try. Now, I'm not talking about people who couldn't participate because of financial reasons or mental health reasons. I'm talking about people who did nothing because they were scared to try. They had built the idea of being a great artist into their head and to such a high pedestal that failing became too terrifying so they never tried. And I would urge you not to become that person. fine so they never tried and I would urge you not to become that person try and expect failure and make failure your friend and fuck up and humiliate yourself publicly and do all of that

stuff do take all those risks that you have to take if you want to be professionally creative a person who fails has no fucking regrets the person who did nothing because they were scared to try is a walking regret. And I mentioned this a few weeks back. How do you prevent becoming that person? Don't allow yourself to begrudge. Don't begrudge other people's successes. Don't become a hater.

Don't bond with other people by talking shit about another person's success. There's entire communities of people on Twitter that bond around being haters. And these are all really intelligent people with serious knowledge of art and probably have talents themselves. And they're not creating anything

because they're self-identifying as haters as if it's some type of valorant achievement. If you're in any way creative and you begrudge another person, how hard you are in that person's work is how hard you are in yourself when you attempt anything creative and then nothing gets created because you're paralyzed. And getting out of begrudgery and getting out of being a hater is surprisingly easy. All you got to do is be happy for other people's success. If someone else gets a short story published

or if someone else has a song and it does well on YouTube or if someone has a comedy sketch and it gets a load of retweets, be happy for that person. Be genuinely happy that this person who's trying to do the same thing that you're doing is after succeeding because when you're happy for them it starts to feel possible for you and that toxic energy that

could have gone into begrudgery now becomes the possibility of your own success so actively support and applaud the successes of your peers. Actively be happy for them. And that will make it easier for you to identify and achieve your own goals. And I fucking guarantee that. Alright, that's three questions in a one hour space, which is pretty good going for me. I'm going to leave you go now. I didn't want to do a big hot take this week because

I'm conscious that it's so close to fucking Christmas that ye probably all have your heads up your arses, it's a distracting time, it's the few days before Christmas, we're thinking about shopping we're anxious about going home we're entering those few silly days

where you don't know whether it's a Tuesday or a Wednesday I'm looking forward to that because COVID got rid of that, you know. Lockdown got rid of that. But I'm looking forward to next week where it's a Saturday but it feels like a Tuesday. That's why I went for easy listening this week. I didn't want to do a full hot take

because full hot takes are for when ye need to be distracted. And I think coming up to Christmas people are distracted enough I'm going to try my best to have a podcast this time next week

I want to avoid working over Christmas especially on Christmas day if I can but I'm going to see what I can do between now and the 23rd because

I haven't missed I haven't missed a podcast in five fucking years and there's a part of me saying Jesus take next week off man take next week off but I know I probably won't I know I probably won't and I'll deliver something alright dog bless

have a wonderful have a wonderful fucking Christmas and be aware that if you are going home to your family to your family of origin even though you're an adult the family situation

might cause you to emotionally regress into old patterns of behaviour that aren't conducive with who you are right now and to bring that into your awareness bring that into your awareness, bring that into your

awareness, when you go back home you could find yourself screaming at your mouth or a pair of jocks, or you might feel like you have your shit together you're living up in Dublin, you have a job that you like people look up to you people respect you

and now you're back home in Mayo and you're the baby of the house again and your brother's making comments about your jowls and it impacts your self-esteem just have it in your awareness when we return to our family of origin we can emotionally regress and that's okay just bring it into your awareness dog bless go fuck yourselves Let's go focus. 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 Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at TorontoRock.com Thank you.