The Blindboy Podcast - Wet Declan

Episode Date: January 30, 2019

King Theodore of Corsica, The Bystander Effect, The Environment, Social Media Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

hello you suntanned berries what's the crack welcome to the blind boy podcast i am uh still over in london if this is your first podcast go back and listen from the start please because we have new listeners every week but yeah i'm over in london and i had planned i had a plan to try and do something this week but it didn't work out because i planned to do it on on the weekend but it was pissing rain and i couldn't so anyway um as you know from I did a previous podcast where I investigated the history of gin the spirit gin and its devastating effect on London in the industrial revolution so the thing with gin is what I always found amusing about gin, the amount of nicknames that it had in like the 1700s.

It was called White Satin, Partiality, Lady's Delight, Dutch Courage it was called because gin was a a Dutch drink brought over by King William William of Orange Mother's Milk South Sea Mountain Cock My Cap Mother's Rune it was called

Mother's Rune, Cuckold's Comfort which is fucking fantastic it was called Cuckold's Comfort which is the spirit for somebody Comfort. Which is fucking fantastic. It was called Cuckold's Comfort. Which is. The spirit for somebody. To drink. While your wife is off. Having sex with another man.

The Cuckold's Comfort. But. By far my favourite nickname for gin was. King Theodore of Corsica. And whenever I was looking at gin names. That one always stuck out. like who the fuck calls a drink King Theodore of Corsica I found it particularly amusing

so while I was thinking about it last week I was like I need to find out why gin is called King Theodore of Corsica. So I did. And by fucking mad coincidence, I was like, right, okay, who the fuck is this King Theodore of Corsica? So I read up about him.

And it turns out he's buried like two minutes from where I'm staying in Soho. buried like two minutes from where I'm staying in Soho in a little graveyard in St Anne's Church which is a small little church from the 1600s at the end of Dean Street in Soho so I was like fuck that King Theodore of Corsica is buried down the road i'm gonna head down to his grave and i'm gonna do a podcast from his gravestone for the crack why not but it was pissing rain pissing rain so i didn't get the opportunity to do a podcast from the grave of King Theodore of Corsica, unfortunately. So, you know, I was like, all right, if the cunt is buried around the corner, then I might look up and read up about him. And it turns out that King Theodore of Corsica was a bit of an interesting character he wasn't from Corsica Corsica is

it's this tiny little island kind of off the coast of Italy and it's now a province of France but when Theodore was knocking around in the 1700s Corsica was ruled by Genoa Theodore was knocking around in the 1700s. Corsica was ruled by Genoa.

Genoa was a province of Italy, I believe. And I think the inhabitants of Corsica were enslaved by the Genovese. So Theodore, he wasn't even a royal of royal blood. He was like an eccentric, travelling, adventurous lunatic. Firstly, he was a Rosicrucian, which was this bizarre sect, this German sect in the 1700s. They would have been occultists. The word occult, when you hear it you think like satanism and shit but it's not occult just means

hidden knowledge we associate it with evil things because the church the catholic church very much demonised occultism but occultism really it would have been the conspiracy theory conspiracy theories of the time in the 1700s that would have been 200 conspiracy theories of the time.

In the 1700s, that would have been 200 years after Protestantism became a thing, but the Catholic Church really held all knowledge, do you know? And occultism basically posits that there's hidden spiritual knowledge to the life of Christ or beyond that the Church withhold. knowledge to the life of Christ or beyond that the church withhold so practicing occultism or this particular version of it, Rosicrucianism would have had to have been done in secret

and they were just a bunch of fucking nerds who, they would have practiced alchemy, alchemy was a precursor to chemistry, it was a way to it was lots of different things, but mainly alchemists were trying to make gold from lesser metals because they didn't understand what elements were.

And they would have been into astrology. Astrology would have been outlawed at the time. That would have been considered occultism. And they believed that they had access to hidden knowledge that went beyond Christ all the way back to the Greeks to the ancient pharaohs so they would have worshipped Egyptian gods and all of this

an intellectual enough movement but it had to be practiced in secrecy so this theatre of Corsica lunatic was one of these and with the gift of the gab as a German

he was out on the pist one night and managed to meet a load of like Corsican rebels who were also out on the pist and they just met him and were impressed with him and said to him we're from Corsica, it's a tiny little island

off Italy and we're not too happy with the way it's been run by Genoa we're rebels we're exiled but we want to go back and we want to try and take it back so Theodore out of nowhere just goes I'll be your king

and he was so charming, the lads said fuck it, why why not he's not even from corsica but let's give him a crack let's give him a go so theodore manages then to convince uh the tunisians but which would have been the bay of tunis at the time to also help out and they went and invaded the little island of corsica in the hope of beating off the Genovese. And also some French I believe. And it was. A noble effort but a disaster.

So. Theodore then fucks off to England. Kind of in exile. Kind of. Declaring sanctuary. Do you know, because he'd just tried to start a war on Corsica. And then it turns out that Theodore married a woman from Limerick, where I'm from, called Catalina Sarsfield. She was related to Patrick Sarsfield of the Siege of Limerick so at this point I'm going fuck me

this King Theodore chap who you know whatever the fuck he did they decided to name Gin after him has got a Limerick connection so I'm starting to get a mind horn going I gotta go down to this cunt's grave. A world class bullshitter. Managed to declare himself king of a country.

Because he was so charming. Married a woman from Limerick. Was involved in the occult alchemy. This is an interesting character. And. Turns out anyway when he went to London part of his charming personality

was that he was also a notorious bullshitter who would non-stop just borrow money and he ended up in a debtor's prison in utter poverty but still managed to charm some people into being his friends and one of his friends was a fella called

Sir Robert Walpole who was or no, Horace Walpole who was a poet and described as a man of letters which probably just means he'd have been a wanker on Twitter so anyway anyway the reason why i think gin was named after this lunatic theater of corsica king theater of corsica

is because he came to london as a king not really royalty but you know a king and ended up dark poor in the debtor's prison and dying. So that fall from grace, that fall from being a king of Corsica and ending up in a London debtor's prison was sufficient to name a drink like gin after him. It's like if you drink gin, you'll end up like Theodore of Corsica. You'll have everything in the world and in in a week, it'll all be gone, because you'll get addicted to gin. So that's why.

So, yeah, I'm pissed off I didn't get to do a live podcast from the fucking gravesite of King Theodore of Corsica. That would have been interesting, but it was pissing rain, lads. But in fairness, he's remembered as someone who was an early proponent of the abolitionist slavery so he can have that

and he's buried in Soho so this week I'm not gonna, I don't have any hot takes this week I'm fucking stupidly busy, I'm unbelievably busy, I'm over here shooting with BBC and my hours I'm fucking stupidly busy. I'm unbelievably busy. I'm over here shooting with BBC

and my hours are insane. I'm up at seven all week and not home till seven or eight in the evening and then obviously have to try and get to bed in time so I only have a small window to be recording the podcast and as well just mental exhaustion you know you never factor in when I'm factoring in the amount of work that I'd be doing you know I'd always look at my schedule in terms of actual physical time so I'd say to myself right okay I'm working 12

hours a day on this shoot that gives me three hours then to record a bit of the podcast or whatever or to research it or whatever the fuck but mental exhaustion is something you can't really factor in um to the thing that you're doing so I'm a little bit burnt out at the moment to be honest but what I will do this week because I don't know every podcast I always say to you I'm going to take some questions at the end and I end up rambling so much on one hot take that when it comes time to actually take a few questions I run out of time and I never get to do it so this podcast I'm gonna take a bunch of questions that you've asked me on Patreon or Twitter or whatever and actually go about answering them and see if we can have a small bit of crack

let's get the ocarina pause out of the way I I don't know where the ocarina is, it's somewhere in my room, and I don't know, I don't know, so instead of the ocarina pause this week, I'm going to jingle some keys, they're interesting sounding keys actually, I was testing them out earlier, they sound more like,

like cattle, like cattle with a cattle bell, so this is the So with a cattle bell. So this is the Soho Key Cattle Bell Pause. And the reason we're doing this, because you might hear an advert, I don't know if you will or not, but this key pause will serve as a warning. Here we go. 27th to 31st, people across Canada will rise together and show those living with mental illness and addiction

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13th when the toronto rock hosts the rochester nighthawks at first ontario center in hamilton at 7 30 p.m you can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game and you'll only pay as we play come along for the ride and punch your ticket to rock city at Toronto rock.com. Sounds a bit like cattle, doesn't it? Bit of a bovine chime. I think it does.

So that was the key pause so anyway as well this podcast is supported by you the listener via the Patreon page if you would like to contribute to this podcast patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast your patronage is what keeps this podcast going if you can afford to give me the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month

please do it makes a huge difference to my life if you'd rather just listen for free or you can't afford it that's grand carry on as you wish this is a model based upon soundness so Brendan on Patreon asks blind boy what is the most interesting fact that you have learned in the past week em I don't know is it a fact

I was reading about the murder of a woman called Kitty Genovese in New York in 1964 right and she was uh she's about 25 or 26 and she was stabbed to death outside our apartment building in New York right and what made the murder of this girl Kitty Genovese so significant is so it's 1964 New York New York in the 60s was starting to really deteriorate socially it was starting to become a quite a a violent place with a very high crime rate you know the 70s in New York was pretty bad so Kitty Genovese was stabbed

to death outside her building and what made it really strange is that 40 people either directly witnessed her murder or heard it and nobody did anything nobody called the police, nobody interven and nobody did anything nobody called the police nobody intervened

nobody did anything about it and this is the murder the stabbing of a girl in her mid-20s in a very crowded area in New York she was murdered in Queens in New York but what makes one kind of interesting thing that stands out for me just it's coincidental but it's weird is she was born in Brooklyn and after her mother

witnessed a murder in Brooklyn a few like 10 years previously the mother said fuck this we're getting out of New York and moved the family to Connecticut where it was safer this we're getting out of New York and moved the family to Connecticut where it was safer but Kitty decided to stay in New York so the ma happened to witness a murder before and she was so shocked by seeing a murder that she took the family away and then Kitty becomes synonymous with being murdered 40 40 people seeing it, and no one doing fuck all.

I'll give you a little heads up at the moment, actually, because I'm going to go into more detail. Just that I'm going to be talking about violence towards women. That's what this incident is, and there's a sexual violence element as well. So you can fast forward about 10 minutes if you don't want to listen to that um but anyway what happens is katie was coming home from work it was like two o'clock in the morning and a lad who was just hanging around decides to attack her so he runs

up and stabs her she starts screaming there's loads of people around like these are apartment blocks screaming, screaming, help me, help me he stabbed me I think one neighbour heard something and screamed leave her alone or whatever

katie goes running with a stab wound to try and get into her apartment and the attacker runs off then the attacker realizes that no one's doing anything about it and 15 minutes later returns stabs her more to kill her sexually assaults her and takes her money so not one person intervened no one tried to help her this was a very public murder

in a high density area with many witnesses and it really stumped people and it took a long time I mean she was initially stabbed after about half two and by the time the ambulance got there it was four in the morning and she died en route in the ambulance after bleeding slowly. It turns out someone did call the police, but the police didn't even bother responding. And her murder really stumped people. It really fucking shocked people.

But what makes her murder significant is it led to a theory in social psychology called the bystander effect and it's a theory that's about human behavior that the more people there are to view the more people that present. To see a crime or horrific event. The less likely. Anyone is to do anything about it. Which is. Bizarrely irrational. But it appears to be the case.

It's as if. When we're in a public situation. And something really bad happens. You're frozen. With this feeling of. Why should I be the one to step up or not even like that it's like it's it's it's not my job to step up someone else will do it and it's not just with horrific like murders you know the bystander effect comes into play when there's something like homophobia public homophobia racism do you know we don't act on it when it happens in the moment in a public place and it really challenges our kind of personal opinion of how we are because most people

if you were to say to yourself you know you witness someone being beaten up or you see like the common one is just walking over homeless people on the road or seeing someone in pain or seeing someone in distress or if someone gets an epileptic fit in the middle of the road and just falls to the ground and so many people just walk past them and we'd like to think that we're the person of when we view this that we will actually act in that moment in the here and now chances are we won't and one of the things I was thinking recently that

might stop the bystander effect is mobile phones so now if something horrific happens in public you'd think alright people take out their phones and then record it surely the awareness of that act would make someone go You'd think, alright, people take out their phones and then record it. Surely the awareness of that act would make someone go, wait, I better put my phone down and try and do something.

But that's not the case. When people see fights in public, when people see, like just last week in Ireland, there was a fatal car crash on the M50 and the Irish police had to basically what happened is that

this was a particularly graphic car crash and people just stopped their cars pulled out their phones, took photographs of a person's mutilated body, and then shared it online. And it went viral all over WhatsApp.

And people were screen grabbing the conversations of people. Like a collective bystander effect. It's like, think it's like think of that think of that like you're going along the M50 you see a crash you see a horribly mutilated dead human and then you decide to take a photograph of it

and show all your friends on WhatsApp that happened en masse in Ireland this week with regular people who not all of them, maybe one or two might have actually been psychopaths but probably not just regular people laughing and joking about a person's death

sharing graphic photos of a fucking person's death this is happening on the same week sharing graphic photos of a fucking person's death. This is happening on the same week that that Ted Bundy documentary is on Netflix. Ted Bundy used to take photographs of people he'd murdered. So now you have an entire group of people in Ireland exhibiting behaviour which is the behaviour of

an utter criminal psychopath, one of the worst ever. and we're all left wondering why the fuck would you stop your car take a photograph of a dead human then when then share it around all over the internet be complicit in that sharing and make jokes about it and i don't't know, is that particular, that is an example of the bystander effect. And technology seems to fucking amplify it, rather than stop it. I mean, certain people, a lot of people did step up and go,

what the fuck is going on? And the guards stepped in, and now the guards are looking at CCTV to try and see who did take photographs of that person's body. But a lot of people got involved. A lot of people shut off all emotion and engaged in this horrendous bystander effect. I mean, there's nothing you can when it's somebody already dead

there's nothing you can really do and you know the police are there so there's nothing you can really do to stop it or make the situation better but taking a photograph and sharing it certainly makes the situation worse you could not do that

but something about mass crowds stops us engaging in empathy to a like a temporary psychopathic level those people who saw and heard kitty genovese being stabbed to death over the course of 10 minutes and didn't do anything are exhibiting temporary psychopathology and it's not a desire to hurt someone

it's like it's so intense they completely disconnect and I don't get it what I do know is you know to take it back to what I was talking about with gin there earlier um gin is something I've spoken about on multiple podcasts because it interests me deeply because gin is the first ever industrially produced alcohol that caused widespread alcoholism and social destruction. Alcohol wasn't that much of an issue before gin. But when gin hit, London in the Industrial Revolution destroyed the place.

And I don't think gin was the issue the issue was massive amounts of people living in the same place at once when you read reports about industrial revolution London and how it became completely crime ridden there were new waves of crime and murder and violence that had never been seen in society before and what people theorise is that people used to live in villages

and in a village where there is a very small amount of people and everyone knows everyone's business that's enough for kind of

public shaming to an extent that's enough for it to work in a way for people to moderate their behaviour and then as soon as people move to cities and all of a sudden you could become anonymous and you're in these massive crowds where you're nobody and no one

knows your business all hell broke loose and gin accompanied that and the the classic example is there was a woman in London in the 1700s and

she was so addicted to gin that she went to a poor house, got clothes for her child then sold the clothes went drinking gin with the money she got from the clothes and then strangled the child later on

and that had never been seen before that level of deprivation that level of addiction, that level of dehumanisation and some people say it that level of addiction, that level of dehumanization. And some people say it's because of populations. Humans aren't really meant to live in giant populations that were supposed to be, you know, Robin Dunbar's number, 150. And within 150, then we can behave as humans are supposed to behave.

But beyond 150, shit like the bystander effect kicks in. So that's an interesting, that's the most interesting fact I learned recently. Or the thing I've been thinking about anyway the past week, or mulling over to answer your question, Brendan. Susan asks blind by I never hear you speak about climate change on the podcast yeah that's true

I don't speak about climate change if I'm being totally honest sometimes I find it so scary, I don't engage with it a little bit, you know, because I feel powerless to an extent. One thing I'm definitely doing, like I'm in London now, and I'm going to be back in Limerick in about a week,

two weeks. So I was looking at the, a report came out, a at the a report came out a big big report came out a week ago about human consumption of meat and basically

humans are going to need to reduce our consumption of meat and animal products by 90% in order to save the planet 90% is a lot so I am going to have a crack at.

Just to see. I'm going to try and live on a plant based diet. For five days of the week. When I get back to Limerick. Effectively a vegan diet. For five days of the week. You know why am I not doing seven because I just know myself from my own experience it's never wise for me to go complete if I adopt a new life a lifestyle change if I go into it 100% it's more likely that I will

give up after a while whereas if I gradually introduce myself to it then I have a greater chance of actually making a lifestyle change so that's the one thing I'm going to do for the environment meat consumption that's the one thing I'm going to do for the environment. Meat consumption is destroying the fucking planet,

mainly because of cattle. Climate change deniers will say, how can cattle be destroying the planet? They're animals. I thought this was man-made. How can animals destroy the planet? Well, cattle, first of all, cows, cows aren't real animals.

Cows aren't, cows are invented by humans. A cow doesn't exist in the wild. They're not a thing. There were wild, wild herds of things like cattle 10,000 years ago and we domesticated them into animals called cows and now the cows that we have are bred into these creatures that don't exist in nature

and all they do is eat grass and fart and the methane from their farts is destroying the planet it's creating greenhouse gases and this is observable and we don't need as much meat as we eat the big big problem with the western world is we are genuinely consuming far more than what we actually need across the board to the detriment of the planet or other human beings

like I said we don't need to be able to go into pennies and buy 10 pairs of trousers and for those trousers to need to be made are not specifically pennies but at any high street shop that has been accused of using sweatshop or slave labour. Okay, so not specifically pennies, just because I don't have the figures at hand.

A lot of high street shops have their clothes made in fucking Bangladesh in order for us to be able to buy them cheaply. And we don't need ten pairs of pants. order for us to be able to buy them cheaply and we don't need 10 pairs of pants what we need are one or two pairs of pants that are ethically made and of good quality fiber where you can trace the entire production so that it's ethical that's what we actually need and can get away with but capitalism and consumerism whereby since the end of the industrial revolution our happiness is tied up with what we can consume we think we need 10-20 pairs of pants and in order to have 10-20 pairs of pants they need to be cheap

in order for them to be cheap the corporations have to abuse people in the global south same with meat we don't need as much fucking meat as we eat we do not we don't need to eat two chicken breasts a day or a lot of beef but we do because it's tasty and our cavemen brains can't tell the difference our caveman brains will continually feed ourselves

because they think we're back in the paleolithic age and you've just actually caught a wildebeest and must must guard on it so i'm gonna have a crack at a plant-based diet for five days of the week by which i mean all i'm doing really is is those lads on youtube the lads from wicklow the happy pair i'm just going onto their page and looking at their recipes and going I could do that because the other thing too I'm viewing it as a challenge that I can take on and be positive about I love cooking

I really love cooking and then I started thinking Jesus when I cook with meat I actually make the it's making it too easy on myself if I make a spaghetti bolognese with just meat I actually make the... It's making it too easy on myself. If I make a spaghetti bolognese with just meat, half that tastiness is coming from the fact

that I'm fucking a lot of fatty mince into it. So if I take the mince out, I now have to creatively think on my feet with replacing that mince with lentils and carrots or beans, you know um when you're eating only plant-based diet you can't rely upon onions and stuff as much because they're too fermentable so you have to use foods that don't ferment in your stomach so i'm very much looking forward to the challenge of creating really nutritious healthy meals

that don't use any animal products whatsoever I'm looking forward to the challenge of that to the changes that it will have in me but as well I'm also conscious here's my issue

here's a little issue that I have with me and you But as well, I'm also conscious. Here's my issue. Here's a little issue that I have with me and you being, we say, taking individual responsibility for the environment, right? Like, I recycle the fuck. I'm very good at recycling. Now my next thing, like I said, is I'm going to try and eat ethically and keep it all plant-based in the interest of the planet. But my actions as one human being, it's really just, it's going to do fuck all.

Let's be honest. Me eating 90% less meat and fucking washing my milk bottles and making sure they're recycled, me doing that does fuck all. It's such a tiny impact. And one fear that i have about taking individual responsibility for the climate is that i don't want to take individual responsibility if it takes my eyes off the real picture the facts are the vast majority of damage that is that's being caused to the climate is being done by a small amount of corporations okay and i wouldn't be surprised

if these corporations are funding the kind of the push for us as individuals to start behaving ethically because it takes the pressure off them so if i start you know my recycling and i start eating properly i am absolutely going to have in my awareness that i'm not taking my eyes off those fucking corporations that's what the world needs to do i'm not saying don't behave ethically in your personal life, don't think about the environment. Absolutely do. Lead by example. Tell your friends about it.

Embrace the positives that can come about from a food-based diet. Because as far as I can see, it is all positives as well. When you switch your diet over to fucking only plant-based foods, when you switch your diet over to fucking only plant-based foods you've increased the variety of ingredients that you're using by about tenfold all these new flavors and foods and new nutrients and all of this only positives but when we do this we can take our eye off the ball there needs to be you need to we we're getting to the stage where you need to start fucking talking to your politicians about what what is ireland's you know what's ireland's situation with these companies that are environmentally not ethical we saw a

couple of weeks ago you know i was complaining about about Gillette. Gillette have put all this effort and money into letting us know how woke they are. Oh, look at us, we're Gillette, we make razors. We want to dismantle toxic masculinity. Meanwhile, our pairing company, Procter & Gamble, is not only abusing human rights, but devastating parts of rainforests. You know, as I said, Procter & Gamble are being accused of responsible for causing a species of orangutan to go extinct. So Procter & Gamble, through the use of palm oil,

first off, in order for the palm oil to be grown, entire forests, which are the lungs of the planet, taken away, decimated, palm oil put in its place, and then using slave labour to extractimated palm oil put in its place and then using slave labour to extract the palm oil so these massive corporations need to be held to account and here's where I see the positivity

all corporations give a fuck about is our money that's all they give a fuck about because over the past three or four years you know with we'll say things like feminism definitely becoming far far more visible and talked about a hell of a lot more in public forums and in the media than they would have been 10 years ago right becoming proper mainstream conversations that are creeping into every household because of these things because of stuff like me too because of you know serious

conversations around mental health and main male mental health it is clear to the corporations that we as human beings now really are interested and care about this stuff to the point that corporations are trying to performatively present their brand as all right everyone cares now about deconstructing toxic masculinity in order for gender equality then let's change our entire brand image to suit that so if that power exists what would happen if the conversation around the environment became so intense on social media that the corporations now genuinely have to compete with each other over who's the most environmentally fucking sound. Do you know? That's the solution to do it within current consumerist culture.

The possible chilling reality behind that is that if these companies become environmentally sound, they might not have a business model. Another thing that happens with the environment is corporations are able to abuse the environment because they successfully lobby governments in particular countries a lot of them in the global south they lobby these governments to allow these horrible practices to occur so speak to your TDs boycott there needs to be organised campaigns online

where the companies that are clearly fucking destroying our planet to the point that I don't even know how I'd feel about fucking having children if I decided to have children at some point introduce them to the world the way it's going to be in 50 years

like mass boycotts of companies that have a clear shit record and are destroying the fucking planet while virtue signalling to all of us about how woke they are. Fuck off.

So, yes, I'm going to have a crack at the plant-based diet thing. That's mainly for myself. I haven't seen what meat is doing to the world. If I sit down in front of a burger, I feel like a fucking dickhead. And that level of cognitive dissonance which is cognitive dissonance is when it's the part of our brain that kicks in when you

smoke a fag everyone knows that smoking fags is fucking terrible okay there is no positive argument for smoking fags other than when you're addicted they're kind of delicious okay cognitive dissonance is the psychological game that our mind plays on ourselves when we make excuses and it's a defense mechanism so now that i'm fully aware of what meat is doing to the planet if i sit down to a plate of spaghetti bolognese or if i sit down to a to a fucking burger i know it's delicious i love it it's fucking very tasty but my brain has to enact defense mechanisms every time i eat it and as somebody who all i want is happiness and the only way i can achieve happiness is that i have if i have decent mental health i can't have decent mental health if I'm using defence mechanisms every time I sit down to eat.

I speak about mindfulness. I like to eat mindfully. When I eat, I sit down and I say, I'm not going to have this meal now, wolf my way through it. Forget that I ate it. I'm not going to do that. I'm going to put time into preparing it, put time into cooking it and put time into eating it and I always do that as a mindful exercise I make sure I taste the first bite I make sure I chew it properly I make sure I kind of give thanks to how delicious it is I take notes of how I've cooked it,

could it be better the next time, I smell it, I mindfully consume my food, because that is a good practice for my mental health, and for to live in the here and now, I can't fucking do that, if I'm taking a bite out of my burger, and saying,

yummy, yummy burger, I wonder if the cow is farting me into oblivion. Do you know what I mean? So, again, yeah, that's the kind of, I suppose the selfishness behind why I'm trying to do the plant-based thing. I want to eat mindfully in the interest of my mental health

and that's not happening if my botanase is destroying the planet. So I'm going to do that, but I will not take my eyes off. This is, corporations are doing this, lads. Like, the facts are 71% of the global emissions that are destroying this planet, 100 companies are responsible for 71%.

100 companies, okay? And, like, most of them, to be honest, are petroleum. The worst company in the fucking world for destroying the environment is the Chinese love of coal. The Chinese are burning a lot of coal and it's 14% of fucking up the planet is the Chinese coal consumption. Second in line, Ar Aramco which is a

Saudi Arabian oil company then oil, oil, oil, Iran every single one of them is coal and oil, Russia fossil fuels oil, oil, oil, I'm looking through the list right here now because I pulled it up in front of me

yeah, it appears that yeah, the top 100 are all fucking oil and coal it's all fossil fuels so that's what needs to be fucking boycotted and that's a tough one of course but I don't know So that's what needs to be fucking boycotted and that's a tough one, of course. But, I don't know. I would be of the,

I would lean towards the opinion that there was a massive conspiracy going on regarding our dependence upon coal and our dependence upon oil. Like, I hate to be defending Elon Musk because he's an annoying prick but and he doesn't support fucking unions which I hate

you have to have fucking unions but at the very least Tesla is forward thinking in terms of energy consumption, maybe I'm wrong. If I am wrong, let me know. Because there's a lot of hatred for Elon Musk online. And I'm not fully sure what the hatred is about.

I can appreciate that he's not into unions. So fuck that. But I wonder if the hate towards him is disproportionate or not. Please let me know let me know if he is in fact the worst cunt in the world and the hatred is justified and it's not just begrudgery, I don't know but 100 corporations

are causing 71% of the global issues so me chained into a plant based diet doesn't make that much of a difference even though i'm going to do it anywhere i'm going to attempt it and me recycling same carry on we need to be focusing on corporations here if something's to be done that means talking to your tds and using the power of fucking online to organise boycotts if possible

what else are you going to do let the place burn Carrie asks how are you coping with all the female attention you're now getting particularly on Instagram where ladies are saying they want to ride your voice

and your long eyelashes do you know what so I had this I want to ride your voice and your long eyelashes. Do you know what? So I had this weird, this weird thing happen recently. So I've got an Instagram page, you know, and there's like, I've never really been able to use Instagram properly because I have a plastic bag on my head so if I'm out and about in Limerick I don't want to pop the fucking plastic bag on and then everyone knows who the fuck I am and take photographs of myself with the plastic bag on in public places

because that just creates hassle for my life as I've mentioned numerous times I wear a plastic bag so I can have a quiet fucking life and live a normal human life but this was affecting Instagram um and growing my Instagram my job effectively is you know being good at social media the more followers I have on social media then the easier it is for me to earn a living and to be able to tell people about my podcast or my book or my tv series so social media is quite important to me so one day about three fucking weeks ago no about a month ago I just happened to be in my hotel in Cork before the gig and I took a selfie near the window

and the only thing I have really because I have a bag on my head is my fucking eyes I have no other part of my eyes and my ears and I took a photograph near the window and normally I was getting like a thousand likes on photographs I was posting I was

just I'd post photographs of animals or screen grabs of tweets and I was getting about a thousand likes and then I posted a photograph a selfie and it got like 7,000 fucking likes and I was like what the fuck 7,000 likes and then all the comments were mostly women and some lads saying oh I really like your eyes I really like your eyes so I was like fuck me so if I post a photograph with my bag on and it's close up and my eyes are in it then this gets like 7 000 likes so I was like fuck it okay I'm gonna do this so I posted like three or four other photos that just are flattering to my eyes and they all got loads of likes too and then you get loads of followers so I'm deliberately doing what's known as I think it's called thirst trapping on Instagram which is where people just post photographs where they look nice and then other people like it so

it's thirst trapping so yes I'm deliberately thirst trapping on Instagram and I think it's kind of gas I think it's funny I enjoy I think actually it it says a nice thing about people when you have people going I like that photo of you I find it very attractive even though you have a bag on your head I think that's nice I think that's really

it reflects well on humans that's not really that superficial you know it's like wow you look really nice with that bag in your head and when someone means it I quite like that

and I am conscious about growing social media you know what I mean like I said it's my job so I do want to have lots of Instagram followers and I do want to have lots of Instagram followers and I do want to have lots of Twitter followers and lots of Facebook followers

but I also believe in trying to do that I don't know is ethically the word there's ways ways you you can you can grow your social media by acting like a prick and I don't want to do that. If posting a selfie of myself and people like it is a way to grow the page, then that sits comfortably with me. And if... Now, I'm not judging anyone, but... Sometimes, like, when people have Instagram pages and they just have these perfect bodies or look

absolutely gorgeous i understand the person who's doing that that's just their hustle and that's their way of doing it but sometimes when people follow it it can be quite kind of and it creates anxiety i don't want to shame the people that are doing it people are entitled to be proud of their bodies or if they you know if they look really nice or if they fit within what society deems as being physically attractive and they want to show that on instagram that's a hundred percent their business and more power to them and I'm not shaming those people but it can create look just ask people some people who use Instagram

they can find it very tough on their self image when they're continually seeing all this these standards of what society considers to be beauty and perfection so I'm alright with having a fucking bag on my head and posting a photograph

and if the only thing that's there is a set of eyes and people like them I don't think that's going to give anyone any any body issues the other thing too with social media I try and grow my social media through just having stuff that's actually nice and clickable

photographs of animals if I can stuff that's genuinely funny or makes people think or my own political opinions like the stuff I'd say on this podcast that I try and express that people like but there is shit

ways to get people to follow you on social media too mainly by being a contrarian and I often get in trouble with Irish kind of journalists sometimes for calling it out like let's just say I want to

see here's the thing with social media especially somewhere like Facebook it no longer matters whether people like what you're doing or dislike what you're doing so long as they're engaging engagement is what matters so if someone is saying you're good or someone's saying you're bad it doesn't matter. Let's take Facebook as the example. If someone simply reacts to that thing that you post, like if they want to say, I hate this, I disagree with this, or I love this post, each one of those people, because they've interacted with your post, it means that the Facebook algorithm will show them

more of what you're posting for the week so mission accomplished from the page's point of view so i'll give you an example now of a way that i could grow my social media but i won't do because i consider it harmful and unethical disingenuous right so let's just take a recent piece of news let's just say it's my facebook page so i would think of a hot button subject a hot button subject in ireland at the moment is immigration so and just a few days after christmas it was announced that 100 Syrian people um refugees I believe were located in Ireland so 100 refugees were located in Ireland now I'm genuinely happy about that I think that's a good thing that's we're compassionately taking 100 refugees and rehoming them that is a good thing

I agree with it and I can say this on the podcast because you can't really be clickbaity with a podcast you know this is my genuine opinion but let's just say I go to Facebook and I say so glad to hear 100 Syrian families or sorry so glad to hear 100 Syrians have been relocated in Ireland what do you think? If I post that on Facebook right, on my Facebook I can be guaranteed that's going to get 10,000 interactions and most of those interactions are

from, not from people agreeing with me but from people disagreeing with me. I would posit an opinion that I present as being virtuous and good so happy to see 100 Syrians relocated in Ireland

what do you think? what I'm actually doing is baiting angry racists of which there's a lot for them to come onto my page call me a prick then someone replies to their comment and says you

racist and all of a sudden now I have 600 separate arguments in the comment section where racists and anti-racists are fighting with each other writing big long comment threads it doesn't matter what they're saying because they're saying all of them are engaging with my page and because they're engaging in some way. Whether it's calling me a prick. Or agreeing with me. It doesn't matter. My page visibility.

Has now went up tenfold. And it will appear in all of their pages next week. That's a disingenuous way. That I would see for me. To grow my social media. I wouldn't be comfortable with that at all. So that's the type of stuff. and a lot of Irish sites do that at news sites in particular if they're running slow they will present this

opinion which baits contrarians and racists they don't moderate their comment section so then you have a comment section of pure and utter hate everyone gets furiously angry it's the digital equivalent of starting a riot and then selling everyone fucking bottles of water

afterwards after they get all tired out do you know what I mean? it's creating digital riots amongst angry reactionary people for the service of growing your own page so that when you do post a few articles later on they'll appear in people's feeds if you get me and the reason i have this opinion is like I've probably done that before unintentionally where I present a hot take on Facebook and then looking at the comments I'm going oh fuck I wish I wish I didn't say that the arguments in this comment section are fucking horrible and there's some stinking opinions going on here and these arguments exist because of something I posted and I don't want somebody who's affected by these arguments to see it

so I'm a lot more conscious now past couple of years to not do it and I try and reserve my hot takes for the fucking podcast I can hot take all I want on the podcast and because there's

my voice and tone and all these other things it's just there to be listened to but not to create a big massive fucking argument

you know shit stirring the current digital environment it really really rewards fucking shit stirring and if you have a big page and you're not going to moderate your comments you should sit back and really have a think about whether this shit stirring especially if the shit stirring is around marginalized groups of people whether you're improving your community you know that's what

I try and ask myself if am I shit if I'm shit stirring here is this going to breed an environment where horrible horrible things are being said about marginalized people and do i want to contribute towards that i don't i really don't that for me is i i don't agree with that way of growing social media and i won't do that i will happily post a fucking stupid photograph on my face with my eyes if that's what people want I will happily post a fucking stupid photograph on my face with my eyes if that's what people want. That's as far as I'll take it. But thankfully that's on the way out I think. That is classic clickbait.

And as I've mentioned before on this podcast. Clickbait is not a good thing. Especially when clickbait speaks about race social justice or gender these are subjects that should be spoken about with compassion and understanding and clickbait websites all around the world who position themselves as being pro-social justice and you know fighters for the causes of social justice and pro-gender equality and committed to ending racism they have spent the past six seven years on facebook deliberately presenting issues of race and gender in a fashion that simply baits rage in people who disagree with it.

Now, like I said, the articles themselves could be fine and well-written, and the person, the journalist who wrote that article could really care about what they're saying. But the way the headline is presented on Facebook is just to get people mad angry and to create division. And I think that's shit. When clickbait is used it like that it's really disingenuous and it causes quite a bit of harm but it's on the way out because if

you've been paying attention the past week two big perpetrators of this Huffington Post and BuzzFeed a huge amount of journalists were laid off now I'm not happy that journalists were laid off that's that's bad they were betrayed by their company they had to beg for money owed uh buzzfeed fired a bunch of people and then while those people were being hired or fired people who had actual jobs and salaries they advertised their positions as content fellows i think they were called a form of internship you know but to me it symbolizes because of the cambridge analytica scandal and the way facebook has changed its algorithm we are finally living in the age of the end of clickbait what we're going to move it towards which i think is isn't a bad idea more and more media publications are going to be behind a paywall which means that if you want to get your news

online from your favorite fucking newspaper you have to give them a tenner a month that stuff is becoming more and more normalized I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing I rather my journalism when it doesn't require clicks because then it can be more honest and journalism is really important so subscribing to fucking newspapers is a good thing because you're paying journalists to do the work

they're supposed to fucking do. How the fuck did I get on to that from a question about whether I'm thirst trapping on Instagram I am thirst trapping on Instagram

absolutely and follow rubber bandits official on Instagram because it's got 50,000 followers and I want to try and grow that up

properly to over the 100 mark like the Twitter and Facebook that's enough for this week I'm fucking wrecked I need to go to sleep and I have to be up in like

five and a half hours to shoot for a twelve hour fucking day I have a gig this month in when I get back to Ireland I'm doing four nights in the Sugar Club. They're sold out completely. There's a gig in Castle Bar in Mayo this month.

I don't know the exact date, but if you're in the Mayo region and you want to come to a live podcast and have a bit of crack, just Google Blind Boy Live Podcast in Castle Bar. I don't know where it is or when it is, but I'm sure Google will sort you out. Come along to that. I'll be back next week with... I'll have a hot take.

I'll have time to think of a hot take and to give you a hot takey podcast. Thank you for the questions this week. I was going to get through loads of them and I didn't I think I just answered fucking three of them but I enjoyed it considering I'm tired it was pleasurable

have a nice week be sound to each other, be compassionate to each other take on board that stuff I said about the fucking environment absolutely try and be the change in your own personal life okay, but on board that stuff I said about the fucking environment absolutely try and be the change in your own personal life okay but be cautious

that it is sometimes used as a distraction from the corporations that are really fucking the planet over eating tofu can make you feel happy yourself for the rest of the fucking day you gotta be keeping your eye on who the fuck is doing this

it's the big boys 100 of them only, only 100 all in the same fucking industry the energy industry pricks God bless, have a lovely week yart God bless, have a lovely week Yacht © transcript Emily Beynon Thank you. © transcript Emily Beynon Thank you. © transcript Emily Beynon Thank you. © transcript Emily Beynon Thank you. the visionary behind the groundbreaking Song Exploder podcast and Netflix series. This unmissable evening features Herway and Toronto Symphony Orchestra music director Gustavo Jimeno in conversation. Together, they dissect the mesmerizing layers of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring,

followed by a complete soul-stirring rendition of the famously unnerving piece, Symphony Exploder. April 5th at Roy Thompson Hall. For tickets, visit tso.ca.