The Blindboy Podcast - Trevelyans Vienetta

Episode Date: September 11, 2019

Update on Andy the Goose. Should adulthood start at 24? I explore the concept of adulthood through the film Home Alone Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Good day you grieving bus conductors. Welcome to the Blind Buy Podcast. It's episode 101 and before we go forward, look, I'm just going to tell you very quickly the live podcasts that are, the ones that have tickets available for the month of September 2019. The ones that have tickets available for the month of September 2019. This Saturday the 14th in Waterford, lads, in the Theatre Royal. There are 50 tickets left, okay? My guests are Colm Williamson and Gerry McBride from Waterford Whispers News. Waterford Whispers are... They were almost my guests the last time I was in Waterford Whispers who've been operating for the past 10 years more and they're friends of mine as well

so I'm really looking forward to that that's going to be crack so there's a few tickets left for that Waterford then what else have we got there's tickets left for one more gig this month with tickets Killarney lads down in Kerry I-N-E-C

on the 28th Saturday there's a few tickets left for that, so that's it two gigs that have tickets left and a few in between that are sold out, two London gigs they're sold out fucking ages ago, I'm looking forward to that, I'm looking forward to

going over doing some gigs in London em there will be exciting stuff for 2020 in the year 2020 sounds like the start of a song doesn't it in the year 2020

which is a very futuristic year even though it's a couple of months away I'm going to be servicing the needs of my international listeners alright quite heavily that sounds like I'm going that sounds like I'm getting on a plane

and wanking people off around the world that's what that sounds like I'm getting onto a futuristic fucking plane in the year 2020 and wanking people off all over the world no, what I will be doing I can't announce any details yet.

All I can say is that. The Australian tour. Which is now sold out. In February 2020. That's only the start. You greasy boys and girls. That's only the start. 2020.

Is going to be. International boys tour. Getting on a plane. And fucking. Tour touring around the world. To the different places where. This podcast has a listenership. And there's some queer corners of the world. That's all I'm going to say.

Um. One thing that I'm a bit. You know here's the thing that pisses me off. As you know like. I'm on a climate buzz. As we all should be, I'm very much aware of climate change and trying to do what I can to stop it now, so I do feel like a fucking prick getting on airplanes as part of my job, that makes me feel a small bit cunty, I'll be honest, but what am I gonna do do that element of you know I need to travel

in order to do this job but you know how do I level this with myself this is also as well I get attacked a lot online by what you would call the alt-right I don't even want to

call them that just fucking contrarian right wing pricks, and they love saying to me, I heard you virtue signalling about the climate myth, but how do you, how do you, how do you virtue signal so much about the climate myth, blind boy, you

beta cuck, how do you do this while also flying around the world you hypocrite you lying hypocrite George Soros funded cuck this type of stuff right and it's a good point how do I

you know go down to Australia get on a fucking plane to Australia we'll say and then virtue signal essentially about climate change well what I try and do is offset if I can

I mean I can't not go and do my gigs like do you know what I mean so I have to go right what's my fucking footprint here and how can I offset it in some way one way you can do it is you can go online and get like a

a carbon calculator so what you do is there's plenty of them one one for example is myclimate.org have got a co2 calculator and you just type in where your plane started and where your plane ended and it will give you an approximate calculation of the amount of carbon that was created because of that trip then it will give you a sum of money that is equivalent to that carbon and you can you can pay so i typed into this calculator dublin to sydney and back which is that's a massive flight like that's one of that's one of the biggest flights you can take in the whole world like flying from Australia to Dublin is a 24 hour long journey it's it's the biggest flight in the world more or less so I typed it into the calculator for this huge trip. It came back €130.

So that's how much it calculated my carbon, €130. Then you press the next button and it has an entire list of like renewable charity shit around the world, whether it be solar, planting trees. There's all these different product projects uh regarding helping the climate whether it be absorbing carbon or renewable energy and i can offset the carbon emitted on my flight which is 130 euro and donate that then to one of these causes so that's one example of how i can kind of do my fucking job because i need to do my bloody job how i can do my job but do it in a more

ethical fashion um and try and offset the harm that i am causing in doing my job, do you get me I mean, again if everyone fucking did that it would be, it would really be helping if everyone did that with your trip to fucking Magaluf, I mean your trip to Magaluf is going to cost you probably a tenner fifteen quid, that's not a huge amount but

and then you get to give that fifteen quid towards some trees being planted sounds good to me so last week's episode was the 100 episode I loved it I loved doing it it was good crack

I was a little bit anxious about fucks the 100 episode what will I do so I cracked open a bottle of wine which I referred to as Rioja and many people got into my DMs the next day and said it is not pronounced Rioja it's something closer to Roca apparently

fuck do I know alright it looks Rioja I'm going to call it that way no wonder they giggle at me in Spain but yeah I cracked open a bottle of wine and had a small bit of baldy however I hadn't eaten much that day and listening back I did get quite fucking shit-faced and a bit stoned by the end which was lovely and I enjoyed it and it was good fun but looking back I'm a tiny bit disappointed

because I told the story of Andy the Goose while under the influence and I don't think I did it justice most people think I made up that story last week about the poor goose I told a story about a goose from Nebraska who was born with no feet. And then his owner put a pair of shoes on him.

And the poor old goose was brutally murdered. By someone anonymous. That's a fucking real story. That actually happened. Look it up. Look up Andy the Gooster's photographs of him. This is a real murder mystery of a goose. And.

Because I was so out of it. And so. Kind of. and because I was so out of it and so kind of what do you call it not free consciousness fucking free associative in how I told the story and fleeted from you know the fictional work Spastic Hawk

into the story of Andy the Goose I think the lines were blurred to the point that most people thought I came up with this story about fucking Andy the goose on the spot. No it's real. This poor little goose called Andy. Who did not only be born with no fucking feet.

The poor bastard. And this kind man came along and gave shoes to him. And then someone pulled his fucking head off. And it's heartbreaking. And when I listened to it the next day. I was annoyed. I was annoyed at myself going, blind boy you should have fucking saved that story

for a sober podcast save that one put a bit of structure behind it, do Andy justice because I started getting loads of hot takes the next day mainly this is the difference now

this will show you actually the difference between a mind that has a bottle of wine in it and a mind that doesn't like a giant detail stuck out with that story of Andy the Goose last week and I didn't even investigate it I just glazed over it

which is not my hot take brain and when I listened to it the next day I wanted to box myself into the face the little detail of so Andy the goose footless goose when his owner

put the children's shoes on him and gave him the ability to walk the owner said it was the part of me that was a shriner that wanted to do this for this little ghost that it was my compassion and my desire to improve this disabled or sorry different differently abled goose's life was because he was a shriner and i just glazed past that right I glazed past this Shriner

business and went on to the other fucking details and I wanted to slap myself into the face because I ended up then in a sober state looking into the Shriner characters and I think the Shriners are a very strange American Masonic sect.

They're not Freemasons, but they're a Masonic sect. And they're fucking weird. Weird as fuck. Okay? It's a secret fraternal organization. How the fuck do I explain shriners well they're they're like a a sect that came out of american freemasonry um freemasonry is is like freemasonry is it's a secret society freemasonry goes back to like the 13th, 14th century

it initially would have actually started off similar enough to a guild of masons who are people who work in stone and it would have started off almost like a trade union but then slowly but surely became kind of more powerful and elitist

and it was this secret society of men so it's fraternal meaning brotherly and who have these i don't know principles based on i don't even fucking know i'm not too sure but basically the gist you need to know about freemasons is that secret society contains often powerful men it's exclusive it's you can't just sign up to be a freemason you gotta have another freemason vouch for you and all this shit and because it tends to be wealthy powerful men historically who were freemasons a lot of conspiracy theories exist around it do you get me it's like it's it's you know the hot take about it the conspiracy theories are if you've got like a banker who's a freemason a politician who's a freemason a priest who's a freemason if you have all these men of power in in separate organizations and they're all

fraternally part of this organization then it means and it's a secret organization it means that the secret wheels of power can operate behind closed doors in this freemason thing and the public aren't concerned so that's where the conspiracy theories come from with freemasonry it's it's there's a bit of that it's also Freemasonry, it's, it's, there's a bit of that, it's also very, like, in contemporary terms, very nerdy old men, it's essentially like a giant game of LARP, you know, it's very ritualistic, it's very solemn, I don't really know, but anyway, Freemasonry was a big deal, especially in America, a lot of founding fathers were Freemasons, in New York in the 18th century 1800s

a new sect of American Freemasonry developed and these lads were called Shriners I don't know why but what makes it interesting is so this group of New York Freemasons felt

that Freemasonry was a bit boring and it was no crack so this this group of new york freemasons felt that it freemasonry was a bit boring and it was no crack so this other group says how about we start our own type of freemasonry but it's based around silliness and fun and crack and in a kind of colonial racist way they thought that uh eastern things what what would be called oriental things at the time now in colonial terms remember now americans in 18 fucking 40 1850 there's the ones who would have been in would have been freemasons they're essentially just second third generation brits so they would have had the british colonial mindset and the british colonial mindset of the 18th century was orientalism so everything from fucking egypt as far as japan is just oriental it's the orient okay and these this sect in new york who wanted to break from traditional Freemasonry

to have this more comedic fun Freemasonry they started to adapt oriental styles of dress because to them oriental things are hilarious and gas and funny and strange so they start to wear

so it's a new type of Freemasonry now called Shriners and they start to wear a fez a's a new type of Freemasonry now called Shriners and they start to wear a fez. A fez is a strange type of Moroccan hat. It's a traditional Moroccan hat that looks like a thimble, a red thimble. So Shriners start wearing Moroccan hats and they become involved very much in children's hospitals, things like that. There is a thing specifically within Shrinerism about helping people who've lost limbs. This is why it ties in with the Andy story. If Andy, the footless goose's da or owner or whatever you want to call it,

can't remember his name, if he was a Shriner, then him saying, I wanted to help this ghost because I am a shriner makes sense because within shrinerism there is this tradition of helping people who don't have limbs but if you look up these shriner cunts like there doesn't appear to be anything

insidious on the surface but they're weird they're like they're mainly present in America at festival days, right? Or if there's a parade. Grown men in their 50s who get into these tiny red, tiny red children's cars and wear these ridiculous fezzes and they dress up in an oriental fashion

and they drive tiny, tiny red children's cars through parades all of them it's one of the most bizarre things you'll ever see when i went googling it i was like what the fuck is this so this is this uniquely strange american sect of freemasonry where they dress in kind of 18th century orientalist clothes and drive tiny children's cars in parades so andy the goose's da was a member of this sect and i'm annoyed with myself because because i got shit-faced and because i was stoned my brain wasn't hot taken it wasn't the synapses weren't clicking off each other. In honour of poor old dead Andy, I think this secret fucking society is the key to what happened to that goose.

Do you know? This goose had become very famous all over television. This ghost had become very famous all over television. He was a famous American ghost because he was wearing children's shoes. And then one day he disappears. Someone pulls all his skin off and plucks his head off. And just leaves his body there. And his owner was on a phone call saying,

We found a headless ghost with children's shoes on. It's most likely Andy, the famous goose. This is real, lads. This happened. This fucking happened. I'm not making this up. I'm not pulling this out of my arse. This is the real thing. This is what's frustrating me. Because I've never heard anyone do a podcast about poor old Andy the goose. And I think it deserved a proper, serial style, murder mystery podcast,

where I wasn't pissed and sawn, where I could have done Andy a bit of justice, so, had that have happened, I mean, same time as well, it was the 100th episode, you know,

I'm not being too hard on myself, I needed to celebrate, I just wish, I would have spoken about something else, the music of Westlife I don't know instead of fucking blowing my lord on Andy the goose that sounds awful

that sounds terrible I didn't mean it like that um so this is what I'd investigate there's something fucking strange about Andy's owner being a member of this weird Masonic fucking sect

where grown men wear fezzes and get involved in parades in tiny children's cars. That's fucking strange shit. And a lot of fucking dodgy stuff is often associated with Masonic groups because of of

even though the Shriners don't appear insidious right what you have is definitely a group of men of power who can operate in secrecy and can operate cloak and dagger.

And you would have had them involved in police and all of this in the community in Nebraska. So you have this powerful organization and one of their members is now starting to get famous all over the news because he has a goose that wears shoes. And you have to wonder what went on there what went on between the owner and his secret fraternal fucking organisation that he was a part of

and then all of a sudden because the thing is the way that Andy was killed he was decapitated and he was turned inside out so it was a violent death for no reason a poor little fucking goose

someone murdered him and murdered him publicly and left the body there as a sign so you can rule out a dog or a cat this was the act of a human

it was ritualistic, it was deliberate and there's not a lot online about Andy there's not a lot, there's two or three articles and that's where I got most of my fucking information from but it's just when I listen back the next day

and just head in hands going why the fuck, did you get pissed, for the poor goose's podcast, why did you have to, smoke hash like that, you were talking,

out of your fucking arse, at the end, why did you have to do that, for the poor fucking goose, and I'm listening back, to it like this, and, just saying to myself,

I didn't do him justice, I didn't do him justice, so, there's my fuck, there's my hot take that I should have investigated and should have maybe we'll go back to it

maybe I'll fucking fly over to Nebraska and carbon offset myself and properly investigate but something about the fact that his fucking honour's in the Freemasons lads his honour's in a secret society

the ghost with children's shoes his honour is in a secret society the ghost with children's shoes his honour is in a secret society and then the ghost gets fucking killed in to me what sounds like a public execution it's ritualistic someone sending a message the ghost had gotten too famous he was on Johnny Carson

he was a famous fucking ghost and pride would have gotten involved and maybe the ghost's honour got too big for his boots excuse the pun as far as the Freemason lads were concerned the Shriners

I don't know ok maybe fucking maybe Conti started talking too much about being in this organisation he upset someone. And I think it was deliberate. And we're left with a fucking.

An inside out. Just decapitated goose. Wearing children's fucking shoes. And that shit haunts me. But. Just take that. Take last week's podcast as a lesson. For.

Don't drink a bottle of wine and smoke a lot of baldy if you intend to engage in anything that requires any serious cognitive functioning and that's about it, 22 minutes 22 fucking minutes explaining that, look if you didn't

listen to last week's podcast you're going to be very much in the dark there but listen back to it and I tell the full story of poor old Andy the Goose alright and I'm sorry Andy that I didn't do you justice with a proper well researched thought out

podcast, maybe someday I will if some other prick doesn't rob the fucking idea if any other prick does a podcast where they properly investigate Andy's death day I will, if some other prick doesn't rob the fucking idea, if any other prick does a podcast where they properly investigate Andy's death, and particularly follow that Masonic route, then dog shit in the post for you lads, alright, so what do I want this week, I want to do, not so much, I suppose a bit of a hot take, I want to do not so much, I suppose a bit of a hot take. I want to do a bit of a hot take around psychology, specifically developmental psychology.

Not a mental health podcast as such. Just one kind of about general psychology and society. Something that I've been thinking about a lot. Before we get into it, so I'm not interrupted, we'll get the ocarina pause out of the way. I have a lot of ocarinas now, lads, because you've been sending them to me, or I've been handing them at gigs. I've got eight or nine ocarinas, so I have this one here,

which is from Chile this is I've got a one from Peru Chile actually it's called isn't it that is Chilean one which is kind of deep so we'll give this a go for the ocarina pause I'll try and make it not too aggressive for you go back a bit the ocarina pause as well by the way it's in case an advert is inserted if you're a first time listener

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So that was the ocarina pause. You might hear an advert there. You know the crack, alright? Rest of the crack. Podcast is supported by you, the cracker right rest of the crack podcast is supported by you the listener via the patreon page it's um do you know do you want to become a patron of this podcast how do i make money from this podcast i make it through people listening to it who like it and say jesus i'd like to i'd like to support blind by i'd like to give him the price of a pint once a month so if you would like to do that patreon.com forward

slash the blind by podcast why would you do this just because i don't know if you like listening to the podcast and it gives you a bit of solace or entertainment or whatever, I essentially do it for free. So this is a way that you can support me, basically. Because of Patreon, I have a regular income. I have a very stable life compared to a couple of years ago. I'm just happier I'm happier it's very difficult to get a stable income

as an artist and with something like Patreon I now have it it's a fucking incredible life changing system so if you enjoy the podcast please consider signing up for the Patreon please you don't have to some people can't afford it that's fine all right but if you can and you'd like to please do patreon.com forward slash the blind by a podcast

please like and subscribe the podcast on whatever app you're on for using the fucking the apple podcasts a like and a subscription and a review as well goes a long way why does that go a long way I think if I get a bunch of if there's a lot of reviews and likes and shit it's the podcast is more likely to be suggested

to people so it helps increase it's reach same with Spotify this podcast I'm assuming podcast has a lot of subscriptions. It would get suggested to cunts. Alright, tell a friend about the podcast, especially if you live outside of Ireland. This podcast now has a 60% international listenership

and this is because of word of mouth. It's, and I know this from feedback I'm getting, someone would hear it, they'd say they like it and then they tell all their friends who've never fucking heard of it and all of a sudden i have communities of listeners all around the world who in 2020 i'm going to be coming to you and doing gigs all right so there you go right this week's topic and hot take um well a few a few different things kind of sparked this number one was a tweet i saw earlier during the week it was macaulay culkin on twitter macaulay culkin as you know you remember him from the film home alone and i want to investigate the relevance of the film home alone in 2019 in a similar way to how I investigated the Tom Hanks

film Big in terms of 2019. The tweet in question was someone suggested that they should remake Home Alone and Home Alone as you know it's about a six-year-old boy who's left at home by his parents by accident and he must cope by himself when Facebook robbers in the house. Someone suggested on Twitter and Macaulay Culkin retweeted it that they should remake Home Alone but with a 38 year old Macaulay Culkin and

Macaulay retweeted it because it was gas and then I started thinking do you know what if you remade Home Alone with a 38 year old Macaulay Culkin, I don't think it'd be that strange. I think it would actually work. So these are the themes I want to explore in this podcast

using developmental psychology. I want to talk about human development. human development I want to talk about the emotional maturity of human beings at various stages in our lives kind of

what psychology says of us that should be expected at various stages of our life do you get me and i'm going to go into it in in more detail what kind of sparked this off is an article i saw about a month ago and what the article was about is it it was actually only two weeks ago, apparently psychologists have come out with new information. And they're proposing that we traditionally understand that a person becomes an adult, a legal adult at the age of 18 well this team of psychologists are suggesting that the period of of adolescence should be extended until the age of 24 so they're saying someone is not uh an adult at 18 but instead 24 should be the new age, the new cut-off point for adulthood. And I just want to explore that.

I want to explore that concept and that idea. So the suggestion of extending adolescence and declaring adulthood at 24, it comes from the Royal Children's Hospital in Australia, right? That's hemopsychologists. hospital in australia right a team of psychologists and what's interesting is like it's it's it's always been known that the human brain so i'm talking physically now this is nothing to do with not emotionally but physically the human brain continues to grow until 23 years of age 23 is the cutoff so you have people who are 18 who are legal adults and an 18 year old in most western societies can they're a fucking legal adult they can make

every single legal decision that an adult can make they can get a fucking mortgage they can drink they can do whatever but an 18 year old's brain isn't fully developed that we know that that happens at 23 but this new suggestion of extending adulthood to 24 it's not as a result of this information it's it's suggested because of societal changes basically 18 year olds today are not reaching the same um milestones in their lives as 18 year olds were 20 years ago 18 year olds today don't have society doesn't offer 18 year olds today that the same degree of pressure and responsibility and autonomy that 18 year olds had 20 years ago and as a result of this it's these psychologists are suggesting it's resulting in a type of arrested development as such and therefore

adulthood should start at 24 so the research was kind of showing that like 18 year olds in 2019 you know they're not they're not driving cars in the way that their older brothers or parents were at their age 18 year olds today, for whatever reason, they're having a lot less sex than 18 year olds were 20 years ago, I don't fully know why that is, and 18 year olds today are leaving the house far less than 18 year olds were 20, 30 years ago, so all of these factors here, years ago and so all of these factors here like something as simple as being given the responsibility of a car at the age of 18 like like humans are ritualistic do you know what i mean we're ritualistic and this is why you know throughout regardless of religion throughout all societies we tend to have these markers of adulthood in our rituals you know this is why even things like communion and

confirmation are important even if you don't believe in religion now i don't like the idea of communion and confirmation i because i'm not into the catholic, but I do like the idea of having events in a child's life, a ritualistic ceremonial event which acknowledges that child as being a person. You know, the good thing about a confirmation or a bar mitzvah or whatever is it's for the first time that child is, I am a person, I exist, and all these people are here to see me, and something about this tells me that I matter, and that I'm transitioning now into becoming myself, I'm no longer just this thing that belongs to my parents but I have an identity, I am me and that's what communings and confirmations do

and bar mitzvahs they're ritualistically important to the human psyche things like going in a car do the same thing now when I was fucking 18 yeah there was a lot of cars around, there was now you needed to

have a kind of a fucking day job, but a lot of lads in fucking sixth year had cars, put it that way, because the economy was really good. It was the Celtic Tiger. Cars weren't that expensive. Insurance wasn't that expensive. And lads who just simply got a job you know in a petrol station at

the weekend they were able to afford a fucking Honda Civic and come into school with it so lots of people had cars and the responsibility of that is I think that's like a little cultural marker it lets the person know I'm driving around knowing a huge big chunk of metal I'm doing this big adult thing and when society throws that at you it is a little internal ritual whereby the person then accepts kind of an adult responsibility they're they're faced with a crisis basically they're faced with a crisis of you now have the agency to have a car or you now have the agency to have sex with another person and the responsibility that goes with that do you accept this crisis you know do you take it

or do you reject it do you get me and it's how we master this these are milestones in kind of maturity and autonomy and all this shit you get me but this study is saying that 18 year olds today this is happening less and less social media obviously is going to be playing a factor in it um why are 18 year olds having less sex you know I'm not putting that out of my fucking arse this is what the study is saying 18 year olds are having far less sex than 18 year olds today are having less sex than 18 year olds 20 years ago

why would I think that is I mean look social media as such it's put it this way lads before social media like we as humans have a desire to connect and communicate

with other people okay some people more than others but we like if you're fucking 18 you want friends you want to be communicating you want to be socializing with your group, you want to be interacting, but today, I mean, here's the thing, in 2019, you can stay at home the entire day and use WhatsApp and Twitter and Instagram and connect with lots of your friends and your brain feels as if you've ticked those boxes your brain feels like i have communicated with people today

i have had meaningful conversations with people today that's a fact you know you haven't left the house but your brain is ticking the box going you spoke to 16 people today you got information and you did that if it was 1991 either get the fuck out of the house or stay at home on your own all day and speak to nobody so social the part of our

brain that needs social interaction and communication with other people that part of our brain is being satisfied but we physically don't need as much to leave the gaff anymore so if people are still communicating but they're not physically meeting then that goes to show that of course people are still riding but there's just going to be less riding if you're physically present with a bunch of people and then talking there's a greater chance of coitus but not over the fucking internet maybe there's sexting sexting doesn't count as riding does it so that's the only reason i can think about that but sex is is a very adult act. It's, you know, it's a thing that adults do.

It comes with responsibilities, you know, to have safe sex, to be mindful of pregnancy, consent. These are all very adult things for adults to do. And so if this is happening less and less then it's it that's one less adult challenge that's happening less and less in order for the person to reach these milestones of maturity and autonomy did you get me um but overall the biggest reason why we would be seeing societal changes that are placing less adult demands on 18 year olds

and why this study is asking for adolescents to be extended to 24 it's economic reasons okay 18 to 24 year olds today they were children during the fucking recession, alright, they don't remember the boom of the 90s, they weren't around, so they grew up with a recession, and they have far less opportunities than the previous generation who would be older millennials we'll say so generation y now the

youngest ones who are just turning 18 much less opportunities a very very important milestone in human maturity and development is the ability to leave your parents and to exist autonomously. That is fucking huge. Okay. Now I. I was 21. 21 when I left my parents house and was living on my own. Right.

And that was a massive massive milestone. In terms of my mental health in terms of my self-esteem my confidence and feeling okay to identify as an adult when i speak about the mental health issues that i had as a 1920 year old 21 they were quite severe but the root cause of my mental health issues a lot of it had to do with fear of autonomy it was a fear of a fear of adulthood a fear of being able to stand on my own two feet like the most simplest things like the idea of having to cook my own dinner would bring intense feelings of anxiety because I didn't feel capable.

I didn't feel okay calling myself an adult. I was in a position of crisis. And that's a very common trigger for mental health issues for people who are 19, 20 or whatever, right? Very common trigger. A huge, two huge landmarks happened that allowed me to move away from that number one my dad died when my dad died at a young age whatever i was 2021 that's like getting hit into the head with the hammer of adulthood that was like like i spoke about the importance of kind of ritualistic or symbolic milestones in in life when you lose a parent straight up that's a a big calling card from the universe almost it says to your brain

you you have lost someone who provides for you so now you stand on your own two feet that's the challenge you're presented with also when i moved out on my own you had to go kind of fight or flight it's when you're on your own when you're living on your own at a young age it's initially stressful and it's initially frightening, obviously, but it's massively beneficial to becoming an adult, by which I mean self-identifying as an adult and feeling okay in calling yourself an adult. That's huge for confidence because then you can make adult decisions. You can be rational then. You don't operate as emotionally or from a fear-based place.

Because children can often operate from a fear-based place. A place of, I will get in trouble. Or there is someone to protect me. An adult doesn't think like that. An adult doesn't think in terms of, I will get in trouble. And an adult doesn't think in terms of, I need someone to protect me. An adult protects themselves. But when you're faced with the challenge of

I'm living on my own, I must generate money in order to pay my rent. If I do not prepare food for myself, I won't eat food. If I do not wash my clothes and dry them them I'm going to be a smelly person these are very important challenges to someone's sense of autonomy and to be able to identify as an adult and I was fortunate enough to be able to be put into that situation when I was 21 because rent was affordable and the mad thing is when I

think back in in the space of like three months I rapidly went from child to adult by simply having the opportunity to exist autonomously if like the root of my my issues were this fear of autonomy when I'm actually living autonomously making my own choices making my decisions and proving to myself each day that going to the shop budgeting buying a dinner and cooking it is not difficult it's actually what that did for my confidence and self-esteem was fucking huge and all of a sudden I went from being an incredibly insecure child who felt incapable who couldn't look people in the eye who felt inadequate who was scared to leave the house in the space of three months, I went from that to now being okay with saying, I'm a fucking man. I'm an adult.

The world isn't that frightening. If the world throws challenges at me as an adult, I can flexibly approach these challenges and adjust to them. I can cope. approach these challenges and and adjust to them i can cope i am an adult i have the tools and abilities to cope with my environment a child doesn't have that when you feel like a child you say i i am a child and i can only cope with my environment and my reality with the assistance of a parent with someone looking over me but by moving out my mind went from fuck that not only do i not need parents to be honest i don't particularly want them what that then also does is it improves your relationship with your

fucking parents your parents then stop being parents and they become human beings with flaws they stop being this thing above you that is providing and that is always right and now you can look at your man your dad as they are flawed human beings and that improves and deepens your relationship because you can meet them eye to eye as an adult that causes personal growth for everyone and it means you get closer to who you are because you stop pedestalling your parents and you can go do you know what my ma I as an adult can now see that my ma is insecure or I as an adult can now see that my da is is angry or whatever you have for yourself you know you need to be an adult in order to

meet your parents eye to eye as adults and then you improve and your relationship improves if you still see them as parents that doesn't happen the other crucial thing that comes with a sense of autonomy and independence and being young we'll say early 20s late teens and being able like i said to look in the mirror and say i am an adult and i believe it right another huge thing that comes with that is when it comes down to self-talk okay my search for autonomy you know existing by myself feeding myself clothing myself washing my own clothes at the same time i was also exploring cognitive behavioral therapy as a way to cope with my depression and anxiety okay a huge part of self-help and cbt in particular as i mentioned is self-talk it is the ability to spot irrational flaws in your thinking

and to be able to square it with yourself to be able to when you're an adult you can confidently say to yourself this this anxiety that I'm feeling I don't have to feel this way or this anger that I'm feeling I might be wrong to challenge yourself to search for the unhelpful thoughts that are causing painful emotions in order to tackle them and to move towards a place of flexibility and to be able to cope with whatever life throws at you, that requires a level of adult confidence. You have to believe your own internal voice, if get me and a child again children don't really have that internal voice children don't have the capacity for critical thinking a child still

depends upon this parent hovering over him but not an adult an adult can think critically and an adult has the agency to make 100 decisions for themselves and you have to believe that and having a sense of autonomy like living by yourself and looking after yourself that fuels your inner internal monologue that you can draw upon when using self-help when using cbt so that was a huge thing for me too if i'm getting a panic attack at 21 right and i want to stop it and i want to say things to myself such as i know you feel like you're dying right now but the fact is is that this is just a fire alarm and there's no fire or when I investigate why I'm feeling so anxious or I investigate my depression I have this strong adult confident voice that I can believe in that says no fuck it I'm standing up to my anxiety today i'm standing up to my

depression today this was all facilitated by my environment by the fact that i was living autonomously okay and why i'm getting into this i'm i'm i'm becoming more and more aware of that being an actual privilege that I had a privilege that I had at that age in that time because of economic reasons because the economy wasn't fucked it was just before the recession myself and nearly everyone I knew was able to fuck off out of their homes when we were 19, 20 and it was normal and it was affordable. That's not the situation anymore. I feel especially sorry for young people living in fucking Dublin because I know people in Dublin who are in their late 20s and they have jobs and they're living

with their parents because Dublin is so fucking unaffordable that they they have to like get up at nine in the morning go into their professional fucking careers and it could be journalism it could be college lecturing they could be team leader in an office positions of responsibility they have to put their adult cap on in the morning and then come home from work and return to their family of origin and that has there's implications for that with mental health because as i spoke before with the transaction analysis podcast being around your parents as an adult can be particularly triggering for unhelpful childhood patterns and behaviors okay if you are fortunate enough to not live

with your fucking parents and you return at christmas we'll say and i've said this before just measure the difference in your mood measure the difference in your personality when you return home at christmas and you're around your mother or your father or your brother or your sister you can lose the autonomous responsible adult that you are in your other life and all of a sudden return to a period in childhood where you might throw a tantrum you might be feeling more fearful you might be more likely to be reactionary you might be incredibly hurt by something tiny that your parent says these are all childhood triggers that can happen when we return to our family of origin as it's known so what's going on

for these 28 year olds living in dublin or 29 year olds or 30 year olds who know nothing other than living with their parents because the economy simply simply won't allow it i mean if you want to rent in dublin now you better have fucking 900 quid a month it's as simple as that and most people with regular jobs they just can't do it and even if they could do it they might someday want to own their own house. So in order for them to be able to save, at least, with their good jobs, they're living with their ma and da. But what is the emotional and psychological impact of that on an entire fucking generation? And this isn't just Dublin.

This is around the world. Anywhere in major cities. It is happening in Limererick but not as bad obviously limerick is still affordable it's definitely happening in cork you know it's happening all over the world and it's happening to a generation where economic factors are allowing for this sense of arrested development and this is why this study has come forward and said we need to be extending adulthood to 24

because the lack of kind of ritualistic challenges that are being presented to young people are not presenting themselves and as a result 18 year olds aren't really adults anymore they're not being given the opportunities for responsibility so i don't really have a hot

take around it i find it interesting but i find it very believable too because one thing we don't think of is like this is this isn't the first time this has happened in culture this isn't the first time that adulthood has been extended because of changing factors in society okay 120 years ago adulthood started at maybe 14 years of age at you went people went from being a child and the adage goes basically is that you children wore short pants and you were a child and you wore short pants and then you get to 12 13 boom you're an adult long pants um so adulthood in we say the victorian period or whatever earlier you know it's much closer to physical development like if you take adulthood to mean the age at which a human being can

get pregnant really i mean girls can get pregnant that maybe 12 lads are able to get people pregnant at 13 so back then the concept of adulthood was related to sexual maturity essentially you know and people were getting married at 16 there was economic reasons too there wasn't you know the high availability of education families were very poor so once the child becomes an adult at 12 there wasn't much labor laws as such the child went and fucking worked and brought money back into the family so there was all these societal economic reasons that just went child 12 long pants long pants adult get married have kids repeat but then in america around the 1920s which would have been a time of great uh

you know the 1920s were very economically ferocious we'll say in America that's when the idea of a teenager starts to develop for the first time ever so there was no such thing as a teenager before the earliest about the 1920s in America this idea that there might be

a buffer period between being a child and being an adult it didn't exist there's many driving factors for this that there might be a buffer period between being a child and being an adult. It didn't exist. There's many driving factors for this. The two main ones really are the birth of consumerism. Okay, I mean, we're talking America, so an incredibly capitalistic country. Consumerism, as I've mentioned before, consumerism is when capitalism starts to make far more items than it needs to sell, right? So it figures out a

way to market things to people that they don't need. That's consumerism. It's no longer about, you know, this all ties in as well well I did a podcast about Edward Bernays Sigmund Freud's grandson who invented a lot of modern advertising this happens at the exact same time in the early 1920s in a nutshell lads late industrial revolution too much

stuff is being produced how do we sell people things they don't need well here's how we do it this bar of soap I'm not selling you this to get you clean instead i'm going to put the bar of soap into an advertisement beside a beautiful person i'm not selling you soap anymore i'm selling you a better version of yourself and that's limitless that's consumerism so the teenager starts to come about at the same time as consumerism i'm going to get into that a bit more in a minute also the birth of the

fucking car 1920s are when people start being able to own and drive cars and this changed society massively so before we say victorian times people were if you, 14, and you're to meet, no one really had girlfriends and boyfriends, right, you kind of, your parents met with another parent, and you were set up with a suitor, and dating wasn't a thing, you met your, you're a teenager teenager and you meet the other teenage suitor male and female and you do this under supervision this is how things were when the car became a part of american society and you had 14 15 year olds with cars this introduced a new degree of freedom distance and privacy that previous generations of children didn't have so now this idea of you're a teenager your parents are going to hook you up with another teenager

this is your suitor and hopefully you'll get married this was going out the window now now you had lads with cars picking up girls and they could head off and sexually experiment in cars the birth of what would we now call dating dating didn't exist but now dating becomes a thing in the 1920s it's now this thing that 14 15 year olds do where they can sexually experiment without the commitment of i'm getting married to this person because the parents aren't around it's happening in a car another thing that happens is 1920s american society starts to realize and understand the value of having an incredibly well-educated workforce so the idea of a kid getting you know a primary education up until the age of 12 and then going immediately into the workforce,

they soon realise this doesn't provide the economy with the wealth and range of workers that we need. So high school becomes a thing. Affordable, free high school. Only the incredibly wealthy went down to high school in the Victorian period or then went down to college. But with the 1920s, it becomes state sponsored and funded and more available to everyone. So now you have 12, 13, 14, 15 year olds and they're all going to high school together.

They now have this new space where you've got a group of people the same fucking age together. We've got a group of people the same fucking age together and a new culture emerges that is unique to these people's ages. Because think previously, 14, 15, they fuck off to the factory and they're working with people in their 20s and their 30s. But now it's just a bunch of people of the teen age together culturally in this new space developing new ways of speaking new ways of looking all of this type of stuff new interests new shared common interests and a new way to identify so when the teenager really starts to definitely become a thing and when the wordager starts getting used. It starts to be getting used. In the 1940s.

But the teenager becomes a thing. In the 1950s. In America. Because. And it was. It was uniquely American. Because. The Brits hadn't really caught up.

The Brits weren't really at that stage. In the 40s yet. America. After World War II. Had a huge economic boom alright and you have the emergence of a new wealthy middle class

and you have the war generation having children who they themselves would have gone off to war quite young feeling that they want to you know happy that they have this fucking freedom and the Nazis didn't win wanting to give a new sense of freedom to to, you know, happy that they have this fucking freedom and the Nazis didn't win, wanting to give a new sense of freedom to their kids, you know, they weren't as harsh on their kids,

they didn't want to go to their 12 year olds and say, fuck you, go and get a job. That's when the teenager starts to become a thing, that's when society decides, in a moment, hold on a second, I don't think it's right to call this 13 year old an adult i don't think the challenges that that i faced when i was 13 these adult challenges i don't think they exist now for this 13 year old because they're in school they have a new thing going on they're not expected to go to work so the teenager gets invented this new adolescence this idea that adulthood happens now at 18 instead of happening at 12 becomes a thing definitely by the 1950s culturally reflected in 1955 is the year really

rebel without a Cause with James Dean the reason that film was so shocking is that it simply depicts the audacity of teenagers, this new group and Elvis Presley and how it works too the feedback loop is America, the capitalist consumerist society

teenagers were brilliant for consumerism. Because as they try and shape this new identity that is not childhood and is not adulthood, that's where like pop music comes from. Do you know, a whole lot of cinema, popular culture, comic books, this stuff that is now

marketed and consumed by this new group who are between the ages of 13 and 18 the teenagers it feeds perfectly into american culture and the rest of the world soon follows so why i'm kind of talking about this is this article I read where they're suggesting extending adult to 24 it sounds nuts and I don't know how I feel about it but it's not it's not the first time that's

happened in society it really isn't and time will tell, time will definitely tell whether that's how it's going to be in maybe 10 years And time will tell. Time will definitely tell. Whether that's how it's going to be in maybe 10 years. Maybe. I mean, let's be realistic.

No one's getting. Those teenagers in the 50s, a lot of them are still getting married at 20. Do you know? Now, people are getting married in their 30s now. Like, nobody wants to get married in their fucking 20s. Because the 20s is seen as too much crack to body or hoop getting married in their 30s now. Like nobody wants to get married in their fucking 20s. Because the 20s is seen as too much crack to body or hope getting married. And economic reasons too. But people are now having marriage and children in early to mid 30s. For economic and choice reasons.

for economic and choice reasons. Economic because people don't feel that they're economically stable enough to make such a huge commitment until they're in their 30s. And also, just a sense of... When you get to 18, you don't really want to go, I'm an adult now, the crack ends. It's like, can I have more crack please for another 10 years please do you know what I mean so I don't think it's I don't think it's absurd that in even as little as 10 years time if we all now start to think 24 is adulthood do you know and to take it back to

I was gonna I was gonna go into this podcast was supposed to be with the theories of a psychologist called erickson i was gonna go through erickson's stages of development which is an entire psychological theory about the various stages of life and where humans where erickson says humans should be. At different ages and stages. But I don't think we have time for it. And. I quite like just rambling and hot taking there. About the nature of age and maturity.

And autonomy and what that means. To kind of wrap it up. To hark back to an earlier podcast. That I did. It was about the film Big. And in the film Big, I can't remember the name of the podcast, but you know the film Big with Tom Hanks. A little child is granted a wish and all of a sudden he's an adult overnight.

He's like a 32-year-old man overnight. And the whole premise of hilarity in this film in 1984 or 85 when it came out the premise of the film is oh my god look at this 30 year old acting like a child isn't that hilarious that doesn't work anymore because of the hipster the hipster i think is like an extended teenager there's now nothing at all strange about a grown adult man in an office jumping up and down on a trampoline in fact it's normal similarly

Macaulay Culkin made a joke on Twitter there last week someone suggested because apparently they're going to remake Home Alone you know and someone said I don't want them to remake Home Alone if they remake Home Alone, they need to remake it with Macaulay Culkin, and I started thinking, that wouldn't be strange, like if you think of the film Home Alone, it's this young fella,

Kevin McAllister, who's six years of age, and he's left on his own at home and you're left with this anxiety of oh no what's going to happen and then robbers break in and he does all these elaborate gas tricks um to catch him right or sorry it does all these elaborate gas tricks and traps and whatever to stop the robbers and it's highly entertaining i don't if you put out a film today and it's a mother and father who go off for a vacation and they leave their 33 year old son at home and that 33 year old son is anxious about being home on his own and robbers try to break in and he tries to stop them through a series of elaborate traps I don't think that's shocking

I really don't I don't think it would have the I think it would be quite fucking normal I mean look at I mean what's giving me the context for that being normal again it's the bigification of society things like jackass

even though that's a 20 year old reference but YouTubers out their fucking back gardens you know YouTubers in their 30s out their back gardens with flamethrowers Elon Musk and his flamethrower or Jake Paul

doing bizarre things out their back garden setting shit on fire, having booby traps doing it to record it and create content grown adults do this now and it's normal, so if you remade Home Alone and remade it

with what age is Macaulay Culkin now, he's 38 if you remade Home Alone and you used Macaulay Culkin and he's 38 years of age and fucking remade it it would actually work it wouldn't seem so bizarre or absurd or far-fetched it would be like no here is a 38 year old man who because of economic reasons still lives at home with his fucking very tired old parents and because he has has not had the

opportunity to live autonomously his extended adolescence and infantilism leaves him with a sense of anxiety at being left home alone and his only coping mechanisms are stupid elaborate fucking traps and fun tricks that he's going to upload onto YouTube when the robbers break in. That doesn't seem at all strange to me. At all. In fact I'd quite like to see it. I think it would be a good film. You don't need to remake

Home Alone with a child. Not in 2019. Alright yart. 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

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