The Blindboy Podcast - What is Mindfulness? With Dermot Whelan

Episode Date: February 16, 2022

Dermot Whelan is a comedian, presenter, and certified teacher in mindfulness and meditation. During this chat we have serious craic and speak about how mindfulness and meditation has changed both of our lives for the better. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rose the Sunday Goose you foolish owners. Welcome to the Blind Buy Podcast. Do you notice anything different about the sound this week? I hope you don't notice anything different because I am not recording this podcast in my studio. I am currently recording this podcast right now in my office. Now if you've been listening to the podcast over the past three weeks you'll know that I had great difficulty recording the podcast in in my new office because I'd gotten this space just for writing and research but the office was quite noisy. Outside my door there's an accountant who we've come to know as the barefoot accountant who walks up and down the corridor taking phone calls

and his voice was leaking into this office to the point that if I pressed record you'd be hearing him talk he's outside now can you hear him no you can't because I found a fucking solution I didn't have to speak to the barefoot accountant

I didn't have to ask him to adjust his day in any way. Here's what I did. A buddy of mine makes studios. So he came down and he put some sound paneling around the office. So what this does is that it helps the sound in here. It means that you're not going to hear any echoes or you won't hear the sound of the room, which is essential in order for me to give you an intimate podcast hug.

You just need to hear my voice. How did we stop the sound of the barefoot accountant coming in without speaking to the barefoot accountant? Here's what we did. We put a rubber seal around the fucking door. So there's now an airtight rubber seal around the fucking door so there's now an airtight rubber seal around the door no sound can get in or out also i'm using a thing called a limiter on my microphone so even if someone is talking and a little bit of sound gets in you won't hear it. So I'm unbelievably excited and happy to tell you I'm fucking recording this

podcast in my office and it feels incredible. Why does it feel incredible? Over the past two years exacerbated by lockdown, I had developed a desperately unhealthy relationship with how I record this podcast I had lockdown meant that I all sense of schedule and routine and normality had been removed from my life I was spending a huge amount of time at home we all were this was particularly bad for me because I'm I'm self-implied I I make my own schedule. I decide when this podcast gets made. But I'd gotten to a point where I was only recording this podcast very late into the night and it had gotten as bad as I would record this podcast at 12am and maybe finish it at 8am. Now this wasn't, this wasn't me procrastinating, this wasn't me being

lazy. I fucking love making this podcast. It was something more than that. I've mentioned in the past month I'm currently being assessed for autism or ADHD or something on the autistic spectrum there's a there's a strong likelihood that I am somewhat on the autistic spectrum or what we'd call neurodivergent now I'm halfway through assessment so this hasn't been confirmed yet and lockdown very much exacerbated some unhelpful behaviors that I have and time management, managing how I can focus was one of these things I was struggling with. So the reason I was recording the podcast at 12 a.m. is I would wait around for the feeling of at 12am is I would wait around for the feeling of inspiration to hit me, this strong feeling of I must create now and I'd lost the sense of control with it. I was no longer dictating my productivity, something else was dictating it and the relationship that I'd developed

recording this podcast, it was getting into the territory of addiction it was becoming as destructive as an addictive behavior now that sounds mad I got addicted to recording my podcast late what I mean when I compare that to addiction is that I had become completely powerless to this feeling right I would for months on end I would sit down at 9am in my studio and try to begin recording the podcast and I would sit there like a dickhead for maybe 12 hours getting nothing done trying really really hard to press that record button to begin speaking and I couldn't. I couldn't do it. This didn't impact my ability to research the podcast. I'd have days of research done. I'd know exactly what I wanted to talk about. I had to wait around all day until my brain decided now I would get hit with this

huge feeling of inspiration and focus really late at night and then I could record it. But the feeling of sitting around all day in front of a computer. So it's not laziness. It's not procrastination. It's not simply kicking myself up the arse and doing it. It's not even a desire to not want to do it. It was a complete inability to do something as basic as

press record and begin recording this podcast and it felt very shameful and it felt embarrassing and it felt like I was failing and I didn't say it to you because it was kind of embarrassing it's kind of embarrassing to try and sit at a computer for an entire day and do nothing until I learned that that that particular difficulty can be referred to as having difficulty with executive functioning which is a symptom of being neurodivergent a symptom of adhd or being on the autistic spectrum so the the pressure and strain of that and the unhappiness of that is what led me to seek assessment for neurodivergence along with a load of other reasons and the fact that i get contacted a lot by people who listen

to this podcast who are autistic or who are neurodivergent and they say to me blind boy i listen to your podcast a lot and you sound like you may be autistic have you ever thought about getting that checked out and the problem with recording the podcast and doing it all through the night is the next day then was a complete fucking write-off. I'm going to bed at 8am, I'm getting up at 5pm. It was ruining my week. It was making me incredibly unhappy. And the worst part is it was leaving me with an intense feeling of failure and shame. And then this was impacting my self-esteem and this was impacting my mental health as a result.

And my happiness levels for the past year were quite low. And I understand this probably sounds fucking mental. This probably sounds absolutely mad to you. But you have to believe me, it was completely and utterly outside of my control. No matter how much I tried to sit myself down and record, even when I knew what I wanted to talk about, I had lost all control and I felt powerless to whatever the fuck was happening with me.

I really, really felt powerless and it was causing me a great amount of upset. But now what this office has done for me is I get up at 9am. I have this separate space. It's clean. It's organized. I have a whiteboard and I write down what I'm going to do.

I'm getting up in the morning and either cycling into my office or now I'm running into my office because I have a shower here. I'm finishing my work at 5 p.m I'm leaving with this beautiful sense of achievement and accomplishment this is then having a knock-on effect on my self-esteem I'm returning to my regular levels of mental health because I have a fucking office where I go to and do my work in a disciplined fashion and I now have regained complete control over that part of myself that I had no control over. This type of shit is one of the reasons that I'm being assessed for neurodivergency. My sense of happiness and calmness and emotional regulation is very

heavily tied in with my capacity to hyper focus to focus on my passions and my abilities um i'm someone who can i can do a weekly podcast i could write a fucking book, I can do all of these things and I enjoy them and they come to me quite easily but when it comes to something as simple as scheduling my day, going to bed on time, keeping my studio tidy, taking basic responsibility for everyday things, that's the shit I struggle with, That's the shit I struggle with. That's the shit I struggle with. And lockdown made it particularly bad for me. Because lockdown was like when I used to have agoraphobia.

When I used to have agoraphobia I couldn't leave my house. And lockdown triggered quite a lot of that shit for me. It triggered feelings of intense helplessness and feelings of intense helplessness are what would drive me to a situation where I'm staring at my computer for 12 hours and I can't press that record button until the feeling hits me. At this office is sorting all that shit out for the first time in two years I'm feeling happy and confident and content I feel very very good at the moment lads and I can't believe it's 11am on a fucking Tuesday and I'm recording this podcast and I got a load of work done yesterday and I got a load of work

done over the weekend and my evenings are free to not work and I'm going to bed at a normal time and getting rest I feel fucking incredible so it's not just a simple case of a blind boy got himself an office I have done something very structured in my life that is returning me to who I used to be to the person I was before lockdown my happiness and my creativity is coming back as a result and now I have this office is where I get structured work done this is where I answer emails where I record the podcast and then my studio in my gaff that's that fun neon space where I relax where I do my twitch. Where I have fun and I play. And I have two separate spaces now.

And now my life feels like I have control over it. And also I just want to thank everyone who's a fucking patron to this podcast. Because. Offices cost money. Like I'm renting this office. So only because I have patrons and you're supporting me do I have the financial capacity to go I need to fucking rent an office I need to sort my shit out I need to do this so thank you to my patrons for making that possible I don't want to go into too

much detail about my autism assessment because like I said it's ongoing but like since I've begun the process there's multiple things about how I am and about my life and my life up to this point that I'm now viewing them through a new lens and you might be thinking Jesus blind boy how do you go your entire life possibly being autistic and then only in your 30s do you notice it and ironically the answer is called masking um autistic people can compensate especially autistic adults can compensate for autism through something known as masking which is putting great effort into behaving in a way that's perceived as normal and that's kind of how I am including my love and knowledge of psychology and psychotherapeutic theory and my use of mindfulness and CBT and transaction analysis

and emotional intelligence in particular. Sometimes I feel like I've put all this effort into psychology, not just as self-help, not just as self-help to become a better person, but to kind of learn to be human. The other thing too around masking is, since I'm in my early 20s, I've been in a job that perfectly suits my personality and my needs being blind by creating professionally for a living getting to focus only on things that I'm genuinely really really passionate about I'm very fortunate that that

happens to be my job so because of that because my environment suits me I'm actually quite happy and the issues that might present themselves if I am neurodivergent don't present themselves as aggressively because I'm in this environment where I get to do what I want to do on my own terms. However, if I was in a job I wasn't suited to, if I was working in an office with colleagues and would have to adhere to the nuances of social interaction, like back in fucking school, which I performed terribly in and was expelled from,

I'd have great difficulty, I would be a miserable person, I'd be absolutely, I would not be able to do that job, like I told you before, I had, the first real proper job I had was, I was working in a phone company, in a call centre, I lasted two weeks, and the reason I was fired was I was working in a phone company in a call center I lasted two weeks and the reason I was fired I was fired because I couldn't sit on my chair properly and I used the office printer to print out 92 pages about CIA crack cocaine smuggling in Nicaragua which I was reading while on the phone to people working in a call centre and I was reading it because the stress of speaking to that many strangers was overwhelming and this was the only thing that made it manageable and when they fired me I didn't even know any of that was wrong.

Another thing with autism is a thing called stimming which is a type of repetitive body movement that's used to regulate emotions and throughout my life I pace back and forth and rub my hands together as a way to when I'm thinking or when I'm anxious but this isn't just regular pacing I've paced so much that I've worn holes in carpets I have calluses on one of my hands because I rub my hands together so much and I do do this when I'm anxious but most of the time I'm doing it when I'm perfectly happy, when I'm thinking about an idea, when I'm thinking about a hot take and researching, I read something, I get up off my chair and I pace rapidly thinking about something and this

makes me feel fantastic. That may be what's called stimming. Another red flag is I was asked during assessment about my plastic bag, what's the plastic bag about? And there's an element of entertainment, but being honest, I have a fucking plastic bag in my head because I have social anxiety. I'm terrified of the idea of small talk and if you're well known or recognized your life is nothing but continual small talk with strangers all the time people come up and will speak to you and say I saw you on the telly I saw this I saw that and then you have to engage in small talk it could be perfectly friendly but that terrifies me and my plastic bag allows me to not have to deal with that I can pursue my passions I can be on tv I can write books I can do all these things I adore and love without any of it leaking into my private life when I'm just trying to buy

some carrots like one of the questions the psychologist asked me during my assessment right. Was how are you in places like barbers. And that set me off. Because I'm like oh fuck let me tell you about me and barbers. I'm terrified of barbers. I am terrified of having to engage in small talk in a trapped space. Because that's what a barbers is. You're trapped in the barbers chair.

And my fear of barbers had gotten to a point where I had designed an app right I had designed and formulated an app whereby before you go to the barbers you upload a photograph of your head draw in the haircut that you'd like so you have to avoid that bit where you tell the barber what type of hair you want because i freak out at that question i just say to him what i have now but shorter which isn't an answer i wanted to design an app where you upload your photograph of your head draw in the haircut then you have a box that you tick that says whether you want to talk or not and if the answer is yes I do want to talk you have a list of topics that it's okay to talk about and I was legitimately going to make this

app or see about trying to make it just so I could make my experience at the barbers a little less stressful now I didn't because I'm aware that that idea is fucking mad. I could also seen it being unethically exploited as a type of Uber for haircuts. I'm aware how ridiculous that is and I'm also aware that it's funny but I'm dead serious. I'm dead serious. That is where I had gotten with the barber conundrum. Now did I make the app? Do I do things like that? I don't. What do I do? I use cognitive behavioral therapy, mindfulness, grounding techniques and I go to the fucking barbers. I tell myself nor a divergent or not you gotta go to the fucking barbers. There's nothing bad is gonna happen and I use the tools that I have learned

to safely engage in small talk and I do it and I feel great for doing it because I know from my experience when you avoid things like that that's when the anxiety gets worse so I do it I go about my life as normally as possible I engage in small talk I speak to strangers I say hello to people I do all this stuff but it just requires from me this extra level of effort and thinking that other people don't have to do at all it just comes naturally to them it's instinctual it's not instinct for me it's effort and overcoming stress and then feeling good that i've done it so that's like a a neurodivergent red flag right there and what am i scared of in the barbers i'm scared that they ask me a question like what are you doing this weekend i don't know how to answer the question what are you doing this weekend? That really causes me a lot of stress.

I kind of freeze up a little bit. What I want to do is not answer that question. And then I'd like to talk about the history of pineapples for a solid hour at the barber. But you can't really do that in real life. You can't really do that. That's highly eccentric, not socially acceptable behavior depending on the relationship with the barber but that's that's not acceptable behavior but it's absolutely fine if you have a fucking podcast where people are listening so that they can talk about pineapples

for an hour and also using humor using humor and comedy can be a form of masking and I've managed to successfully turn that into a career like all that shit about the barefoot accountant the past two weeks I'm aware that that stuff is funny

I'm actually I'm delivering the story of the barefoot accountant as comedic entertainment and finding the humour in it because I enjoy that but at the same time I'm in my office loving the office and the biggest source of stress in my life is trying to figure out how do I speak to a man and ask him to put his shoes on and stop shouting in the corridor not because I'm scared of him but trying to figure out the rules of the

small talk and the social cues that that conversation could happen in that's the source of stress and then another another kind of red flag is how can I be so efficient and hard-working and obsessive and competent in areas like art creativity music learning about stuff reading about stuff speaking passionately about things I'm interested in how can I be very good at these things and then absolutely terrible when it comes to very basic life skills that we take for granted those things don't add up. So yeah, I might be neurodivergent, I might be autistic, I might be ADHD, I'm not sure. Or else, you know, I'm what I always thought I was, which is just a neurotypical person who gets pretty bad mental

health issues from time to time. But if I'm neuroddivergent I'm still the same person with all those mental health issues it's just the cause the cause for all my history of social anxiety may actually be a neurodivergent brain and that's what I'm trying to find out I've already spoken a bit too much about it I was kind of I was saving a lot of that for a later podcast when I get my full assessment. But this week's podcast isn't about that. This week's podcast is a live podcast I did recently with Dermot Whelan. Dermot Whelan is a comedian, a radio presenter. He's an author. He's written two books. He's written a book called Mindful.

He's written a children's book recently called Nanny and the Great Chocolate Mystery. Dermot also is a proponent of mindfulness. He trained in mindfulness and now he speaks about mindfulness because this is something that has had a transformative effect on his life. And me and Dermot sat down in Vicar Street and we had unbelievable crack. Dermot's also from Limerick. My first ever break that I got in television was on a TV show called Republic of Telly and Dermot was the presenter on this TV show and Dermot was a great help to me when I was starting off in TV because that was my first proper TV job. I was scared. I was in my

early 20s. I'm up in RTE. I don't know if I deserve to be there. And then there's this presenter at this TV show who's from Limerick, who's hilarious and sound. And we just had so much crack backstage, making each other laugh. That was very helpful to me. It made me feel like I belonged in television and this live podcast I almost didn't put it out and I tell you why so when I do live podcasts sometimes they're wonderful crack if you're there if you're in the audience and you're there on the night there's this real loud energy but that energy sometimes doesn't work as a podcast that I put out here because the energy is quite different to a podcast hug so this live podcast that you're going to hear it's a different

tone a way different tone to what I normally put out the first half is quite high energy a lot of jokes a lot of laughing a lot of participation. And then the second half is much more introspective. That's when we speak about mindfulness and meditation. And I nearly wasn't going to put out the first half because I'm like, who wants to be listening to two people roaring and shouting in Vicar Street? But I listened back and I laughed so much listening back

that I said, fuck it. I got to put this out. It's too funny. I got to put this out. Darmot is fucking gas. So the first half is high energy. And then the second half is much more introspective. When me and Darmot speak about mindfulness, meditation and mental health.

And I hope you enjoy this fucking podcast. Also, Darmot's on tour at the moment you can go to DermotWheelan.com if you want to see his tour dates but he's doing

the Mindful tour he's in the Helix that's sold out 20th of February he's in the University Concert Hall in Limerick he's in the Town Hall

up in Galway on the 27th go to DermotWheelan.com and check out his tour dates and go along to one of his gigs and I hope you enjoyed

this live podcast as much as I enjoyed being there on the night doing it. Take off my hat because it's a bit formal Why is that always funny? Do you know why it's funny? And I've figured it out man every time I take

my hat off. I'll tell you why. Because usually when a hat comes off a head, you get the natural resistance of scalp and hair. And when I do it, you don't. And the only context that we have is like post-coitus floppy Mickey. You know what I mean? You're pinching the reservoir. Who decided that?

Whose job was that? It's a condom. What do we call the top? The reservoir. Reminds me of a fella I knew called Sean when I was 14. And Sean... He could be in the audience the audience, he's living in Dublin. Sean from Limerick, you're not living in the audience, are you? Five of them.

But anyway... I remember we were 14 and no one had even... If one of us saw a fanny, we'd look for a plaster. It was that, we were that young. And no one really knew what sex was or anything like that, you know. And Sean turned around and goes, when I have sex with a girl,

I'm going to piss inside her so she thinks I've loads of cum. And you're like, Sean, why do you want her to think that? Who told you that that's what women are interested in? He had a fucking TK lemonade bottle full of cum inside in his nuts.

So that's who named the condom. Sean **** or someone genetically related to him who's like, no, no, no. You need to call the top of the condom the reservoir so that the man thinks he has loads of cum. Because what do you keep in reservoirs? Legs. So, my guest tonight,

it's Dermot Whelan, radio presenter, man from Limerick, gas cunt from Limerick. I'll be honest with you, because my first ever, ever gig on television was the Republic of Telly, which you were the presenter of. And it was just a lovely, lovely feeling to be like making shit in my bedroom, making fucking YouTube videos and stuff, and then getting the call of you're on RTE. And that being terrifying, because it's like I'm up from Limerick up to Dublin. Dublin was like a very frightening place full of Vikings and stuff and I had no idea what Dublin was I was going to the window of Arnott's and getting panic attacks at the side

of a colour television but like it was a lovely calming feeling to go into the Republic of Italy studio and be like holy fuck you're on TV it was a lovely calming feeling to go into the Republic of Telly studio and be like holy fuck you're on TV

and it's like there's a limerick lad across the way do you know what I mean and we'd go backstage and just start shouting limerick things at each other

it was it was a brilliant time the Republic of Telly because we used to shoot it on a Sunday night yeah and there wasn't very many people

in RTE on a Sunday. No. So it was kind of like all the teachers had gone home and we had the place to ourselves. And there were just so many creative heads just hanging around at that time. Yeah. And just all busting our balls to get this weird show done.

I always think a TV show is good if you can't describe what it is. Yeah. Because it was just an amalgamation of new acts and new talent and just slagging every TV show we could get our hands on. And the thing about it as well, I don't think we realized it at the time, but it was a really, really important piece of TV

because it's the last thing of an era. If you're a young comedian now and you're making shit on the internet and you're trying to get noticed, you can't really go further than that in Ireland. The way TV has gone, there's no Republic of Telly. The way TV has gone, there's no Republic of Telly. Like, the most important thing Republic of Telly did for me was, I'm in the undisciplined environment of making comedy for the internet. Then it's like, you have to make five minutes of television and it's out on Monday and you have a week to write a script and you have to show up here and you have to work with camera people

and sound people and you're just thrown into the fire of the professional environment. And yet, it's like going, one week was like being in college for four years of just being thrown into it. And what it did for me is you get the confidence. So it's like when someone gives you a TV gig or you get your first gig on stage,

you don't feel like you deserve it. Everyone has a little bit of imposter syndrome. And then doing that was like, fuck it, maybe I do deserve it because these people around me are so professional and they're taking me seriously, so maybe I should take myself seriously. And that gave me the confidence then whereby when I was getting phone calls off Channel 4 or BBC to write TV,

I might have said no. I might have chickened out. I might have said, no, I'll fail. I'm not going to do it. But that little stepping stone of Republic of Italy gave me the confidence to at least try. And it doesn't really exist anymore. Do you know what I mean? Younger comedians don't have the entryway into dipping your feet into the water,

having a little go of it, you know? Yeah, it's funny. I'm trying to remember, was the rubber bandit sketch you did first, the cookery with the yolks? Yeah, we did that live in studio. That's one of those moments where I was sitting there in my little suit.

That was the first time yolks was said on Irish television. Yes. And, oh! Willie or Dee had to go on to the radio. Next day, we're all on Joe Duffy. Joe Duffy asking him if he knows what fucking yokes are. But, like, you're right. It's a strange time for comedians.

Because I suppose that time, was it? Ten years ago. That was ten years ago, yeah. And the normal path for a comedian is you write five minutes, you get up on a stage, you die in your hole, and then it all begins. Yeah. And so then you do your stage miles,

and then eventually you hope that you might get noticed enough to get onto a panel show or something like the Republic of Telly. The days of the panel shows, yeah. There was Don't Feed the Gondolas and shit like that. That was good crack, that was. But now, I suppose, people don't have to do comedy clubs anymore to do that.

But then again, at the same time, people aren't watching regular television the way we used to watch it even ten years ago. No, it's different now. It's hard to build a TV audience or else you get put online onto the RTE player. I love watching

10 ads in a row. The RTE player, they've scripted it using Awam. The RTE player was so bad, man. Using it was like peeling a lemon the way you'd peel an orange. Do you know the way? Do you know the way?

You know the way you... But you know what I mean? You'd peel an orange and you're like going, I know what's going to happen here, right? There's going to be... It's an orange. It's an orange. There's going to be a little bit of spray. There's a fragrance

to it. I enjoy it. I'll wash my hands afterwards. You're not fucking doing that with a lemon. There's a fragrance to it. I enjoy it. I'll wash my hands afterwards. You're not fucking doing that with a lemon. Because the skin is too thick. You could have a go of it if you let your fingernails grow a little bit. I'm not fucking peeling. I'm not peeling a lemon like an orange because it's going to explode in my face and hurt

my eyes. That's what the RTE player is like. But they sorted their shit out over the pandemic. I don't want to be too harsh on them. You can use it functionally as a thing to view content now. There was a feeling though maybe if you were using it you felt like a time traveller

because the same ad would keep so that you would keep going back in time by roughly 35 seconds. So you watch something and go the VHI looking after your family. The VHI

looking after your family. I think the problem was though, it wasn't necessarily... I didn't mind how many ads that it had. It was the fact that well, it wasn't necessary. It was, I didn't mind how many ads that it had. It was the fact that, well, the ads run perfectly. Why doesn't the TV show run perfectly? You're able to do something right, you greedy Dublin cunts. Do you know what I mean?

And that's the experience you had at home. But they fixed it now. It's better now. Sorry to the RTE player. I was, well, we were talking Charlie High backstage. I told you a story I can't say and I can if I change

the person's name yeah he told me a story about the time he pissed on Charlie High his crotch you're in the right territory it's not Eamon Dunphy but we're in that region

much more respectful so this this was, Charlie Hockey was in power and this fellow who would be a big media personality, a brash man. He was in the Jacks.

What's that old posh hotel that they used to have in Dublin? The Burlington, was it? Yes, yeah. Yeah, back... The Burlow. The Burlow, yeah. They used to have,

what was their, in the 80s, they used to have silver cutlery and people would come up from Limerick and steal it and sell it in the market. Come up and just look at it. The fox in the bag, you go.

The fox inside in the bag, you go. But... So he went into the toilet and saw Charlie High, who was Taoiseach at the time. And as he's taking a piss beside Charlie High in the urinal, I can't say urinal on the stage in Vicar Street, I can say it anywhere else, the urinal, so he was pissing into the urinal and as he's doing it he decides to start getting

into an argument with Charlie about what he was doing to the country and it got so heated that he just turned around and pissed all over Charlie Hottie's crotch. And then Charlie Hottie had to walk out of the Jacks. And it's like, did you piss yourself, Charlie? It's not my piss, though.

Imagine having your crotch destroyed with piss and it's someone else's piss. Everyone's picturing Eamon Dunphy still, aren't you? No, you're telling me Glenn Whelan should never have played Dunphy. It wasn't Eamon Dunphy.

It was in that territory. I'd love to tell you who it was. I'll murder him and come back the next time and tell you. But the... murder him and come back the next time and tell you. But the... You're after getting in... That was me being mindful.

Because you're after... See there, that's called a sig. A segue. But it's spelt sig, which I never understood. Yeah, yeah. Segue is... Segue as in Seag, which I never understood. But the... Is it? Yeah, yeah, Segway is...

Like, if you... Segway, like, as in, like, a transition from... Like, there, I was like... I took this stage vape that's part of the theatrical act. I went like this. And then I said, I'm smoking it mindfully. And that was a Seag into asking you about mindfulness.

You're just making me think of other words that are spelt weird now. Like I discovered today two things. You know, it piqued my interest. Go on. Is P-I-Q-U-E-D. Fuck off. Had no idea. Why is that?

Does anyone know the etymology? Are there any etymologists in the audience? Which is something you don't want if there's been an accident. This woman is bleeding to death. Is there an etymologist in the audience? It's actually haemoglobin. Haemo from the Greek, they're dead. I remember my dad used to say that to me

when I was, they'd buy a steak you know, and the steak would be there dripping, sweating red and I'd be like, I'm not eating that, there's loads of blood on it, and my da would go it's hemoglobin you prick because it's not blood, it's hemoglobin you prick

but yeah, peaked. Is it related to the word piquant? P-I-Q-U-A-N-T, which I believe means... Piquant is a... Spicy? Is it a flavour that's kind of notable? Anyone know what piquant means? Sharp.

Did someone say tart or sharp? A sharp taste. So it peaked. Piquant means? Sharp. Did someone say tart or sharp? A sharp taste. So it peaked. Piquant. I think he plays left back for Arsenal. If I was eating something, like an olive, if I was having a crack at an olive for the first time, I'd be like, oh, how piquant. It peaked my interest. Yeah. So what other words have we got that? Well, it wasn't really a word.

It was, you know that song Down Under by Men at Work? I do. It was the first album I ever got as a kid. Oh my God. But a choice. Was this something you consented in was this something you wanted I wanted to get an album

but you know at age nine I didn't have quite a large knowledge of the music industry I can see actually that's

you know what do you come from a land known under maybe you gotta put a bit of respect to that song like it's one of those ones where like

you hear it so many times you lose respect. But, like, no, fuck that, man. Hold on a minute now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, my older brother took me to what was the Virgin Megastore at the time, which was a massive record shop on the Keys. That they started to sell condoms in. First place you could buy a condom in Ireland with a reservoir.

Yeah. Yeah. in first place you could buy a condom in Ireland with a reservoir yeah and my older brother said look I'm gonna get you an album what do you want and it was like all the top ten or whatever and I couldn't take the pressure I started to get upset so he said what you want I went that one because it's quite it's bright yellow okay I got the yellow album. But that song was on it, and so began the lifelong love for Men At Work. Don't tell me you went down the Men At Work rabbit hole.

Well, I've... It's an Australian reggae song about being in Australia. Yeah. It's an Australian reggae song about being in Australia for an Australian audience where they're asking the Australian people if they come from Australia and are currently there.

It's like, do you come from a land down under? Well, you're there. So, under what? Who is this far? Was it directed at the Northern Hemisphere, is what I'm asking. It was a very subtle immigration check. They were just friendly, you know. Do you come from a land down under?

No, actually. Get out. But there's a line in that song where he goes, he just smiled and gave me a NNS sandwich and the lyric I always thought it was he just smiled and gave me a bit to my sandwich and I spent decades wondering why was the other guy giving him a piece of his own sandwich how somehow control had shifted and he was now in charge of

the sandwich and he had to be rationed out in tiny pieces. But actually the real lyric is he just smiled and gave me a Vegemite sandwich. And I just found that out today, 40 years later. Has anyone here emigrated for a little bit? No? No. That's it. They stay there, don't they? They don't come back. It's really weird. It's pure Van Diemen's Land shit, man. Have you got

friends who went to Australia, surely? I have a brother there. My brother's lived in Australia since the early 80s. Right about the time I got that album actually so he was trying to get it into your head I'm leaving Limerick I'm going to Sydney

yeah he's been there for that long and he's still there so like if you look at the history of Ireland like emigration in particular, so in the 50s,

it wasn't strange to literally say goodbye to a family member forever. Like literally, they're going to Philadelphia. Bye. I don't know how to use a phone. See ya. Forever. You're dead, but not really. You're in the purgatory of America.

And that was normal. And Australia is still the place where it's a bit like that. It's so fucking weird. It's a really sad thing. People in this audience now, if you're in your 30s and you remember the fucking recession.

How many people here lost someone to Australia? Yeah, yeah. And it's a weird feeling because... They sound quite happy that they're gone. Oh, fuck, yeah. Oh, fuck, they are. But... Because we hate hearing how they're getting on.

Hiya. No, it's actually... Yeah, it's actually too hot here at the moment. Because, like, our Christmas is the summer, and you're like, seen you wearing an offaly jersey down on Bondi. We know what you're doing. Worse than

that, man. I'd be chatting to buddies there and they'd be like, I don't have electricity bills. And I'm like, what do you mean? I fucking sell my electricity to the government. What are you talking about? There's so much sun that I have a solar panel and I don't even need the electricity. I sell it and I make money from it, from my roof.

My roof makes me money. What are you doing? Do you know what I mean? But like, people go to Australia, it's the moment your friends, you get a Christmas pint once every three years. Like the people who move to Canada,

I see them twice a year, that's fine. The Australian, the ones who go to Australia, once every three years, Like the people who move to like Canada, I see them twice a year. That's fine. The Australian, the ones who go to Australia, once every three years and then they come back and they snake in a little good day. And it's like you're back in Limerick and you know at that point you've lost them. They're saying good day and then all of a sudden they start caring about the Australian rugby.

And they're gone. Their minds, and it's like that song. Their minds are just canonized and they're there forever. We used and it's like that song. Their minds are just canalised and they're there forever. We used to live in fear of the Christmas phone calls, which is where my brother would ring the house phone. And it would cost you money. And...

Yeah. And it would cost us even more money because when he went to Australia, he didn't get an Australian accent. He just started talking way slower, but going up at the end of his sentences. No! So, you know, if you watch Home and Away, it's all, oh, I can dance to Suf Club, oh yeah, great.

So he still had a limerick accent. So he would be, Hi, Dermot. Is Christmas going well? Now, couple that with an 80s phone delay. We'd all be, you know, Oh, okay, I'll pass you on to your brothers.

And we'd all be like, no, no. It was about two seconds of a delay. It was New Year's Day by the time they'd get off the bloody phone hey Dermot how are you 15 minute delay great

oh we lived in fear of it the fucking the limerick accent with a little inflection at the end are you getting a bag of chips? Are you from Ask Eton? Whereabouts in Limerick are you from? I'm from Bally Clock.

Bally Clock. Holy fuck. Did Bally Clock get some sympathetic cheers there? Are there people from Bally Clock? You're not from Bally Clock. I don't believe't believe you're just being polite they're being polite they're going there's the name of a place we better better show some representation it was your average we didn't have it there was no shop well there was for a while there was a butcher shop but that was also a sweet shop oh yeah which was you know when you're like eight and you all you want is sweets that's it and you remember those

golf ball chungums they were great I just love the word chungum it's all one word and if you chewed it and then you spat it would look like bird shit but I remember the

butcher had obviously his shop across the road which was a converted garage yeah and but he also sold

penny sweets so he'd be serving chops you know and cutting meat and sausages Jesus Christ and

the wasps would be in there you'd have golf balls with hemoglobin on them yeah don't mind the wasps so then he'd finish up and go alright Mary good luck would be in there. You'd have golf balls with hemoglobin on them. Yeah, don't mind the wasps. So then he'd finish up and go,

all right, Mary, good luck. And then you go, can I get 20 golf ball chungums? And then, so the meat hand

would go into the, she didn't care. It was just like, there was a, in a village up in Tip where my ma comes from and Tip is called Tipperary by the way. But

they had a sweet shop right and so the sweets used to be in the front window and they were the sticky sweets and the sun would be coming in so the sweets would be like warm and sticky but then the owner used to let the cats sleep on the sweets. So you'd go to the shop, and it's like, can I have an apple drop?

But, like, you'd move the cat. And removing the cat from the apple drops, and they'd be stuck to the cat's chest like fucking sugary sweet nipples. And then the other sweets were that do you remember the mice do you remember the lovely mice that were 5p yeah so the shop owner used to reach into the fucking mice and eat all the tails and then and then the family the family of this fella who owned the shop, right, the circus came to town once, so the circus came to town, and one of his sons, I don't think, I think even though they owned the shop, I don't think they had a lot of money, whatever, probably because he was eating the tails and the mice and

letting the cats sleep on the suites, but anyway, the son, like, robbed the circus, right? And ended up robbing a lot of clothes, right? But the family used to go around wearing clown's pants. And the dad turned up in a clown's shirt, just taking all these free clothes that they got from the circus. Yeah. You don't get that shit anymore, man. Not with this 5G around the place and stuff. Bring back that.

You see that, those people going, I want Ireland the way it was. I want Ireland the way it used to be. What, fucking cats sleeping on sweets? Getting a box into the face off the priest? I'm just picturing the poor kids trying to play a gam match in the clown's shoes. Well, we had Sizzlers,

which were a brand of shoe that I wouldn't recommend to anybody. What the fuck were Sizzlers? Sizzlers were... Was that the actual name of the shoe brand? Yeah, it was the cheapest option. I can't remember what... I don't know if it was pennies or the actual name of the shoe brand? Yeah, it was the cheapest option. I can't remember what... I don't know if it was pennies or...

What constituted the sizzle? Where'd they get those balls? They were like own brand runners. But within about 20 minutes of wearing them, the sole would just gradually peel away so that it flapped like a dog's tongue, basically, as you tried to run around would you have called them tackies?

I'm not sure if I ever said tackies I think my mother might have given out to me for saying tackies that's because it was a Limerick City thing do you know, speaking of etymologies so Limerick is the only place in Ireland where we refer to runners as tackies

to the point that because I'm the type of person that comes up to Dublin I've stopped saying tackies because it's just caused so much hassle like what are you talking about? my shoes you mean your runners

no they're tackies so in Limerick we call them fucking tackies right and I as I travelled outside of Limerick I was just like what the fuck is this why only in Limerick are we calling them tackies? That's weird. I need to find out what this is about.

And I found out there's only two places in the world that call them tackies. Limerick and Cape Town in South Africa. Yeah. So what happened was, right, in the 70s some priest it was in Balinanti Church

some priest fucked off down was in Balinanti Church, some priest fucked off down to South Africa on a mission. Back in South Africa they were just starting to wear runners, but it's so hot that the rubber shoes would stick to the ground and make it, it'd be pure tacky. So in South Africa they started

calling them tackies. And then when he came back to Limerick, runners started becoming a thing that people were wearing in the 70s and he banned them from the church. So he started going, no one's allowed in here wearing tackies. And that's where the word tackies comes from in Limerick.

It's true! It's true! I still like the idea of him being sent to South Africa on a mission. Yeah. I think there were a lot of priests in the 70s. I know, yeah. Who got sent on missions. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tackies.

So you don't want to talk about mindfulness? No, no. I'd love to talk about it. I'm just not really sure how we ended up going to the other place. We did a siege. Hold on, I'm trying to see what time it is now. Hold on. What time did I come on stage? Because we were... I didn't come on stage at 8 o'clock.

Will you stop, love, will you? I didn't come on at 8 o'clock. 8.50, love? Will you? I didn't come on at 8 o'clock. 8.50. 8.50, did I? So that's been 40 minutes. It's 21... I'm shit at numbers, lads. 21.

21 is 9. I'm that bad. I'm that bad. Is this time for an interval? Do you want... So I have to have an interval in this, right? Because of the COVID starts, it was all fucked up. And would you like a pint and a piss now?

All right. We'll have a little interval now when we come back in maybe 15 minutes. Is that all right? Dog bless. And what a perfect opportunity for us to have a little interval too. Because I think it's time for the ocarina pause. We don't have the ocarina this week we've got the grinder of perfectly legal

herbs I'm going to grind this grinder and you're going to hear an advert for something on April 5th you must be very careful Margaret it's a girl witness the birth bad things will start to happen evil things of evil.

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

Hey! Movie of the year. It's not real. It's not real. It's not real. Who said that? The first O-Men. Only in theaters April 5th. 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 host the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game and you'll only pay as we play come along for the ride and punch your ticket to rock city at torontorock.com you would have heard an advert there i don don't know what for. They're algorithmically inserted into the podcast by Acast. Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash theblindboypodcast.

This podcast is my full-time job. This podcast is how I earn a living. I adore making this podcast. I love making this podcast. I earn a living. I adore making this podcast. I love making this podcast. If you're enjoying it, if you listen to it regularly, if you're taking something from the podcast, please consider paying me for the work that I'm doing. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month. That's it. All right. If you can't afford that, if you're out of work, don't worry about it. You can listen to this podcast for free. But if you can't afford that, if you're out of work, don't worry about it. You can listen to this podcast for free.

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and telling people about it and leaving reviews, that's all really important tiny bit of housekeeping I've got some live gigs, if you're enjoying this podcast with Dermot Whelan that's an example of the type of crack that we have in Vicar Street and I've got three Vicar Streets coming up in Dublin in March and that in April March and April

three Vicar Streets look them up on Google come along to those gigs they're going to be unbelievable crack because of Covid I only have a short amount of time to promote those gigs so please do come along if you're considering it it'll be lovely midweek fun also Cork two of my Corks are sold out, the Opera House and St Luke's there's one St Luke's left where tickets are available also I'm in Castle Bar

in Mayo at the end of this month, at the end of February, come along to that and then of course check out Dermot's Live Gigs at DermotWheelan.com let's get back to the crack. It's a great smell of booze and fags now. Yeah.

Isn't there a lovely smell of cigarette after just wandering in on the back of people's jumpers? Yeah. That's great though. Actually, yeah, that only happens. What is that about winter? What is it about? You never bring in the smell of summer into a house, but you always bring in the smell of winter, don't you? Yeah.

I used to have a friend when we were teenagers. We used to sneak up to the golf course to have cigarettes in the evening time. And we had a schedule. We'd watch Home and Away, go for a dump, and then we'd meet and go up to the golf club. But, you know, we were so paranoid about bringing that smell. What age? Surely you were children. No, like 15 or something. Okay.

Why the golf club specifically to smoke cigarettes? Because there was a hut off the first team. Ah, okay. So you could sit in there and talk about girls. But he used to... His mother had... My dad used to smoke. What did he smoke?

I could stick Marlboros into my ears. Your dad smoked Marlboros? No one would notice I was smoking. Your dad smoked Marlboros? No, he was John Player Blue. Basically gravel in a tube. Yeah. Yeah. Basically gravel in a tube. Yeah. Jesus, it's been a long time since I've had a John Player, man.

Yeah. That's the 50th year was the last time I had a John Player. Do you know what I mean? Fuck me. Who smokes John Player now? Hard men. No, I don't. I think it's grannies.

Do you not think it's John Player. No, I don't. I think it's grannies. Do you not think it's John Player? No, no, actually, John Player is a grand fag.

Rothmans is the granny fag. It's people, you know, that I have a huge respect for,

you know, that liked lads who loved 80s haircuts and wore those glasses that were

kind of looked like they were nicotine stained. Oh, yes. And they didn't change since the 80s. They're still going.

They spoke Johnny Blues. Those lads. The equivalent of that now is lads in the bootcut jeans and the shorts like it's 2006. Just walking around the place as this vestigial specter of the Celtic tiger just walking around the place as this vestigial specter of the Celtic tiger, just walking around reminding us all of property developers and stuff like that.

Oh, the boot cuts on a rainy night. They're coming back and it's terrifying. There were people who never made it home from a night out because of the weight

of the wet denim. Do you remember me wearing them and it's like, my shin is wet? And you're real. It's like, I didn't. There was no puddles.

And then it's the capillary action. All the way up the shin. These pants are too small for me. They look like, I thought I was getting fashionable pants, but they're actually too small. So it's like I'm doing the, can you see them there?

The pants blocks are in front. They're like those 1996 flood pants that Bjork used to wear. He's up on stage dressed like Bjork. So anyway, so my friend was so paranoid about the smell of fags bringing it home that he used to wrap his hand in cling film.

Oh, for fuck's sake. And then he put on a yellow marigold rubber glove. To smoke. And then he'd smoke with that hand. Forgetting that his entire jacket and his hair stank of cigarettes golf court what about the poor cunts playing golf in the evening who's that child with the yellow hand

what's wrong with him my god he's only done half the washing up do you remember My God, he's only done half the washing up. Do you remember? Major. That's not even, that's a memory cough. I'm vaping.

Remember Major, man? You'd smoke them if you wanted to come off cigarettes. If you were a child, back in the days when children used to smoke, thankfully it doesn't happen as much anymore, but like I was nine and like you'd smoke cigarettes and everyone else would smoke cigarettes. And this is what you did when you were a child. You smoked cigarettes. And then we used to say to each other, I wonder if that's where the government COVID shit comes from. Cause we used to tell each other as kids, oh, you can't get addicted if you're a child. You know, we used to say that to each other. No, don't worry, you're a child.

You can't get addicted. And then one lad we knew, Enda, who used to hide his cigarettes in a hedge. Enda got addicted once and we didn't know what to do. And then my buddy Damien was like, how do we get Enda off the cigarettes? He's only 10.

And someone found out that he had to steal Major from someone's grandfather. So Damien went and robbed Major from his granddad in that weird broad packet that Major was in. And Enda had to go into his fag hedge and smoke all the Major. And this apparently would have been enough to get rid of the spectre of addiction. It didn't work.

Oh, that's so sad. You used to have the small... Who remembers the small friend from the cigarettes? Do you remember that? The small friend because he's smoking since he's six with children with yellow hands. Yeah, but especially there were different ways you could hold a cigarette.

Oh, yeah. Which was directly proportional to how hard you were consuming. So if you just held it normally, you know, like your mother, you'd get beaten up. No, forget about it. But if you were, and that's why Major were so good, because they were shorter. Yeah, and still cut red.

Yeah. You could flip the cigarette around so that the burning part was now facing towards the palm of your hand. So even though you were in terrific pain, because it was essentially giving you Padre Pio stigmata, as long as you could smoke it like that, where the cigarette was concealed, effectively.

And then it was all about how much of a Clint Eastwood squint you would give it on the way out. Like, each suck was agony. You were willing to put yourself through it. For the sake of being hard.

Then you'd have the interesting phenomena in the winter time so the lads that have all the puffy jackets they're back now as well but you'd have the lads in the puffy jackets and so they'd be smoking a cigarette like that and having it well concealed in the hand but it used to they'd be in school like so they'd walk across the yard like that with the cigarette concealed but it led to a an epidemic of smoking collars so you'd see someone in a puffy jacket and all this smoke rising from their ears because they're so brilliantly being hard and concealing the cigarette like that that it's just going up that like that they look like suicide bombers. Like failed suicide bombers. It's like it didn't go off.

I was given for my christening a cigarette box. Which had Dermot Valentine written on it. Yeah, Dermot Valentine. Why? Well, because that's my middle name. Do you know what? St. Valentine's heart

is like across the road. Like you're named after St. Valentine. Sure he wants it back. I swear to fuck. Over in Christchurch, which is like there, they've got St. Valentine's heart in a box.

Man. As part of the performance art, we bring the entire of Vicar Street, kick in the door of Christchurch. Kick in the door of Christchurch. Cut open Dermot's chest and insert the heart of St. Valentine and every one of us will smoke a major over his corpse.

Ring the Daily Mail. That'd be a good way to go. Imagine what that would do for the news cycle for a year. Imagine that. Did you hear how Dermot Whelan died? Cut open his chest and inserted the heart of... Willingly. He wanted to do it.

Where's the rest of them? Decomposed. Like, what have they... You know it's there, like, for real. You can imagine his pancreas sitting in another part of the church going, no one wants to look at me. They're mad, though, with the fucking... The relic business.

The relic business. So there's St. Valentine's heart, and then there's someone's head floating around, isn't there? Oliver Plunkic business. So there's St. Valentine's heart and then there's someone's head floating around, isn't there? Oliver Plunkett. Plunkett's head.

Did he become a saint? He did. Yeah, so they have his like... If you've ever seen it, it's really small which means he obviously smoked major as a child.

Oi, Oliver! Any fags Oliver Oliver Plunkett's tiny head which is an indie band waiting to happen so there's St. Valentine's Heart and then I spoke before about Christ's foreskin

Christ's foreskin was a huge relic all through the medieval times. Like there was competing foreskins of Christ's. Different churches in Europe would have Christ's foreskin and they'd be like, this is the real one. This is the real one. And the church had to come, like they couldn't deal with it. Because the thing is, if you've got St. Valentine's heart, right, you're like, well, he was a real lad. He was a person. He was just a, you know,

he did a couple of miracles and we kept his heart. You can explain that. But Christ ascended to heaven. So you can't like just cut the top of his dick off when he's a child and then have it lying around.

If this is the case, the Bible itself crumbles. So the church had to come out. This is real. The church had to come out and go, right, first of all, you've got three foreskins, lads. So one of you is taking the piss. Because they were competing all over Europe. King Charlemagne started it. And do you know what the church had to say?

Okay, here's the deal, lads. Yes, his top of his dick was cut off because he was a little Jewish boy. But his foreskin wandered the earth for 33 years. And then when he died, it ascended with him and became the rings of Saturn. That's the actual church explanation. So when you look up at Saturn

and see the rings it's the top of Christ's cock. When he was a child the giant expanded stretched cock skin of a fucking tiny carpenter child. He wasn't a carpenter when he was a child. That's true, actually. That's true.

Eighteen months old, putting up some shelves. No one ever talks about any of the shit he built, though. If Christ was a carpenter, it's all about this fucking wine and water and fishes, and it's like, throw this fucking Ikea thing together, so... Jesus, let's...

Why doesn't any of his furniture exist? Get down to Christ Furniture on the Long Mile Road. I would love if I had like fucking Conor McGregor money I would just literally open Christ's furniture. That would be

just have it there. Fucking hell. And a special Black Friday I mean Good Friday deals. You can see about the back smoking a major. Nothing good about that Friday. You can imagine it though.

Yeah, fuck it. Why doesn't someone just come out with an old cabinet and go, Christ built this. No he didn't. Prove it. Prove it. Prove he didn't build it. The Shroud of Turin was a forgery. It was. build it the shroud of Turin was a forgery it was and Padre Pio you know about Padre Pio

don't you with his fucking manky hands they found a lot of receipts where he was buying acid from a chemist is that real? he was buying acid from a chemist and Is that real? He was buying acid from a chemist and he had his little gloves

and he was fucking putting the acid in the gloves and burning his hands and going around the place going, and that, yeah! He's a lying cunt. They've got the receipts. He's been exposed in a Twitter thread.

Did they even they've got the receipts he's been exposed in a twitter thread there's so many questions did they issue receipts back then they didn't have a till they found I don't know what would you call it a docket but basically it's like hold on Padre right hold on a second now you're like a priest

you do a bit of preaching, fuck you don't go into a chemist buying a lot of acid what are you doing that for, what do you need that for what do you need to wash with acid are you secretly making fucking metal alloys for cars, are you panel beating you know what I mean so that's what he was doing, he was little bits of acid

onto the gloves and then it's like oh stigmata, oh, there's nothing I can do. I'm going to cure you. My God, I'm taking it. They hated him as well. He had like a cult. Like he used to,

people used to follow him around. He was dangerous. He beat a man to death with a tennis racket. No, he didn't. He did not. But he was a very good driver that's why we have him

on the dashboard of the car sorry if anyone's into Padre Piero I apologise no I shouldn't he was going around burning his hands with acid and sin

it was a miracle but he kept his receipts for tax purposes that's it that's it he shouldn't imagine that he was claiming it back. So you're big into meditation. I am.

Now that is a... I am. I've practiced meditation for about 14 years go away written a book on it I know that part

and yeah I love it and I like to try and teach it to people and mystify it a bit the origin story I heard

you arrived at a gig in an ambulance for the laugh yeah no but you arrived at a gig in an ambulance for the laugh. Yeah. No, but you arrived at a gig in an ambulance. I did. I had a panic attack in 2007 on the way to perform at the Kilkenny Cat Laughs Festival. And yeah, I had to pull my car over.

An ambulance was called. I thought I was dying. And I'd never had a panic attack before. And I got into the back of the ambulance, and your man says, you know the way paramedics are always, like, really cheerful? Mm-hmm.

Which is always amazing, you know, the mood they bring to an accident. The O.P. thing. But anyway, he was like, it's okay, you're not dying. And he said, you're hyperventilating. And he gave me a brown paper bag. And I thought, jeez, I know the HSC

is fucked. You've got to have more equipment in this thing than a Centra bag that still smells of your man's sandwiches that were in it about 20 minutes ago. I was afraid he was going to pull out a defibrillator made out of a Tesco bag. Stand back. But yeah, so it was a panic attack. And I think I'm the only person to arrive into the Cat Laughs Festival in an ambulance.

So did he just go, look, we have the ambulance. We might as well take you to the gig? Well, he brought me into town. It would be rude just to leave me there. I went to the hospital and they checked me out and all that. And then I went and did my gigs. Got 10 minutes of new material. But yeah, I think, I mean mean it was quite a showbiz

entrance I mean there were sirens and flashing lights you know but I wouldn't recommend it it's an incredible waste of the emergency services time but that's the mad thing when you get a panic attack and you don't know what it is and often a panic attack is

I used to get those too where it's like oh I'm dying i'm in the process of being dead soon yeah like it's them ones like it's awful it's like i'm do i'm because the thing is it's painful it is isn't it but for me i was driving and it was like the overweight invisible man got into the car and just sat down on me. So I could feel a weight on my stomach. I was drinking the night before, so I was hungover and I was worn out and I had 50 jobs at the time, but I had no tools to manage my stress and everything that I was doing. So it just kind of culminated in that for me. That was kind of the cocktail.

And the fear, the fear drink fear is a terrible one for bringing on another panic attack isn't it it really sets you up yeah I know

but we shouldn't be saying it now because they're all having a great time I know you're grand you're grand but remember

no one's getting rat arsed tonight it's a Monday no I don't think anyone's getting rat arsed alright fair enough say a prayer to Padre Pio tomorrow when you get your fucking rat arsed. Alright, fair enough.

Say a prayer to Padre Pio tomorrow when you get your fucking... So anyway, look, that was an incident that kind of, you know, made me think, do you know what? I need more than Guinness to actually manage stress. So one panic attack was so severe it was enough to go, holy fuck, I need to sort some shit out right here. Yeah, now it wasn't like a woohoo, it was enough to go, holy fuck, I need to sort some shit out right here. Yeah.

Now, it wasn't like, woohoo, the next day my life changed. But it made me start to think, okay, maybe I need to do something else. And then quite by chance, I got asked to MC a book launch of someone who had written a book. And I found out that she, a lovely woman called Siobhan McKenna, was teaching meditation to the guards at the same time as well as writing her books. So I said, actually, I'd like to give that a go. Can we do a swap? So she gave me an hour of her time and I emceed her book launch

and that kind of started me off. And she gave you your first meditation? Yeah. And how would you describe, like have you, is everyone here familiar with the practice of meditating? Have you all kind of tried it at least? Like, I meditate.

He had to say it twice. Is that Eamon Dunphy? But, like... Oh, Charlie, he'll piss on your leg. When you... It wasn't Eamon Dunphy who did that when

when you when you go for it like when you get into the meditation like I I couldn't believe like like I went through

a period of meditating right where I was doing it every day for like two months straight right and when you repeat it

when you do it on a daily basis and you get good at it and it becomes part of the routine like i had a fucking i don't want to say spiritual experience but i had an experience that was like up there with hallucinogenic drugs like i i was meditating by a river and i came out of the meditation and there was a nettle in front of me I swear to fuck I felt like the nettle was a sibling like genuinely genuinely I had this wonderful sense of

I know you're a nettle but like I understood on a deep level you and me Mr. Nettle were part of the same thing it was the it was how people described dmt or ayahuasca meditation got me to a point of understanding another life form that brought me to a higher truth that i can't access on a normal level it was fucking phenomenal and then another time and i'm not i'm i'm agnostic I'm not a believer of the supernatural but like

I was I was meditating and I was I was grieving for my father my father had died a few years previously and I again I was sitting at this fucking river and I came out of the meditation and as I opened my eyes I literally saw my dad across the river. And then he disappeared. And I got this feeling of, I'm okay, I'm okay. Now, I know my mind did that. I'm not saying it was supernatural. But what I'm saying is that the mindfulness of the meditation, where it took me emotionally, it allowed me to access a part of my fucking grief that I needed to access, if you get what I'm

saying. So I don't, I'm not sitting here saying to you, I was meditating and my dad appeared across the river, like Padre Pio. I'm not saying that, but I am saying that in that lovely dreamlike state between meditation and coming out of it, I saw my fucking dad in here. I didn't ask for it. it, I saw my fucking dad in here. I didn't ask for it. And I got a message of I'm okay. And I banked it in here as it felt fucking real. And I actually processed grief and moved forward as a result. Do you know what I mean? And whether that's real or not, it doesn't matter to me. It actually worked. And it was meaningful, you know? So that's what meditation has done for me. I don't do it enough. I should do it. Well, you know, that's obviously an amazing experience.

For a lot of people, they don't get that. And then they think that they're doing it wrong. So part of my thing is to just really demystify it and debunk a lot of the myths around it. Because a lot of people would start meditation. And then, like, we could just do it here anyone who's ever tried meditation or a form of mindfulness put your hand up yeah woohoo now if you kept it going and you still do it keep your hand up yeah see most of the hands go down and that that's perfectly normal. And one of the problems is that people think they're doing it wrong.

And one of the biggest myths is, I have to clear my mind of all thoughts. And we have 80,000 thoughts going through our head every single day. They're not going anywhere. In fact, we don't want them to because if they do, we're dead. Because they're literally keeping us alive. Thoughts, good. You know, like all in its basic form, right? Meditation and the simplest definition I can give is meditation is focusing your mind on one thing.

When your mind wanders off, which it will because that's what minds do. You just realize it's wandered and you bring it back. So if you're focusing on your breath and your mind wanders off, you go, oh, I'm thinking about I never took the chicken out of the freezer. And then you bring it back. So if you're focusing on your breath and your mind wanders off, you go, oh, I'm thinking about, I never took the chicken out of the freezer. And then you bring it back. So it's a tennis match where the ball bounces between attention, distraction, attention, distraction. And that could happen like 500 times in a five minute meditation. And that's okay. Because when they look at the science, it's the flash of awareness that your mind has wandered and you bringing it back. That's where the changes happen in the brain.

They did a study. And is that the skill, Dermot? Is the skill developing the discipline so that you're able to notice the thing and still stick with it rather than react to it? Because sometimes, like I know when I was starting, it's like I'm getting on great and then my thought, I think about the chicken in the oven, then I go, oh you fucking stupid

prick. Do you know what I mean? And that's the opposite of where my mind needs to be. Instead of noticing the thought of the chicken and bringing myself back, I've now reacted to the chicken. But yeah, and that's what it is. but i think it's it's reassuring for people who want to get into it to know okay so it's okay if my mind wanders off and then i just go oh shit i'm not thinking about the breathing anymore and you bring it back that's okay like there's a brilliant study and i try and bring as much science into it as i can when i'm teaching people because that's what people can relate to now and you know a lot of the spiritual stuff came with the eastern traditions and that was the currency of the day

but today and particularly for blokes science is the is the thing people can latch on to initially anyway and then maybe you can have those spiritual experiences if that's where you want to go but most of the time we just want to turn our stress response off long enough that we stop being mental i mean that's kind of it there was a study done harvard study in 2012 and they got people who had never meditated before and they got them to meditate for less than half an hour a day for eight weeks and then they had a control group who didn't do any of it and they didn't see any of the same results but what they found was usual things was you know their heart rates were lower blood pressure was lower stress hormone levels were lower cortisol, all that kind of stuff that they kind of knew already happens every time you sit down to meditate. But what they were shocked to find was that every single one of them, their brains had literally changed shape.

Their amygdalas, which is that part of our brain that plays a key role in fearful thoughts, anxious thoughts, angry thoughts, that had shrunk in size in every single one of them in less than two months. Conversely, parts of their brain responsible for memory and self-awareness and logical thinking and empathy, those had all grown and strengthened. So there was literally more gray matter inside their skulls. So I was thinking to myself, well, look, that's a no-brainer, if you'll excuse the pun. Like, how could I continue to have the same thoughts that put me in the back of that ambulance that day if every time I sit down to do a simple exercise that maybe only takes 16 seconds,

I'm shrinking that part of my brain? Yeah. You know, so that's kind of, they're the things that got me kind of hooked. And, you know, like, I love all this. And just, I had, so my last guest that I had on here was Ian Richardson. He's a neuroscientist up in Trinity College. And he was speaking about that. He was calling it neuroplasticity.

And basically, the brain is like any other part of the body. It can change and grow in response to stimulus. And basically, the brain is like any other part of the body. It can change and grow in response to stimulus. And he was speaking about the exact same thing that you were speaking about there. And in our culture, like if you say to someone, go to the gym and lift heavy things and you might get bigger. We understand that. But like, it's the same with the fucking brain. And not just meditation.

Like, I speak about CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy a lot. That's the same with the fucking brain. And not just meditation. I speak about CBT, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, a lot. That's the same shit. I'm retraining. If my mind is anxious and I immediately go to an anxious thought or an angry thought, I challenge it and work on it until that connection is no longer present in my brain as an autonomous thought. I train it to go to the rational thought now after a while and it's neuroplasticity it's the brain actually growing and responding and changing to what you do to it well we've been so conditioned away from sitting with ourselves that now it's almost an alien thing and for a lot of people it's really uncomfortable the idea of

just sitting alone with your thoughts freaks people out there was another study they did in the university of virginia in 2015 they got a few hundred people all different walks of life and all they asked them to do was sit in a room for between 6 and 15 minutes took their phones off them it was just a chair and a table that was it and you would think and they were like what do we got to do and they're like just sit there they're like, just sit there. They're like, okay. And I said, actually, there's one more thing. On the table in front of you, there's a button.

All right, now you don't have to press the button. But if you do press the button, we should tell you it will administer a painful electric shock. Yeah, don't have to press the button. See you in 15 minutes. And they go out. Like the stats from that

study were, like, literally shocking. Okay. Men did not come out well from this study, let me tell you that. 67% of men chose to electrocute themselves rather than sit there alone with their thoughts. Women were slightly better, 25% chose to inflict pain rather than just sit there. There was one lad in the study electrocuted himself 197 times. Now, we're moving into fetish territory there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Seriously. But it just goes to show, you know, and I think it's a reassuring tale for people that we're deconditioned out of sitting alone with ourselves because we're so conditioned to distraction. It's phones, it's telly, it's Netflix. But immediately when you describe the sit by yourself or press the button,

I'm immediately thinking of social media. And the thing is, like social media is fun 10% of the time, but the other 90% is terrible. Like if you go on Twitter or Instagram or you're not always getting good feelings, you're coming away from it with anger, envy, fear, if you see a news cycle,

but yet you continue to go to the fucking phone because you're searching for that one piece of the good little dopamine hit. And the alternative is sit and do fucking nothing. Like we were speaking backstage about that new Beatles documentary. You haven't seen it yet, have you? No. Has anyone watched the new Beatles documentary that's on Disney Plus? So I can't wait to see it, right? But basically what it is, is it's like eight hours of just the Beatles kind of chatting in the studio. It's like a documentary for the Joe Rogan generation, we'll say.

And what a lot of people are commenting about is it's so nice to watch people for eight hours in a room and no one has a phone. So you see people either being comfortable sitting with themselves or the other things they have to do to distract themselves from the fear of sitting by themselves. And it's often like

making funny noises and stuff. We don't make funny noises anymore. You just pick up your phone. Do you know what I mean? Sorry, I went on a siege there. But, you know, I think there's a lot of stuff around meditation that puts people off. The thought that, oh God, I'm going to have to sign up

to some 10-week course now. I'm going to have to sit in that weird parish hall I drive by with a load of people I wouldn't go for a pint with I'll start talking differently dressing differently and I'll suddenly look like Russell Brand with a top knot nothing against Russell Brand

he's a great fella but people feel like they're going to have to give away a piece of themselves, on a common one or afraid of becoming religious or getting into a cult or things like that yeah but a lot of a lot of people particularly kind of high achievers think well it's going to make me soft yeah i'm suddenly yeah i'm going to relax so much i won't care yeah and i lose my edge and and that's harsh it is absolutely because you know if you're in a

stressed out state a lot of the time even if you're a high achiever it means you're most of your brain isn't online yeah it's you need to be creative you know forget about it yeah so if you're you know if you're in full-on emergency mode in survival mode or you're emotionally imbalanced then your neocortex is gone well you know yeah i can't do anything so i'll just sit here or you're emotionally imbalanced, then your neocortex is going, well, I can't do it, so I'll just sit here. And you're not going to have any good ideas. It's impossible to be really creative if you are just on edge the whole time. So all we're ever trying to do with meditation, it's great that we can aspire to have amazing

spiritual experiences. And that's fantastic. I've had them myself. But for most people, we just want to get back to ourselves. We just want to feel like the selves that we know are in there, but are somehow offline. And most of that is just, we have a stress response. It's like a smoke alarm in here right now. That's ringing and ringing and ringing. And they're great inventions and we need them to work when we need them to work, i.e. when there's a fire. But if those things are ringing all the time, they wear us out, they wear us down and they burn us

out. So all we're ever really trying to do with any of these exercises is just to knock off that internal emergency alarm, that internal smoke alarm, long enough for all the rest of our dials to come back around. It's like a cockpit on an airplane, you know, in an action movie when it's like, pull up, pull up. And then someone hits the autopilot and all the dials just go back to normal. That's kind of all we're trying to do. And sometimes you can do a technique that is literally 16 seconds. That was one of the first ones I met. I learned that my teacher told me. And that can be enough just to knock off that smoke alarm.

And what is it? What is the 16-second technique? Well, it's called box breath or square breathing. So the idea is you're breathing into a count of four. You hold it in your belly for a count of four. Let it out to a count of four. And you then hold that out before you breathe in again to a count of four. That it out to a count of four, and you then hold that out before you breathe in again to a count of four. So that's the first thing. So when I first presented with anxiety attacks to

a psychologist when I was like 19 or whatever, that's the first thing that he got me to do is to breathe. So what I'd noticed was because I was experiencing panic attacks and because I was in a continuous state of anxiety, my breaths at all time were coming from the top of my chest, very shallow, like gasping all the time. And the chemicals in my brain then are totally different. Like this is what Ian Richardson was talking about when he was here. By not allowing the oxygen in, my brain chemistry was feeding the part of my brain, that amygdala, that was interested in anxiety. And just by simply, what he showed me was,

when you breathe, you touch your stomach. And when you breathe in, you feel your stomach expanding. And just that alone, I felt calm for the first time in six months because i was simply bringing more decent quality oxygen into my body like it's mad everybody in here is now thinking how am i breathing yeah with diaphragmatic breathing it's great after like nearly two years of lockdown you could find your belly quite easily enough now. But yeah, I mean, the techniques as well can, I'm a big believer, it's got to work for you.

You've got to be able to build it into your day. And sometimes again, another myth is that people think, I'm going to have to do this for an hour a day. This is another thing I've got to build into. I got to go to the gym and now your man's making me do an hour of breathing. If you can only do 16 seconds first thing in the morning, then do that. But if you can build it into your morning routine, what you're basically saying to your nervous system is like you're setting the table and you're like, before you pick up your phone, before you start reaching for the laptops, whatever it is, you're setting the table for the day going, okay, this is how I want my nervous system

to feel like today. So I'm going to set this little place setting for myself. I'm going to set my Google Maps. This is my trajectory for the day. Because a lot of the time, if you're driving to a wedding down the country and you don't know where you're going, and you never just jump into the car

and just drive aimlessly and hope that you find the wedding. Yeah, yeah. You'll hit Google Maps. But, you know, we can do that for our day and we can decide how we want to feel. And by connecting with ourselves, even as Oprah as that sounds,

we can go on a journey. But, you know, just by taking that few seconds in the day, we can set our trajectory for how we'd like to feel for the day. What I used to do as well, Dermot, is... So when I was learning to manage anxiety and when I was like... So I would get anxious in social situations. So the idea of having to go to a pub and meet my friends, right, that would have been terrifying to me.

I would have been afraid of, what if I get a panic attack when I'm there? And then I'd have certain behaviors that I would, because I'd be anxious, my self-esteem would be low. And then I'd find myself in a group of people not enjoying myself, ripping up the beer mat into a lot of different pieces,

you know, because the anxiety's gone into my fingers, not having authentic conversations with people because I'm thinking about the anxiety. Then the shame of the anxiety means that when I'm speaking to people, I'm trying to get their approval because inside I don't feel much. And I'd come away then from social situations going, well, that was shit. I didn didn't I didn't have any crack I didn't enjoy it I pretty much tried to impress everybody I was talking to rather than have a decent conversation and listen so what I would do is I would pick my mindful moments and go right I'm going into a situation now that I know will trigger my anxiety so I'm going to take my 10 minutes beforehand to meditate before this. And then I get my brain and body to that base level so that when I step into the situation

of social anxiety that's triggering, I'm aware of the triggers. I'm walking in there and I'm going, I don't know. Hold on a second. What are you doing? You're playing with a beer mat. What does that tell you right now about your anxiety? And I go, well, if I'm playing with a fucking beer mat, then the anxiety is going to my fingers, so I need to stop, and I need to breathe, and then I'm speaking to someone, and I'm bragging to him, or something, I'm trying to impress him, and then I'd stop myself, and I'm going, why the fuck am I trying to impress this person when I'm talking to him, all right, what I'm doing is, that's my low self-esteem, feels that I'm not good enough, so I actually need to impress this person.

And I go, no, no, no, hold on a second. Sit back, say fuck all and listen to that person speaking and be comfortable with their presence. And instead of trying to impress them, use empathy to listen to how their day is going. And only through meditating before these situations was I able to put that behavior into practice. And then of course, I'm fucking retraining my brain so that then becomes my autonomous way of operating when I enter social situations you get me hmm I'm always fascinated by the the mechanics of conversation and our desire

to find common ground to I don't know to obviously form some connection but also to impress yeah you know i call it the the yeah i remember one time bit of our brain yeah that someone's like oh yeah um i caught a fish on my holidays and they go into their fishing story and we're already gone we're not we're not present in the conversation anymore we're accessing files fishing stories yeah yeah yeah okay okay maybe I'm not involved. Okay, phishing stories I heard slash jokes, you know,

and you're gone. And I always remember I had a conversation a couple of years ago. I was at a wedding in Poland and I was sitting with an Irish person from just across the table from me

and I said, oh, so where are you from? And he said, oh, Cork. And I was, oh, so where are you from? And he said, oh, Cork. And I was like, okay, accessing Cork connections, Cork stories, do I have Cork friends? And I remember I came out with something like, oh, I have a good few pals from Cork.

And he just sort of looked at me and went, it's okay, you don't have to have any stories about cork. That's such a cork thing to say. I'm sorry but it is like that's pure and utter I know, I know we're great I know you're grand but it just stopped me in my tracks

but fair play to him, yeah. Shit I do that, like I, you go into conversations and you can tell if if you're in a conversation and someone else is doing it yeah we probably all have friends we know who do this more than others so you start to say and if you ever watch people talking about their children it always happens so someone would be like oh my god my young fella came down and he put a suitor cream all over his head again and then

the other person is all, they're gone they're thinking my child, my child did something crazy and so we just keep trying to you know find these, when actually a lot of the time and particularly if someone is dealing with something they don't want to hear

yeah well you know you knew someone who had a really bad illness or you were sick they just want you to sit there and listen and if all you ever say is i to say you're from Cork. I'm having my pancreas removed on Tuesday. I have some good friends from Cork. I keep saying pancreas, I'm not quite sure why. But the lovely thing about that, from a selfish perspective,

is when you do what you're describing there, when you don't jump out with the cork story, and you sit back and you listen, you're engaging empathy. And in order to engage empathy, you're not using that amygdala. You're using the entirety of your brain to be present with another person's words and their body language. And you come away from that. that builds your self-esteem it builds your sense of self-worth because you've just had an authentic conversation with another person and you've shared it's authentic it's fucking authentic conversation that's what it is and i used to i used to i was training to be a psychotherapist at one point you know i didn't finish it but i was training to be a psychotherapist at one point. You know, I didn't finish it, but I was training to be a psychotherapist at one point. And we would train in,

one of the first things you train in is to stop that. So if you're in a situation with, if you're a psychotherapist and you've got a client, psychotherapists are human beings. So when someone comes out and says they're from Cork, the human being psychotherapist is like, I was in Glanmire once do you know what I mean but the training for the therapist is to go oh okay tell me about cork how is cork for you and it's active

listening and through that's the therapeutic process because by listening the other person then relaxes and then they can act, they become safe and they become safe enough to disclose things in the room. Do you get me? Because they don't feel judgment. I imagine I'm telling a psychotherapist, I hit a guy with a hammer and I took his skin off

and I put it on. And what the hammers mean for you? I get asked that a lot, though, with those fucking stories, man. People will be saying to me, what the fuck is wrong with you? But you know what it is. So the stories in my book are fucking mad.

They're bonkers. And one of the reasons I do that is part of my creative process. So when you're prone to anxiety, but you're also creative And the reason, one of the reasons I do that as part of my creative process. So when you're prone to anxiety, but you're also creative and have an imagination, it can be fucking terrible. Because the creativity of your mind and your ability to connect things that aren't connected, when that fucking turns on you, it's awful.

I spent an entire year literally terrified of my own shadow like literally thought my shadow was another person I was veering into into psychosis the anxiety was so bad and what I used to do to help manage my anxiety is I would make it my friend so the part of my brain that can so viciously turn on me with different fantasies of all the different things that can go wrong all the horrible things that are going to happen I would instead go let's make fun out of it let's turn it into a joke so when I write a horrendous story like that about skinning someone alive and climbing into their skin like I used to be afraid to go to gigs and if I was at a gig the thought of what if I just suddenly went on stage and started ripping his skin open? Seriously because one of

the themes of panic attacks sometimes you can be afraid that you're going to die or you can also and this is one that used to happen to me I would be terrified of what if I'm in a public situation and I just go fucking mad? What if I do something that will make me a spectacle and everyone looks, such as climbing up on stage and trying to jump into someone's skin? And these, when that turns on you, it's terrifying. But when I write a story about it and bring it into the mindfulness of creative flow and have fun with it and have crack with it and make something that's entertaining that I enjoy, I'm actually owning my own anxiety

and my own potential towards psychosis to go, no, I control this. I own this. I'm not going to be bullied by this anymore. I'm the creative master of this universe and I can turn these demons that I have into fun things that are enjoyable to create and have fun with.

And all of a sudden I own it now and I'm not scared of it anymore. Like I was talking to a psychiatrist called Pat Bracken and Pat Bracken was talking about schizophrenia right where within schizophrenia people have hallucinations of voices or they see things right and Pat Bracken found because he'd spent time in in Africa and he'd spent time with some indigenous cultures. So in cultures where people experience schizophrenia, whether they hear voices or they see things that aren't there,

if in that culture this person is seen as magical, as in it's seen as a gift that this person can hear voices, the voices that that person hears aren't dangerous. They are valued in their society and they often hear like the voice of God with good news. But in our society where we medicalise and demonise and give it a label like schizophrenia and say this is an illness, the people who experience psychosis

tend to experience things that are terrifying and are going to attack them. So it's the same thing, but the culturally specific conditions around it can dictate whether that voice is terrifying and harmful or happy and bringing goodwill you know what i mean well yeah just listening to you you know when like your levels of self-awareness are off the charts in fairness you know if i didn't have it I'd be mad but most people

don't have that it's a skill I learned it's a I wasn't born with that I used to understand what my emotions were I didn't know I used to not know if I was angry or frightened I studied it through emotional intelligence through cognitive behavior therapy through mindfulness I put effort into it because I'm like I want to be the best version of me that I can be and that feeling that you had when you're getting that panic attack of dying I was like I don't ever ever want to experience or feel that I want something different to that you know but there's also like a huge compassion that you have for yourself because you can't maintain that level of self-awareness and make conscious you know positive decisions if you don't have that compassion and empathy for yourself because you're too busy beating yourself up cycles of negative thought and then you're you're back to

square one again so you know that triggering the empathy for yourself you know for me was was massive because i was it difficult um not really i suppose from a scientific point of view anytime i sit down to meditate i'm aware that i'm if you know if you brain if you scan the brain of somebody meditating their temporal parietal junction will fire up their empathy center fires up and what that means i suppose in real terms is that you have obviously kinder thoughts towards other people and you've parietal junction will fire up. Their empathy center fires up. And what that means, I suppose, in real terms is that you have obviously kinder thoughts towards other people and you have more patience and all those kinds of things, but you also have them for yourself. So what I noticed, I'm one of the, you know, sometimes maybe what's frustrating for people is that the benefits,

even though they're scientifically proven of something like meditation, even though they're scientifically proven of something like meditation they can seem a little bit intangible it's not like I stood in the weighing scales and I can see your numbers now I'm still lighter but there are things that began to happen for me so one of them was

that the volume on my critical inner voice got turned way down and I remember a few years ago I was I don't know what I was doing. I woke up or something and I was thinking that I had forgotten to do something

and I just heard myself in my brain go, oh God, you idiot. Yeah. And I thought, holy shit, it's actually, it's been years since I heard myself talk to myself like that. So, you know,

that's what you do when you can find a little bit more empathy for yourself if that's something through something like meditation. You start to free yourself up so that you can have that level of self-awareness and you can start to make better decisions about how you want to interact with people. But so much of it all starts with kindness towards yourself and i know that sounds wishy-washy and you know something you put on a tea towel and give to your ma but often those platitudes like even something like live laugh live life live laugh i thought how have i forgotten it man i've seen it on so many pillows in tk max

live laugh love nothing wrong with that, man. Go ahead. Brilliant fucking advice. Yeah. But it is. You don't have to be mad to work here, but it helps. That's another great one. Very popular behind the bar.

But exercising kindness is hard yeah because again it doesn't come naturally to us because we are conditioned to strive strive get just do it come on keep it going you know don't be a quitter la la la but actually if a simple exercise at the end of the day of just going through your day and picking one or two things that you did well. And that doesn't have to be an achievement like you hit a deadline or saved a lot of money. It could be you took time out to roll around on the road with your kids. Today I wasn't a cunt to anyone. But that, when I go to bed at night and I look in the mirror and I want to get intrinsic self-worth from inside, I don't look at, I did this today, I achieved this.

I simply say, today, in every interaction I had with everyone I met, I was kind and I wasn't mean and I didn't snap at anyone and I listened. And if I can go to bed and that's how my day went, that's nice. I can bank that feeling that goes into my self-esteem and grows it because it's not that's nothing to do with behavior or achievement it's I didn't make anyone's life worse today you know what I mean well I think for I became aware that there was I called it my invisible scorekeeper yeah it was just somebody there sort of checking off well did you do this did you do that you get that done you know did you

what that leads to is is what i also call a terrible dose of the shoulds yeah and you can have a script running in your head the whole time you should be this should be that shouldn't be doing that should and it's exhausting yeah because if you're listening to that script the whole time you become a failure if that's your method of self-assessment you get to the end of your day and you're a failure because your expectations can never be met

so your shoulds and your musts that you have inside, you're never fucking meeting them so you go to bed and you've already failed and that's why any exercise like meditation or any form of mindfulness, sometimes people get confused between mindfulness and meditation

and you're kind of unclear what it is. How would you differentiate the two? I suppose what simplifies it for me is that mindfulness is anything that pulls you into the present moment. Yeah. So what does the present moment mean? Again, it can sound a bit Oprah and something that you might put the present moment. Yeah. So what does the present moment mean? Again, it can sound a bit Oprah

and something that you might put on a detail. But all the present moment means is that you're not in the past worrying about crap that happened. And you're not in the future worrying about crap that might happen. Yeah. And even if you can get in there

for a few moments in the day, then you will feel better. You will feel the benefit of it. And that can be something that, like I do it with, if I have to wash the dishes or if I have to make the dinner, I actively go,

this is all I'm fucking doing right now. So, and I use all my senses. So if I'm washing the dishes, because the thing is with washing the dishes, you're trying, you can often go automatic and you've just washed the dishes and you've spent your whole time

thinking about an argument you could have won. you know what i mean or worrying about what might happen next week and instead i simply go i'm washing the dishes oh listen to the sound of those bubbles notice seriously listen to the sound of those bubbles notice the feeling of the fairy liquid on my hand feel that how warm the water is and checking in with every part of my body oh god i've touched a tea bag there you go but yet oh fuck me i've touched the tea bag but like that's what i mean i'll wash the dishes and when i'm washing the dishes that's all i'm fucking doing and the way that i bring myself into the mindful territory is to use every part of my senses so like when was the last time you smelt washing up liquid?

When you were four. When you were four, you'd go to the fairy liquid and go, and then you just, but you do, and then you stop as an adult. So the practice of washing dishes is just this thing you have to do. I have to do the fucking dishes, fuck this.

But when you start going, the water's warm, the water's cold, oh, fuck it, it man i'm listening to bubbles i'm feeling the fairy liquid i'm watching the dirt get off i'm listening to the squeak of it drying i was thinking of it today you know those things i don't know if houses even still have them anymore but they're usually to stop the door banging off the wall when you open it stoppers yeah but they have a spring on them so when you flick them and they do this really funky

blurry vibration and then they go back to themselves I remember as a kid lying on the floor just going yes life before Xbox folks but that's kids

kids have got mindfulness down to a fucking T kids will do that kids will just go this is amazing. And we, you get bored of that after a while

as you get older, but also society tells us, like Carl Jung, the psychologist, he used to make time in his day to go to his back garden and play with sticks

on the ground. Like playfulness. I do a thing every week. I do a live stream on Twitch where I make music. And that's, thank you very much I do that as an act of play

that's like me playing with Lego when I'm a kid I try to introduce playfulness for the sake of playfulness into my fucking day because that's a mindful fun activity that gets rid of all that stress, we're a bit stuck for time thank you very much to Dermot Whelan for that wonderful chat that was a long podcast I hope you enjoyed it stuck for time thank you very much to Dermot Whelan for that wonderful

chat that was a long podcast I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed doing it if you enjoyed hearing Dermot speak

go to one of his live gigs lads go to Dermot Whelan dot com and check out his upcoming live dates in particular that one in Limerick

on the 20th of February in the University Concert Hall because Limerick on the 20th of February in the University Concert Hall because Limerick's always hard it's always hard to move tickets in Limerick unfortunately so go along to that

I'll be back next week and probably have a hot take for you recorded live from my office I actually can't wait I can't fucking wait I'm in Belfast tomorrow night up in Ulster Hall that's sold out I'm in Belfast tomorrow night. Up in Ulster Hall.

That's sold out. I'm going to be interviewing Array Collective. Who are the collective of artists who recently won the Turner Prize. But. I honestly can't wait to get back into my office. Get researching. And deliver next week's podcast. I'm really looking forward to it. I'm looking forward to.

Getting a good night's sleep tonight because it's not 8 in the morning. It's a perfectly reasonable time in the day and I'm going to go home, eat my dinner and get a full night's sleep. Dog bless you all. Also I don't have any Twitch song this week. Sorry about that. I didn't

get around to editing one and the podcast was quite long as it is so we'll leave off any Twitch song this week sorry about that I didn't get around to editing one and the podcast was quite long as it is so we'll leave off the Twitch song this week Bar none. Tickets are on sale now for Fan Appreciation Night on Saturday, April 13th when the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com.