The Blindboy Podcast - This is another podcast about the behaviour of Starlings, but I had to make it because this is very important to me

Episode Date: August 20, 2025

This is another podcast about the behaviour of Starlings, but I had to make it because this is very important to me  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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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 because there's always, there's always brand new listeners. And if you want to become a 10 foot deckling or a steaming queva

or a steeple-chasing ea, then go back to the very start. Listen to this podcast from the start. listen to it like a gigantic novel that I've been writing every single week since

October 2017 that's what a lot of you actually do that and I know that a lot of you do it because we're almost at a hundred million listens we're nearly at a hundred million one hundred fucking million

well it's 90 something it's 90 something million I don't like looking at exact figures I like to glance at them and then run away just to get a ballpark and then never think about it I don't like thinking about figures

it's a very it's an unhelpful way to create anything I started this podcast by simply asking the question what would I listen to if I wasn't me and that's how I tried to write books oh the rain is here

the rain is here this oh for fuck sake can you hear that that is some I can't even begin to describe I've got a limiter on now and it's ruining everything okay I'm gonna take the limiter off the gate I mean

I'm in my office I am in my office as you can tell I'm not in my fucking in my studio I'm in my office that has a tin roof there's a storm there's an aggressive storm outside rain drops that think they're hailstones

and I don't want to pretend that they're not here I'm just going to welcome them in they're gone now it's quieting down now there was a little a blast of an intensely heavy shower if you can hear the rain that means that I'm in my office

I'm in my office today if I can record here I will simply because I love coming in here here and doing a nine to five. I love getting on my bicycle and cycling into work and doing a nine to five in an office. So if I can do that I will, but on days where the seagulls are going apeshit or else it's just raining continuously, then I'll use my studio, which has perfect sound, but it's a bit lonelier. I like the drama, the drama and the excitement and

the unpredictability of cycling into my office. I love that. That sets me up for the day. And I have my wonderful window to look out where I can see Limerick City. But yeah, this podcast is coming up to nearly 100 million listens. Which is something I never taught possible. It's not something I ever aimed for or tried to achieve. And it's also something I don't really like thinking about.

It's not very helpful to think about things like that. If I'd have began this podcast in 2017, I think it was October 2017, if I'd have began this podcast with the intention of it having a lot of listens, then this podcast wouldn't be here today. I'd have tried to do something popular, which I can't do that. What I can do is, what would I listen to if I wasn't me? and the best way to achieve that what I found anyway, whether it be with a podcast

or writing books, writing short stories I'm not thinking about whether something's going to be good or even bad I'm interested in am I being curious am I legitimately passionate about the thing that I'm being curious about and am I being playful am I at play?

That's what's important to me. That's much, much more important than listens. Thinking about listens, if I focused too much on numbers and listens and listeners, then that would create a block, a block that prevents me from being curious, passionate and playful. And parsing these two things is very difficult. it's very difficult indeed that's why I say I kind of

I quickly check figures every couple of months and then run away let's briefly let's open this window after that those fat raindrops point the microphone there towards the city

you should be getting bare city there don't know if you can hear much of that oh what's that smell I'm looking for Petrocar and I'm not getting Petrocar because it's been quite wet but what I'm getting is the unmistakable hum of barred shit I knew that would happen. Bird shit.

So that's what happens. That's what happens in Limerick City Center after a deluge of rain. The entire city smells heavily of bird shit of the shit of starlings. Thousands of starlings come to the bird shit district. They rest in the trees and they do

about a half a ton of shit every single evening if there's sun the shit dries into the ground and then it gets awoken by the rain and rises into this unmercifully violent tang that smells like an eggshell's unwashed cousin olifactory vandalism now as I mentioned last week

I was approached by a local newspaper to write an article about about the bard shit situation the starling shit problem of Limerick City in the Bardshit district and I did write it whether they publish it or not is a different

story but it doesn't matter I don't even care if they don't publish it I loved writing it I really really enjoyed research in it because I went deep into research and I think I might have had a little bit of a breakthrough a bit of a breakthrough that allows me to understand the behaviour

of the starlings of Limerick City now I'm acutely aware that jeez I think every single fucking episode of the podcast this summer has mentioned birds in some way whether it's the seagulls that torment me on the roof or the starlings and their shit that I slip on and have to breathe in You're listening to the podcast of an autistic person,

that's what you want me to do. I can't just turn off the bird shit switch in my head. Aside from that as well, just from my window. There's a small population of pigeons that are roasting underneath solar panels. They're not building nests in drains and chimneys. The fucking pigeons are roasting underneath solar panels. And I'm going to have to park that

until I've gotten to the bottom of the Starling situation and I think I think I may have arrived at an answer so there is a street in Limerick City it's a pedestrianised street it's called Bedford Row heavily paved

with the exception of maybe nine trees nothing about this street is natural even the nine trees that are placed into this street onto the paving they're not even in art

when you go to the bottom of these trees there's no soil it's like this strange plasticy foam substance that you put street trees in and every night for three months of the summer thousands of starlings roast themselves on these nine little trees I wanted to figure out how many starlings

might be in those trees each night so I went through Limerick bird watching records over the past 10 years Out in Crumb there was a recorded starling marmoration of 250,000 In 2015 there was a marmoration

of 50,000 starlings They're small birds They're just about They're about the size of an apple As I record this right now The Sun is going down And they circled the entirety of Limerick City Centre

So the entire flock's going to go past my window I'd say sometime within the next 15 minutes But based on the figures that I can see I'm going to estimate the flock size to be 10,000 starlings So that's 10,000 starlings Roasting in nine trees

There they go, there's the cunts, there they are out the window Hold on we listen to him Can we hear that? They're flying above the window there fucking hell you didn't hear that but look so right on time there they were the beauty

of it the beauty what I adore about it is that I've been seeing that marmoration I'm here in my office and if I stay late if I stay late like I am today for when the sun goes down then when the sunlight

reaches a certain colour a peachy slant Then I just look out the window and boom, there's the whole flock. And they just do a circle and they go all around the city. And as I look at my watch right now, it's four minutes past eight, right? So those starlings, they went past, we'll say a minute ago, three minutes past eight. So those starlings, okay, in their little brains, they're highly sensitive to spectral changes in the light. in a way that you and I

we're not. I can look out there now right and I can look at the angle of the sun on a building and I can describe it using colours for a starling, whole different situation. So me Mr. Human being and you in our eyes

we have what are called cone cells right photoreceptors cells in our eyes that perceive light so us humans humans, we have three, we've got three of these receptors in our eyes.

This allows us to perceive our visible color spectrum. Our visible color spectrum. When you look at a fucking rainbow, that's the full spectrum of color. Only what you and me can see as humans. So the three cones in our eyes, that, that, it makes us sensitive to red, green and blue. Starlings have four receptors in their eyes. They see red, green, blue and then ultraviolet. They're back again now, they're after doing a circle of the city and now they've just come back over the window again.

So the starlings have four photoreceptors, four cones, and their fourth one that we don't have. That detects ultraviolet light. You and me can't see ultraviolet light, they can. When the sun sets, when the sun begins to set, UV light disappears. So I'm assuming for the starlings, something went a little dark, something went dark. Like for me and you, when the sun flat out sets, when the sun disappears and you're dealing with the night sky, now you're experiencing the absence of light, you're experiencing darkness. Well when the sun begins to set, just like it did there a couple of minutes ago, when the

sun begins to set, we have to assume that the starlings experience a type of darkness that you and I are not privy to, the disappearance of UV light. But here's the thing, I'm a human being, a human being with language and critical thinking faculties. And I'm my summer, my summer in my office. I track the days getting shorter. Not by looking at the sunset, but by tracking starling behavior. So tonight the starlings went past my window at three minutes past eight. And when I look up the internet and I say, what time exactly is sunset? Limerick City tonight. The internet tells me it's at 8.50pm. So those starlings were on the button. They went past my window at three minutes past eight. But the internet

tells me that next week, sunset is 841 p.m. So next week when I'm recording the podcast, those starlings are going to go past my window at probably 751 p.m. will say. Now fuck the internet. I don't need it. The point that I'm trying to make is I'm obsessed. With the beauty of the literature of a starling's wings. There they are again. They're cunts. And there's a seagull in the middle of them. I should be timing every time they come around.

I'm obsessed with the literature. Of the starlings through the sky. I've just read the cunts like a book. I'm reading them like a book. The landscape is holding the story and the story is telling me. It's telling me when sunset is. We'll open the window now because they've upset the seagulls. Hopefully, let's bring the birds in.

Hopefully you can get a lot of that this week. The starlings are out there. And I've just noticed that like the seagulls are being disturbed by the starlings. It's all kicking off. The starlings are having great crack up there in the sky. They've really disturbed everybody. And the sun is turning into a dark red blood orange like the sky's fucking bleeding

like someone cut the sky's throat. That was a bit of a harsh visual metaphor for something so aesthetically beautiful. But it's what came to me in the moment. A bit of a unnecessary metaphor. for Limerick City and its image issues. We've got Blind by Boat Club on the phone. Blind by you.

Plain by you mentioned last week that somebody took out a knife in Limerick City and stabbed the sun. Are things really that bad in Limerick City? At the moment are things really that bad? But, what was I fucking talking about? I got distracted by the marmoration. That was really, really beautiful.

And it's gone now, it's all gone. It's all gone. I wish I had a camera to show you. There were thousands of starlings up in the sky, and then this had managed to piss off the seagulls as well. The seagulls look really disturbed. The whole sky was alive with fucking bards, and they were screaming and shouting. It was astounding. And the point to them, what I adore, what I'm obsessed with, what I find so beautiful, is the literature, the literature of a starling's wings.

I can read the flock like a fucking story, and the story it tells you. me, it tells me something very important about sunset. And I know I have the internet now and there's other ways to find out, but at one point in our history that was really important for our survival. I have to assume we had these practices in Ireland, but the ancient Romans referred to it as augury. Augury was a very important religious pagan practice in Rome where they would make predictions based on the behaviour of birds.

from the practice of augury we get words like auspices like auspices it literally means like in latin to look at birds looking at birds but today auspices means like authority like if i make a claim on this podcast especially an episode like this where i'm swimming in territory i'm talking about ornithology i'm talking about science i'm not an expert in these things but as an art artist, as a professional artist and someone who studied art. I was shown how to use and identify solid academic research to back up my artistic research. So if I say something about human eyes or the color spectrum, I'm doing so under the auspices of academic research.

I'm being supported by that research. I'm confident that the thing that I'm saying is true because this research here that I'm citing is legit under the auspices of this research. The word auspices, that comes from augury. auspices means looking at the birds. So back in the day and this pagan Roman practice of how do you know this? How can you predict this? About the weather, about whatever. Well, it's under the auspices. I looked at the birds. I looked at the birds. And I can say with confidence, those startings are going to arrive next week, ten minutes earlier, because I know this. that they can read UV light, and they are sensitive to the sunlight and sunset.

So I can tell you that next week the sun's going to come down. It will set 10 minutes earlier under the auspices of the starlings. But I can look at those starlings every single night. I can look at them. And they tell me when the sun is setting that the days are getting shorter, that winter is coming. It's one of the many words in the literature of my environment that I can read to extract very important meaning from. And it's what I love about being a human being

because like I said those starlings they have this extra sense they can see the ultraviolet light that I can't but I can read their fucking behaviour and I can read their behaviour and that I can deduct from that

oh the ultraviolet light has gone and it's so strange I don't know why as humans like we Starlings can't get sunburned I looked it up I looked it up Starlings can't get sunburned

we fucking can we can get skin cancer from sunburns ultraviolet light is very very dangerous to us human beings like I can see in

you know I've got three cones in my eyes to see red blue and green right but I can't see ultraviolet but it's the only it's the only

part of the spectrum whereby I can literally walk into a chemist and buy a cream for it. Like that's what sun cream is. I'm buying a cream that needs to stop ultraviolet light hitting my skin because it's so dangerous. And apparently it was, that was some type of human evolutionary trade-off that in the distant past of our evolution,

I'm talking before we were mammals, maybe back when our ancestors were lizards, that, There was the ability to perceive ultraviolet light, but anyway, mammals particularly primates, we're primates, alongside apes. Our distant ancestors lost the ability to see UV light because it was more important for our survival to be able to distinguish between red and green, especially in the context of being hunter-gatherers, foragers, foraging in forests for berries and nuts and looking at leaves and noticing. how young is this plant depending on the color of green on the plant? So because we can't see in UV, we're very good at that. And then you just have to assume that maybe regarding the skin cancer thing because UV is quite dangerous.

Maybe our ancestors just didn't live long enough. Prehistoric humans lived to be maybe 30. Thirty was considered very elderly. So you could have had a trade-off there where Fuck it, skin cancer doesn't matter if you're going to die before 30 That's just me taking a guess And if you're wondering Where the fuck is blind by getting information

About evolutionary trade-offs and ultraviolet light That's from a paper A paper in The National Library of Medicine from 2014 Called the Spectral Transmission of Ocular Media Suggests Ultraviolet Sensitivity is widespread among mammals So as I look out the window now it's a navy colour

the sun has disappeared the sun has disappeared not completely but I cannot see the sun if I look into the sky I can see the trail of an airplane and that airplane trail is the most beautiful shade of pink so the sunlight is disappearing and the spectrum is changing

and street lights are starting to come on because those street Streetlights have man-made sensors on them, very similar to our eyes or to a starling's eyes. The streetlight sensors, I believe, they just measured the amount of light, and then when it starts to get to a certain level of darkness, the streetlight comes on. In our brains, like, sunsets are beautiful, and so are sunrise. Okay, like, I never find myself in the middle of the day. noon looking up at the sky and going oh isn't that just amazing isn't that beautiful every so often I'd be like what a wonderful clear blue sky what a great day

but I'm not looking up marvelling at the beauty of the sun as it burns my fucking eyes but I think we can all agree that sunsets are exceptionally beautiful and calming one of the most I I spiritually calming moments of my life was I was in Sorrento over in Italy about 12 years ago on the Amalfi coast and I was having dinner in this fucking bar and this bar had an outdoor courtyard that was at the edge of a cliff and as you ate your dinner you could see the sun disappear behind the ocean like a fucking legitimate sunset, the sun disappearing behind the horizon of the ocean. And there was a fella playing a piano there.

And he timed not only the choice of song that he was playing on the piano, but the timing of it, so that the, he timed his piano to end perfectly just as that sun disappeared behind the fucking sea. And I went into a state of pure flow. I wasn't thinking. And the only way I can describe it is it felt like I was a little baby and I was being rocked. Losing myself in that sunset brought back memories of being a tiny baby, whatever feeling that was, that feeling of complete, soothing, warmth and safety and love.

That's what I got from that sunset. it felt like how people describe heroin and I went looking into the neurochemical effects of twilight and the human brain and what actually happens is so when sunset happens when blue light

because we have these three cones these three receptors when the blue light started to disappear when that sun goes down that releases in our brain melatonin Melatonin is the sleep hormone, it's what makes us feel a little bit drowsy and ready to sleep. But then the stunning aesthetic, visual beauty of watching the Mediterranean Sea swallow the sun,

the perfectly timed piano music and probably the delicious winder that was drinking. That then released dopamine and the dopamine and melatonin played together to give me a little sense of euphoria. And it was an existentially significant moment in my life because I remember it clearly, the feeling. It was existentially significant because it definitely brought up vestigial memories of being a baby, being a little baby and feeling safe and cuddled by my ma. But it also felt like how I'd like to die. The thin line of life. disappeared, dark pinky orange over the ocean and it was simultaneously birth and death. It was like that that's how I want death to be. I want death if I'm lucky enough to cradle me like a

little baby and then I extinguish. All that from a sunset. So there's something about sunsets in the human brain that we all experience it is pleasurable. It's euphoric. Look at Hollywood fucking films. Golden hour. Golden hour is sunset or sunrise.

We want to see things filmed in golden hour. Hollywood films spend millions shooting in a small window of hours in the morning and in the evening just to capture, the light, the twilight. that slanty orange, because when we see movies that are shot in golden hour, whatever it is about the angle of the sun, whatever it is about the quality of light, we experience this

as beautiful. We experience that as aesthetic beauty. I mean look at something that isn't filmed. Carb Your Enthusiasm, Carb Your Enthusiasm, wonderful comedy, Larry David, obviously a cantankerous man. We've grown up watching movies in Los Angeles, okay? We know what Los Angeles looks like. Los Angeles is what a movie looks like. Carbbyor enthusiasm is filmed all over Los Angeles. It doesn't feel beautiful.

It doesn't feel... I've been to Los Angeles. Los Angeles isn't beautiful. It's a giant bargeet district. But when you think of Los Angeles, you think of a hazy orange because all the movies we've seen have been shot in the Golden Hour. But Carb Your Enthusiasm

probably just Larry David being a cantankerous man said, I'm going to shoot in the middle of the fucking day because I want to have my evenings off. So most of carbure enthusiasm is shot at noon. The sun is really high in the sky. And visually it just feels a bit strange. Something feels off.

Why the fuck am I talking about carbure enthusiasm? There's some evolutionary reason, right? There's some evolutionary reason where our brains respond so much to sunset. The euphoria. and the beauty of sunset tells us this is important, something important is happening. Nighttime's about to come. Go home. Go find shelter. Find your family, find your friends, find fire, find warmth, find coziness, find community. And also just as an aside there about the golden hour, the golden hour and sunset

and the sunset light which has the absence of blue light in it because it's orangey and slanty. Like if you take a photograph of yourself in, like Instagram even used to have a filter called Golden Hour. You know, that's how significant this is. But if you want a good photograph of yourself

or your friends, summer evening at Golden Hour with the Slanty Sun, if you get a good photograph in Golden Hour, I would wager that you're more, we would appear more physically attractive to other humans in a good golden hour photo. Scientists did studies on the sexual selection habits of starlings. They found that female starlings are attracted to male starlings whose feathers reject and reflect UV light. A starlings experience of sunset is the absence of UV light and our experience of sunset is the absence of blue light.

there may be a correlation between sunsets and fucking. The absence of certain light spectrums associated with sunset can increase sexual attractiveness in both humans and starlings. That's what I'm getting at. I'm not sure if those two things are connected, but I do find it fascinating if they are. What the fuck got me onto this? I was trying to explain the sensors on streetlights.

So it's now almost completely dark outside. The city is dark. The sky is still a little bit illuminated blue, but the city is dark and all the streetlights are on. And streetlights have little sensors on them and those sensors, when it goes dark, the light turns on. Our brains are a bit like that, but it's not as binary. When the light reaches a certain level for our brains,

our brains release chemicals like melatonin, the sleepy chemical and dopamine, the euphoric chemical. The dwindling of blue light appears to be the thing that triggers it. Interestingly, this is the same thing that fucks your sleep up when you take out your phone.

When you take out your phone and shove it into your face at night time, you flood your eyes with the blue light, your brain is like it's night time, let's release some melatonin. Then you take out your phone and all of a sudden you're awake. Like I'm... TikTok, I've banned TikTok

on my phone at nighttime because TikTok is the I've gone up to bed I've been so fucking tired that I can barely drag myself up to bed I'm like shit I'm gonna fall asleep on the couch I need to go to bed I've been that tired and I've gotten into bed at that level of tiredness with the eyelids hanging off me

and if I take out TikTok within five minutes I'm fully awake again and it's blue light and then the sheer entertainment and bombardment of TikTok just wakes me back up but for the starlings that we just saw it's now getting really dark outside this podcast is fucking mental this episode is insane

I didn't intend this at all really to be honest this is after getting really out of hand and I know I keep talking about what are we going to do I know I keep talking about starlings it's dark outside now and that means over on Bedford Row in the Bardshed District

I can't hear it from here unfortunately. But if I was to bring a microphone over to Bedford Raw, it would be overwhelming. You're talking about a small pedestrianized street, nine trees, 10,000 starlings, and the trees themselves are alive and vibrating, vibrating with how many starlings are trying to roast on these nine trees. They can't fit in there, they can't fit in there. there's more starlings than leaves on these trees and they're chattering and chipping and talking the noise is unbelievable

chattering all day long now ornithologists reckon that they're literally talking about the best places to eat they're speaking they're communicating where they've been that day and what they've eaten but when they do this roast when they're getting ready for bed that's when they shit

that's when they shit it's violent it's physical If you were to walk down that street right now I'm annoyed I didn't bring a fucking portable microphone and head over there and just show you what I'm talking about. They shit so much you can hear the shit. They shit so much that if you walk past a tree you will get splattered with shit. They shit so much that the air smells like shit

because there's shit in the air travelling from their arces to the ground. It's unnatural, it's strange, there's nothing like it. And that's happening right now, And I can tell because of the colour of the sky outside, guarantee you. And those starlings, you know, they know to do this. Their routine begins. Like for us, we're triggered by darkness.

For them, they're triggered by when the UV light starts to disappear. That's when the starlings know. It's time to start roasting in the trees. Now, why did they do it from a evolutionary perspective? Because their predators are daytime predators. Hawks, falcons, their eyesight, it's not like a human's eyesight, but it's closer to a human's eyesight than a starling's eyesight. So those predators, they do well in daytime, in bright light. So when the UV starts to disappear at sunset, the starlings go, great, the hawks are going to bed.

It's now safe for us to let our guard down, let our guard down, find the trees, go into the trees, and have a really loud judge. chat and a shit because the hawks are in bed we can have crack now we can communicate and then of course as I mentioned before the flying around the sky that we witnessed there now I didn't I didn't see an exact marmaration but before they sit down and roast they create the synchronized shapes in the sky and that's them trying to look like a bigger bird to scare off the predators as well so the starlings go down to their trees they're doing it right now right now it's happening And they shit prodigiously. The shit goes on to the pavements of this pedestrianised street.

And it is a serious civic issue in Limerick City. Because you slip on the street, it's disgusting. The whole city smells like bird shit. This is no joke. Because I've started to draw attention to this on the podcast, I've been having an ongoing feud with Limerick City Council. And also I've caused international bird shit tourism. people travel from Scotland, Australia, fucking New Zealand to come to Limerick and just to see,

is this as bad as he says it is, I need to go to the Bardshit district and people are doing it now. So I looked at some data to try and figure out exactly how much bard shit is being shot every single night. Based on data, recorded data around the size of flocks in Limerick and its environs and also me just simply seeing the amount of bards, I round it. it off to 10,000 birds, okay, 10,000 starlings. Then I went looking for data on how much shit would one starling produce in a night time and the figure that I got was 4.5 grams. So throughout a nighttime roost sitting in a tree, one starling will make 4.5 grams of bird shit.

So for 10,000 starlings, that's 45 kilograms of bird shit. shit every night. 45 kilograms on a small pedestrian street with nine trees. Then I went looking up what's 45 kilograms? Well 45 kilograms is it's the average weight of a 10 year old human child. So the bards in the barred shit district do enough shits every night that it's the equivalent of a 10 year old human child. Then I realized that's one of the most mentally insane sentences in the English language. I'm not going to be convincing anyone by saying do you know how much shit they do each night you could fill a 10 year old child with that shit okay how much is a bottle of coke bottle of coke is 500

milliliters right okay what's 45 kilograms that's 90 bottles of coke now we're talking okay every night those birds could fill 90 bottles of coke with their shit and if i could do a visual experiment, where I'm imagining, you know, what would that look like? If I had 90 bottles, 500 milliliter bottles of coke, and I spilt them all out on the Bardshit district, what would that look like? It would look kind of like what it looks like after a night of starling shit. That's what we're dealing with. And then I started to obsess.

I started to obsess about 45 kilograms, 45 fucking kilograms. And something beautifully poetic happened. so I couldn't get 45 kilograms out of my fucking head I'm like wow they're doing 45 kilograms of shit it made me feel now that I had answers I started to feel better

it's like 45 kilograms of shit on the bird shit district every night wow yeah that makes sense I can quantify this but then I was going to the gym and I do this exercise in the gym called a military press It's compound exercise You get a barbell

You lift it up over your head It exercises Your back, your shoulders Great exercise Normally my military press is about 40 kilograms That's a comfortable military press for me But I couldn't get 45 kilograms out of my head I'm like

Hold on a minute I'm just going to load this bar up another 5KGs And now I am exercising With the amount of shit that the starling shit in the bird shit district every night so i do now i'm fucking lifting the weight above my head and i'm going oh my god they do they do this much shit wow this is heavy this is heavy and i'm focusing so much on the idea of the i'm lifting all that barred shit above my fucking head 45 kilograms that i'm not thinking about my farm and i'm not thinking about the fact that

that's kind of difficult. And now I have an injury. I managed to irritate my sciatic nerve. Not full on sciatica, but I've a rather unpleasant, pinched sciatic nerve in my arse that travels down my leg all the way to my calf. And I really wish I didn't have that.

But here's the wonderful poetry of this. This is what I... This is why I'm proud to have that sciatic pinch. In last week's podcast, I told you I was cycling down Bedford Row and my bicycle slipped on all that bird shit my bicycle aquaplained on fucking bird shit and I managed to save myself

I didn't fall off the bike I didn't injure myself on the bird shit I injured myself a week later by obsessing about the bird shit trying to figure out exactly how much there is and then lifting that amount of weight above my head then I get my injury. Then I get my injury, which is...

There's a beautiful poetry to it. I'd write a short story about that. But also, autistic people have lower life expectancies than the rest of the population. A huge reason for this, unfortunately, is... The suicide rate for autistic people is very high compared to the neurotypical population. I think it's 17 times higher.

than the neurotypical population because it's so difficult to survive in a world that isn't designed for you. Another thing that decreases life expectancy for autistic people is injuries. Autistic people just tend to get more injuries, particularly in childhood. More accident prone, more falls as a result of sensory processing. Or in my case, there, as a result of curiosity. That's the most autistic injury I've ever heard of in my fucking life. I was so excited and so obsessed and hyper-focused that I'm, I've figured out how much bird shit gets shot on a night time there, and then I'm trying to lift it above my head that I'm not noticing my body, I'm not listening to my body,

and I'm not noticing, this is too heavy and this isn't pleasant, and now your farm isn't good. And when you lift a weight above your head that's too heavy, other muscles get involved that aren't supposed to be involved, and you end up doing what I did I pinched my fucking sciatic nerve so the bard shit got me in the end but when I was writing that article for the newspaper the local newspaper which was like give us your opinion on the

barred shit and I went overboard with research like one of the things I really didn't I specifically said please don't frame this article as it just being about there's slipping hazards in the bird shit district and don't make it about claims

and personal injury and shit like that. Let someone else talk about that. I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in the philosophy of the bird shit, the poetry of the bird shit, and the biodiversity of the bird shit. I'm into the starling behavior. I want to know the whys.

I'm curious about it. But, having said that, if I had come off my bicycle because of the bird shit that wasn't cleaned by the council who were supposed to clean in the mornings, if I had come off my bicycle and seriously injured myself,

I wouldn't be paying my own medical bills, put it that way. But where do I stand as an autistic person whereby I became so obsessed with the bird shit that it eventually did end in an injury? Now I'm just taking the piss. I'm absolutely fine. It's just a little pinched sciatic nerve

and it was actually a positive thing because it has me back doing my Pilates. But the newspaper asked me for solutions to the Starling problem. And the most obvious one that jumped out even though I don't like it is I was just thinking about the light

the light and the evenings and thinking about when I go to bed as a human being and the absence of blue light you know releases the melatonin and I get sleepy but then if I shove a phone into my face it wakes me up

I thought what is the phone that you shove into the face of a starling to make it fuck off UV lights If you put UV lights all over the birdship district pointing at the trees then technically

the starlings won't be able to sleep and they'll leave and they'll go somewhere else and I was thrilled up myself thrilled up myself and then I went looking it up and it's like fuck they do this already they do it for pigeons they have used

UV lights in public settings to stop nuisance birds from roasting in certain areas with varying degrees of success. Okay, let's have a little ocarina pause. Let's have an ocarina pause. I don't have an ocarina. I'm after losing, I've misplaced a lot of my ocarinas, okay?

I've got a banana. I have a banana that I ate. About an hour ago, I've got the peel of a banana. I'm going to slap myself into the face with the peel of this banana and you're going to hear an advert for some bullshit. All right? That's how this works. Interesting

This episode is sponsored by the OCS summer pre-roll sale Sometimes when you roll your own joint Things can turn out a little differently than what you expect it Maybe it's a little too loose Maybe it's a little too flimsy Or maybe it's a little too covered in dirt Because your best friend distracted you and you dropped it on the ground There's a million ways to roll a joint wrong

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Hope doesn't explode. Remember when you used to smoke banana skins? Remember that? Fucking hell. Why did I use to smoke banana skins? When I was a child. When I was a child, because I had a copy of an album called

The Prodigy Experience and on the back of that Leroy Thornhill who I once falsely thought I was interviewing in Bristol when I went mad during COVID when I went insane during COVID and I invented

I didn't invent the gig whatever crossed where it happened it had been suggested to me that I would go to Bristol and interview Leroy Thornhill from the prodigy and I don't know what happened I convinced myself if it was going ahead and I think I spent about six podcasts

advertising this gig where I was going to go to Bristol and interview fucking Lerai from The Prodigy and it wasn't happening fuck me that was the pandemic for you but anyway yeah I had a copy of the Prodigy experience

and on the back of that there was a quote from Leroy where he said he was going to smoke some banana skins and of course I took it literally and used to try and smoke banana skins that was me hitting myself into the head with a banana skin and you'd have heard some adverts

alright how would I rate that experience not something I'd recommend I wouldn't be rushing to do it again but all but I don't know quite a lot of humility in that isn't there hitting yourself into the head with a banana peel very humbling

grounding the worst part of course is so from bananas are picked, they're picked green completely unripe from the tree and then bananas are spread with a chemical called ethylene, ethylene gas and what the ethylene gas does is it triggers the banana to begin ripening during transit but it can shock the banana a bit and then the banana ripens quickly and it releases very cheesy compounds called esters, esters

but as a banana ripens it releases these quite a strong cheesy, strange smell you'll know it. You know it when you go to the supermarket and you get some fucking bananas. You know what the what's that smell? This is not a banana adjacent to order. What's going on

here with these bananas? Well this banana unfortunately had a bit of that and now my hair smells like that so I regret that choice there now support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page

Patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast if this podcast brings you mirth, merriment, distraction, solace, whatever the fuck has you listening to this podcast some people listen to it just to go to sleep

I'm okay with that whatever has you listened to this podcast please consider paying for the work that I put into the podcast because this is my full-time job this is how I earn a living so I rent out my office so I purchase my equipment it's how I survive and exist this is my job this is what I do as a professional artist I adore it I love making this podcast each week that's why I never miss it that's why I always put my heart and soul into it but if you listen regularly and you enjoy it please consider supporting the podcast directly

Patreon.com forward slash the blind by a podcast 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 it don't worry about it 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 based on kindness and soundness if you are signing up to Patreon don't do it on the the Apple app on your iPhone because Apple are greedy bollocks is they take 30% go to your web browser and sign in to Patreon that way

similarly don't join up as a free user if you are joining Patreon make sure you become a paid user and also some people who have become patrons were wondering why is my Patreon page

completely blank? I don't post the Patreon I want to try and keep it so that everybody gets the exact same experience whether you pay or not. I want to avoid a situation where people who pay get more than people who don't pay. I'd like to try and keep it equal if I can. And also, because this is a listener from the podcast, I'm not beholden to advertisers. Advertisers advertise on my terms and they can't dictate or control what I speak about in any way.

upcoming gigs gonna be at electric picnic on the Saturday alright you'll figure it out it's electric picnic come along to that no goals September Vicker Street up in Dublin

on the 23rd of September a wonderful Tuesday night gig that is now almost sold out come along to that Vicker Street gig then up in Derry on the 27th which is a Saturday come along to that and give me a message on

Instagram, playing by Boat Club, and tell me who you'd like me to have as my guests, or who you'd like to hear me speak to any of those gigs. Right, so I really did not intend for this week's podcast to be about bird shit. Last week's podcast was partially about bird shit, but then I spoke to the wonderful Deb's new bold about the history of Shakespeare and theatre. That was wonderful. But yet this week's podcast was supposed to be about the Old Testament. And I'm aware that I'm I've been meaning to do an Old Testament podcast for maybe five weeks. But at the start of this podcast, when I mentioned that, you know, we're coming up to 100 million listens, I don't know how I did that, but I can tell you what I definitely, what I definitely

never do is, yes, this was supposed to be an Old Testament podcast, that's what this was supposed to be. But I followed my thread of curiosity instead. Curiosity and Passion. And what I really wanted to speak about, I needed to get deeper into the bird shit. That's what I needed. Bard shit and the behaviour of starlings. That's where my curiosity was.

That's where my passion was. And if I'd have redirected myself and said, no, no, this podcast is about the Old Testament. Why are you talking about starlings? Second I do that, the podcast is over. There's no room for that type of thinking in a creative space. In a creative space, it's about playfulness, curiosity. The starlings marmorated outside the window. And they basically said, no, this week's podcast is about us.

And I didn't resist the starlings. I didn't consider them to be a distraction that was taking me away from the Old Testament. I went, no, this is really fucking interesting. You've got things to say about these starlings. Let's do this instead. So that's why we're here. but I want to speak about So as you can tell

I've been doing some hardcore starling research Okay But specifically what I was interested in finding out Was So if those We're talking about a pedestrianised street In the middle of a city With nine trees

That they're real trees But they're planted in this strained rubber substrate The bird shit district It's not natural There's not a lot of nature going on. There's a lot of concrete and a lot of pavement and a few strange trees sticking out. It's not natural.

Why? What's going on? Why do the starlings year after year return to this strange little street with its strange little trees? This isn't Los Angeles. This isn't San Francisco.

They can find trees very easily. They can find trees three minutes away. There's a fucking park. What are they doing in this street and why? What's going on? And I wanted to get to the bottom of that and I think I may, I think I might have gotten to the bottom of this issue

and it tells us a very interesting story about climate change. So what I started to do is I started to look at all maps of Limerick City and the street in question Bedford Row which I've done podcasts about this street before. So this street It's quite close to the River Shannon It's not on the River Shannon

But it's one street away It leads down onto the River Shannon It's on the banks Of the River Shannon Limerick was built in the 8th century By Vikings Now Vikings as you know They had their long ships

They were masters of the sea and rivers And Vikings loved to build cities on what's called riparian habitats. Examples of Viking cities that would be built in riparian habitats would be

Wexford, Cork, York, Lincoln, Norwich, Rowan in France. A riparian habitat is it's like a seasonally

flooded forest on the banks of a river. Okay, it's a buffer zone, it's nature's buffer zone between land and a river and it's not quite forest, it's not quite marshland there's trees but riparian zones they flood, they're supposed to flood

and the trees that grow there they grow in soils that are supposed to flood the Vikings loved riparian zones because they were easy to get to on the ships the trees would provide a certain amount of defunds fence, riparian zones often have small little islands, like where Limerick was actually built by the Vikings, just a bit up river from the Bardshed District, where King John's Castle is now Kings Island, that was the original Viking settlement. But riparian zones are very

unique habitats and they're very important. They're nature sponge. They're supposed to flood. They absorb floods. They stabilize the banks and the land so that rivers don't completely erode the land. A riparian zone keeps a river healthy. It provides shade for fish. They're very, very important. And one of the issues that we face in the world today, when it comes to global warming and the risk of flooding, some of the big risks, the human populations. So it's not just that The water levels are rising and there'd be more floods and more extreme weather. It's that.

Older cities like Limerick, early medieval and older. Humans tended to build on riparian zones. So our cities, Limerick, Cork, London, Paris, whatever the fuck you have. We built concrete over nature's floodplain. We took the sponge. the natural sponge, the buffer between river and land, and said, brilliant, this is where we're going to build our city and we're going to use all the wood that's here and we're going to cover it in concrete. So now when it floods, it fucking floods because you're building

cities on floodplains and you're taking the sponge out. And Limerick is no exception to this. So I went looking at all maps of Limerick. And before Bedford Rowe was built, it was a little riparian forest it was built on a riparian zone it was built on a forest of probably willow and alder maybe a bit of wetland I'm guessing what it was like based on

directly across the river so directly across the river from Bedford Row if you go up a little bit you have untouched riparian zone you have the untouched riparian habitat of the river Shannon is on the opposite side it's in a wetlands area called Westfields and this is a special area of conservation and because of that it means that there's fuck tons of biodiversity reports about the place because it's a special area of conservation so I can look at the area Westfields across the river look at the data from that about the animals that lived there about its role, its importance to the river. And then from that, I can say, oh, okay, well, Bedford Roe was probably like that at one point. So 800 years ago or 700 years ago, 800.

Where those starlings are now, what was there was a little riparian forest, a wetlands marshy-type forest with trees that was supposed to flood a couple of times a year. The starlings would have loved those trees. First off, the swampiness of the area meant that the insect population was fucking huge, so the starlings would have been roasting in those trees and eating loads of insects. You'd have had food web dynamics, which means that the presence of so many starlings in the trees, that then brings in hawks and fucking falcons and all this shit. that then keeps the invertive British population under control mice and rats and otters or whatever the fuck that the hawks are eating

the starlings are looking after the insects making sure that the insect population doesn't get too out of hand but the main role that the starlings would have had in this forest that was there right this is where the bird shit comes into it this is where the 45 kilograms of bird shit a night comes into this the specific riparian habitat that would have been on this area a few hundred years ago. So the starlings act as what's called a nutrient pump.

A nutrient pump is a species within an ecosystem that takes nutrients from one area and transfers it to another. So riparian zones, right, these forests that act as sponges, they frequently flood. But when they frequently flood, the water carries away the nutrients, in particular, phosphorus, nitrogen.

In steps, tens of thousands of starlings roosting in the trees and shitting like crazy. All that starling shit in a riparian forest is fucking perfect. So the riverbed, the nutrients are washed away. Okay, nutrients are getting washed away by flooding. The starlings are flying all over the countryside, eating insects, eating fruit. Taking those nutrients from the countryside, then they're coming to the riparian. and forest by the riverbed, then they're redistributing

the nutrients from the countryside into the fucking soil of the river. Not only are they depositing nutrients from their shit, there's also a lot of seeds. The starling shit is then carried away by the river right, and this

nutrient dense shit travels up river. It feeds wetlands, it disperses native seeds for plants to grow, it fertilises soils that can become infertile by seasonal flooding. So that's what I think we're dealing with. There's a population of starlings

who are still behaving as if that area is a riparian forest, but it's not. It's nine trees where a riparian forest once was. And now they're still shitting like mad, but nothing is washing that shit away. it's just foreign, it's going straight onto concrete. Nobody told the starlings, they don't know.

They're just doing their thing, but they don't know that they're not in a riparian habitat anymore. We've built over it, we've built a city over it, we've concreted over it, and that there is the literature of nature. The fact that the starlings are still there even though the forest doesn't exist, it's like their behaviour is a folk memory

or a mythology or a legend of what the land once was and I can read that. I mean that's what I did. I just couldn't stop thinking about the fucking starlings. Couldn't stop them. Why are they there? Why are they there on this street? There's just nine trees. What are they doing? Why is it every year? It's not even practical for them. What is so special about this street that they need to return? And I reckon it's because it consulted the maps. It's because it was once a riparian forest. And it reminds me at that I've spoken about this on previous podcasts, but the absence of linear time in Irish mythology

where you can have stories, you can have vision literature. Imrams, they're known as Imrams specifically. It's voyage literature. It's where you have stories where a central character has a vision that they go on a great voyage. Examples would be the voyage of Bran or the voyage of male dune

I think I've done a podcast on the voyage of Bran but a year ago Irish mythology and quantum physics I think is the name of the podcast where your hero goes off onto a boat and visits the sea

and when your hero is off at sea they will encounter beings and these beings at sea are riding horses and chariots and then you're left with this conundrum of but my hero is out in the middle of the ocean in a boat, how can these beings that he encounters? How can

they be riding horses on the sea? And then it becomes apparent that the lads that are riding the horses are living in a separate spectrum of reality, a mirror reality, a parallel reality. They're riding horses because from where they're standing, they're in a field. And they're in a field and they're going, how the fuck are those lads in a boat? We're in a field. But then the lads in the boat are going, we're on the ocean. How are those fuckers on horses? And it's a motif that you see frequently in Irish mythology, old Irish mythology where there's an absence of linear time where you have this ambiguity about parallel realities and parallel universes. And the fucking starlings in Bedford Row remind me a bit of that. You see, I'm walking through a city. I'm walking

through a city in 2025 and I can see everything is paved. Everything is fucking paved and the trees are in this weird spongy shit and I can see all these starlings and I'm going what are these starlings doing in this city in 2025? They're shitting on the ground and I'm slipping on it. But if this was a story in Irish vision literature in old mythology, if this was a story in old mythology, I'm walking down the street in the here and now in 2025 but the same. But the Starlings see me walking through a field because from their spectrum of reality, they're still in a forest 800 years ago. This isn't happening, everything's happening in the here and now. We're after building a fucking city and no one told the poor old starlings, they're still, they don't know what to do.

Something about the darkness and the microclimate makes them think that this is still a riparian forest and they're just doing their thing instead of moving somewhere else. But it just reminded me of Irish vision literature and those two parallel realities operating side by side. But as I demonstrated earlier, we are living in parallel realities because the starlings are able to perceive ultraviolet light and I can't perceive ultraviolet light. So what's my solution for the birdshit in the birdship district? I don't have a solution but what I do have is a fucking dream and a vision. so first off the starlings aren't the problem the starlings are doing what they're supposed to do in that area they are shitting prodigiously

because their shit serves a very important purpose to the floodplain that we've paved over now there are 45 kilograms of nightly shits it's just staying on the pavement and being washed off the next day when I said there that one of the One of the issues that's popping up with climate change is so so many cities around the world were built on riparian zones, which means that we built over nature's floodplain. So when it does flood, you get these fucking flash floods. But one of the countries that's really tackling this and has been tackling it since the year 2000 is China.

China is putting huge effort into what it calls sponge cities where China looks at. at its cities. I think it first started in Beijing. There were huge floods in Beijing in 2001 I believe. But for China looks at its cities and it says, right, well we can't move the fucking city and we're after putting a lot of concrete here. How can we make parts of this city near the river? How can we make the city behave like a riparian zone? How can we make the city a fucking sponge? So what they start to do is they start to introduce things like permeable paving, which is a type of paving that absorbs rainwater

or it's paving that's designed in such a way that rainwater flows through it rather than collects and collects into like little fucking ponds that flood. They put green roofs on buildings so that's, you might have seen them roofs that are grass and this absorbs

rainwater rather than pushes it right down onto the concrete and floods. Ponds, urban wetlands, bioswales. now that's an interesting one so if I had a limitless budget and a vision you would redesign

Bedford Row to accommodate the fucking starlings by completely repaving the street in such a way that it's a street that behaves like the riparian zone that was once there

so underneath the trees instead of it being this weird spongy rubber stuff and just harsh concrete underneath all the trees you put in bioswales. Now we actually already have bioswales in Limerick City, there's a couple of them up by the top of O'Connell Street and a bioswale basically is it looks like a little tiny wetland that's about the size of a footpath. It's a thin strip that's kind of windy that contains vegetation in there. It's a type of green drainage ditch. and it takes rainwater pollution

and it naturally filters it back into the soil and imagine if the birds were doing all their shits onto this how do you build a street that treats the bird shit as a gift a useful gift this wonderful fertiliser and seeds how do you build a street that treats the bird shit as this useful gift from these indigenous animals whose arces are trying to tell us about a forest that used to exist here 800 fucking years ago create like a little urban shrine of biodiversity to accommodate their bird shit

and to let them live there and to do their shits and it completely recontextualises the shit we're the problem we built the fucking city and the riparian forest we're the problem it's a ridiculous it's just paved it's really fucking ugly. It's terrible down there. It's slippy, not because of the bird shit, but because the bird shit has nowhere to go on the pavement. It's fucking expensive because the council is down there every single day washing it off. Get in some experts. Get in some experts in biodiversity in ornithology. Redesign the streets as an urban riparian sponge streets. Not only would

it be aesthetically beautiful. It'd be really unique. you could contextualize it within one thing I was thinking about is so in the 7th century there was this huge legal tract this Irish legal this is before the Brits this Irish legal tract called

the Breckbeha the Bee Judgments it was this massive body of law about the importance of bees to Irish society these were laws that

bees weren't just fucking insects they weren't just part of nature they were part of a legal ecological commons this entire legal text around the management of hives the ownership of hives the ownership of honey

bee droppings bees were protected and highly respected and people understood their value why not treat the starlings the same way they only do the shitting for about six weeks the year July and August, have a Starling Festival in the Bard Shit District, a two-month-long event

where you get to learn about the Starlings, learn about what was there before a city was built, learning about their role in the ecosystem. And you're doing it in this street that doesn't smell like fucking Bard shit anymore. You're doing it in a street that's designed to accommodate bird shit because you have all these bioswales, these artificial little wetlands going between the trees that are taking the bird shit and filtering it naturally as fertiliser. You could even have people collecting the bird shit as fertiliser and distributing it to flowers all over the city. Why can't we have a bard shit festival where all of the public flowers in Limerick City are fertilised only by the Bardshed District Bardshit. Contextualise it all over.

within the Breckpaha. Write a new text. The Starling Judgments. Sounds like a fucking Robert Fripp album, a King Crimson album. What was the name of their album? Lark's Tongues in Aspic. But yeah, the Starling judgments

and then anyone who disrespects the law disrespects the law of the starlings. Would it be a good punishment? They're forced to strip naked get sunburned, they have to get sunburned by UV light that they can't see as the starlings mock them. I needed to get all this shit off my chest. I've been thinking about this a lot and doing a huge amount of research. And all I can say is this is what you need Nora divergent people for, I understand most of what I said is mad. I know that most of this is

completely untenable and bizarre and strange and I've gone way too far. especially with the parallel reality stuff but this is what you need neurodivergent people for it. This is what I think the value of neurodivergent brains are in society. You know people will say to me

you're thinking about barred shit too much it's not that deep it fucking is yes it is that deep and I reckon through the strangeness of some of those ideas you could actually end up with quite a beautiful solution

that benefits everybody human and starling and this is why I don't want a solution that targets the starlings I don't want them shining UV light on the starlings or introducing artificial birds of prey we built the city on the riparian fucking floodplain and no one told the starlings that's the problem so where's the forward thinking solution where's the solution that actually looks at the reality

of climate collapse and climate change Like the other thing I didn't mention is the Bardshed District as it stands there's no biodiversity there, there's none there's weird, nine weird trees stuck in rubber with a bunch of starlings on it that's all there is if that was turned into a sponge street

with bioswales there you'd have huge biodiversity not just starlings you might have fucking frogs you'd have different birds insects it had improved the smell in the city Only positive things can come from a solution like that.

Anything is better than everybody slipping on bird shit and then a fella who looks like Ross Kemp coming out at 12 o'clock in the day to hose it down with a power washer every single day and it would put Limerick on the map internationally. What's wrong with being mental? What's wrong with a two-month-long bard shit festival? It wasn't mad for our ancestors

before the Brits arrived. It wasn't mad for fucking pre-Christian Ireland and they were just like oh bees they give us honey excellent let's give them legal rights let's write a gigantic law tract all about the rights of bees because no one has come here

and invaded yet to tell us that that's irrational you can be decolonial about this too right that's nearly 80 minutes of a podcast just about barred shit I mean look we are up to nearly 100 million listens so must be doing something right Okay, I'll catch you next week

Hopefully with a podcast about the Old Testament I know I've been promising it I really want to do that podcast I have a lot to say about the Old Testament In the meantime Rub a dog Give legal rights to a starling Genuflect to a dragonfly

Dog bless This episode is sponsored by the OCS summer pre-roll sale. Sometimes when you roll your own joint, things can turn out a little differently than what you expect it. Maybe it's a little too loose. Maybe it's a little too flimsy. Or maybe it's a little too covered in dirt because your best friend distracted you and you dropped it on the ground. There's a million ways to roll a joint wrong, but there's one roll that's always perfect. the pre-roll. Shop the summer

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Conditions apply, details at freedommobile.com. You know, and We're going to be able to be. We're going to be able to be. I don't know.