The Blindboy Podcast - You are better than no one else, and no one is better than You. Because Human Beings are too complex to evaluate against each other

Episode Date: June 3, 2026

Ai psychosis and medieval glass. Howvto build self esteem  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Greetings, you temporary Emmets. Welcome to the Blindby Podcast. If this is your first episode, consider going back to an earlier podcast to familiarise yourself with the lore of this podcast. And if you're a regular listener, you know the crack. I have a couple of very large announcements this week. The first one, because I promised I'd say it as early in the podcast as possible, is I'm coming back to Australia and New Zealand.

April of 27 and those tickets are on sales today, 3rd of June at 12 noon Australia Eastern Time

and you get those tickets on my website the blindbuy podcast dot IE assuming it doesn't crash and just thank you to all my listeners

in Australia and New Zealand for telling your friends about the podcast for spreading the word because it's after getting really big over there

I'm gig in Sydney Opera House I'm going to be headlining Sydney Opera House. house. I'd speak about that later in the fucking podcast and the other dates, but I can't believe it. Thank you to all that the steaming quivas and 10 foot declines for telling your friends for sharing the podcast because it's word of mouth. This is word a mouth. I'm not advertised down there. I'm not on fucking TV. This is all word a mouth. I'm going to begin this week's podcast

with a piece of prose poetry that was written by the actor Liam Neeson. He's He recited this to me in a dream. The poem is called, I am slowly turning into glass so that I can be hurled at the forehead of God. When I die, my soul will not ascend. It will arrive in heaven as a spinning pint glass full of cider. And I will collide with God's forehead.

His purple blood will drip from the cosmos and stick to the clouds. 40 days and 40 nights of blood and cider everything will die this time even the animals there'll be no Noah there'll be no Noah and his Ark because I'll glass that cunt too

and the devil will pick bits of me out of God's eyeballs they'll have to write a new bit into the Bible about it about me Liam Mason the human pint glass I often begin podcasts with a free associative poem to put my mind into a state of playfulness

because I never want to be paralyzed by the blank page when you're stuck staring at the blank page I'm thinking oh what will I write a podcast about what will I do a podcast about this week and then the fear of failure creeps in oh what if I can't think of an idea for this week's podcast oh my God, what will I do? And creativity can't exist in that space.

Ideas won't come to me in that space where I'm afraid of the blank page. So if I'm afraid of failure, I lean into failure. I begin writing not to write anything good, not to make sense. I begin writing for the enjoyment and fun of writing so that I can enter dreamland, so that I can enter a state of flow.

The open way of thinking, where anything is possible, nothing is good, nothing is bad, there's no judgment whatsoever, there's just the act of writing, the act of imagination. Daydreaming onto the page, if I'm in the closed mode of thinking, where I'm afraid of the blank page, I'm afraid of failing, what if I write something ridiculous, what if I don't have any good ideas, then I don't have access to my imagination? so I just let it flow no judgment like a child

of playing with Lego they're not trying to make anything good or anything bad they're playing with Lego and if a child is playing with their Lego that's a child that feels safe children who feel safe

or children who play we're no different as adults if I'm paralysed by the fear of failure the fear of making something shit the fear of fucking up I don't feel safe I feel threatened and my mind is scanning for threats

it's looking in one direction so I have to feel safe I have to experience the feeling of safety so that my imagination can come out and play so when I do that and I sit with that sit with the frustration and just write

and write now I've got a piece of poetry about Liam Neeson wanting to transform into a pint glass and smash himself off God's forehead, which is utterly fucking ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. But it doesn't matter now, because I've broken through, you see. I've broken through the fear of failure. Now I don't have a blank page anymore. I have something. I've got an utterly ridiculous poem about Liam Neeson turning

into a pint glass. And then I look at that poem and I go, well, I went to the land of flow. That That poem arrived to me. I didn't sit down and think I'm going to write about Liam Neeson. It just all that imagery came to me like I was dreaming, dreaming in the middle of the day. Automatic writing it's called. It was a technique from the surrealist art movement. But because the idea came to me in a state of flow, in that state where I leave a sense of time and space and I'm just nice and calm and happy in imagination land where

judgment does not exist. Because the poem, which is ridiculous, came to me in flow state, I can then look at that and go, that poem is telling me something. There's ideas or connections that I'm not fully aware of yet, but if I tease at that poem, they'll fucking reveal it to me because that poem came to me in flow state. And how do I know that? Because when I'm in flow, I'm pulling from my unconscious mind. Like when you're dreaming, you're pulling from your unconscious mind, the depths of your mind that isn't, that you can't currently recall right now in the closed state, but in the open state, you can go into your unconscious mind. And when I'm researching, when I'm just reading something, it could be six months ago, could be six fucking months ago,

and I find it interesting and then I forget about it. That information goes into my unconscious mind and then it bubbles up in moments of flow. Anything I do that I find interesting, that's feeding my unconscious mind. So I look at it and I go, Liam Neeson turned into a pint glass, that's mad. What's that about? Where's that coming from? And I started to remember research I'd done months ago on the Venetian glass industry of the 1600s.

There was a unique farmer psychosis in the Middle Ages. a culturally specific mental illness where certain people, often very, very wealthy people, became convinced, like fully delusional, convinced that they were turning into glass. The most famous example, with the first high profile example, was the King of France. In 1392, a fella called Charles the Sixth. Charles the 6th was made King of France at 12 years of age A child By the time he was in his late teens

He started to show Manic symptoms symptoms of I suppose now you'd call it schizophrenia And he was the king So at one point in 1392 He drew his sword out of nowhere And killed four people around him And there's nothing they can do

It's the king If he wants to kill four people with his sword then the fucking king leave him off. There was no justice for him. His court, the people around him, just had to manage him and try and keep him happy.

So they'd continually entertain him, throw parties for him, try and keep him happy in any way, distract him. Because if he was entertained, then he was somewhat happy. He was still mad, but he wasn't suffering

in his mad. He was distracted by entertainment. Then something really threw him over the edge. So in 1393, they held like a masquerade ball, an entertaining masquerade ball for the king. He was 20 at this point. Masquerade ball was a fancy dress party.

These were all people with a lot of money and they'd dress up in costumes as entertainment and drink and have crack. And since they were figuring too, look if the king is mad, then let's give him opportunities to be mad. Every opportunity we get to get that energy out of him, let's fucking do it. So far this masquerade ball, the plan was,

the king and about six of his friends, they're going to dress up as wild men, and no one's going to know it's the king. And wild men in medieval times be like a werewolf. They're going to dress up as big, hairy, half-man, half-beasts. And these elaborate costumes were made. They were linen and then the linen was soaked in resin

and that was all sticky and then on top of the resin they stuck a lot of flax and branches and whatever and there were these cold like werewolf type crazy costumes and the king was wearing one of them and no one knew who he was hidden behind this

the thing is the resin that the costumes were made out of was incredibly flammable so the role was if there's six fellas at this party dripping in resin wearing flammable clothes then there's no candles

there's no torches there's no nothing this is flammable materials so the king and his friends go out they're dancing as wild men and then the king's brother shows up pissed drunk he didn't get the no fire memo and he shows up holding a torch holding a flame

then immediately four of the men go on fire four of the masquerade dancers the wild men with the king they go on fire and they're howling and screaming and being burned to death. Now the king manages to escape it, he runs away so he doesn't go on fire, but now he's witnessing four men burning to death in front of him, his friends. One of the written reports about the incident is four men were burned alive,

their flaming genitals drooping to the floor, releasing a stream of blood. And only two people survived. One fella jumped into a vat of wine. When he was on fire and managed to survive, and then the king, a woman saved him. She draped her dress around him and saved the king from burning. But the trauma of that incident and witnessing that, and nearly dying and seeing people burned alive in front of him his friends,

that pushed King Charles over the fucking edge. He became fully psychotic and became convinced, like fully and utterly convinced that he was made entirely out of glass and that he could break at any moment. Now this is the 1390s They didn't know anything about psychology They didn't know what psychosis was And it's the king

You can't fucking do anything You can't help him You just have to manage And work around The king is made out of glass now So we just have to treat him As if he's literally made out of glass So they had to make him special clothes

There was a tailor implied That I had to invent like pants and jackets that had rigid metal rods inside them because the king was so convinced that he could shatter into a million pieces at any moment

that he needed metal rods to keep him upright so that he could never fall because if he fell he would shatter and reports reports of people being convinced that they were made of glass started to increase

throughout the Middle Ages as the technology of glass improved in particular when a certain type of glass was being made in the 1600s on the island of Morano in Venice the established theory is that

and this is where you really have to use your imagination because it's a tough one the technology of glass right to someone in the 1600s was so revolutionary that it sent certain people into psychosis it blew their minds

like we've got photography televisions smartphones you're walking around listening to me talking into your ears we're surrounded by technology the 1600s before the Industrial Revolution horse and

carts. A solid, a solid material like glass that you could physically touch but see completely through was a bit too much for people. It was future shock. Now glass had been around a while. You think of stained glass windows, but it was only in the 1600s with Venice did a perfectly clear glass that we would today Like we take it for granted. I can look out my window right now. But a completely clear, crystal clear, see-through glass that only came about in the 1600s in Venice.

Glassmaking became a thing in Venice because it was an island. So when they were making glass, they had huge furnaces. In the simplest way, you're effectively talking about melting sand, which required huge temperatures on a lot of. lot of fire. So glass making was really dangerous in a culture where houses are made out of wood. So the Eastern Roman Empire decided all the glassmaking factories put them out there in the lagoon and the island of Morano because that's in it's in the middle of surrounded by water.

So when a fire does happen we can contain it. So this culture of glassmaking emerges and the island of Marano in Venice and it develops over a couple of hundred years and they start to get really, really good at it, concentrated in this one small space. But because you had this industry and this innovation on this one tiny island, they started to get really, really good at it. And then they started to develop secret recipes of making the best glass. And then these recipes became protected and now all of a sudden on the island of Marano. The quality of glass was so great that It became famous in the known world. It started to be traded and Venice started to get very, very wealthy

because no one was making glass like the Venetians. Eventually the glass blowers, the glass makers, they weren't allowed to leave the island because the technology that they had was so advanced and so specialised that there's no way that this technology can't reach anyone else's hands has to stay here on this one island. By the 1600s that invented the type of glass called Christophe. which is very close to what you and I would call glass today, completely see-through.

The type of glass that you could walk through if someone didn't tell you that that was glass. Modern glass. But this then led to the development of very fine lenses which allowed the invention of modern spectacles. Now spectacles had existed before then, but they were crude. But when you got that Venetian crystal or glass, which was fine and see-through, then they could start developing lenses that for the first time really improved people's sight. People would just lose their fucking eyesight. They'd just get short-sighted, near-sighted, whatever. And all

of a sudden now, people who could not see could suddenly see. And telescopes, telescopes got really, really good. And you could look up at the sky and you could see planets, which challenged the very concept of what reality was. To look at the moon and see creators on it. To look at Saturn and see its rings. What is existence now? And the future shock and the cultural impact of, it's when a piece of technology is so advanced that some people perceive it as a type of magic, that they just, they're holding this thing, this set of spectacles, this telescope, this window, they can see that it's there, that it's in their hands. But the concept of it is so nuts that it drove some people into psychosis and a culturally

specific mental illness, mostly among the wealthy, the people who had come into contact with these refined glasses. Some of these people became convinced that they themselves were made out of glass. A pain of this glass, like glass today. was basically invisible. How could something be solid? How can you touch something? How can you feel it? But it's invisible. Miguel Cervantes, he wrote fucking Don Quixote, released the collection of short stories in 1613. And one of the stories was called The Glass Graduate about a fellow who thought he was turning into glass. Princess Alexandria of Bavaria. Her

dad was King Ludwig I, who had to eat the step. down from being a king because he had an affair with a woman from Limerick, called Lola Montes. I've done an entire podcast on her before, probably in 2018. An interesting character, Princess Alexandra. She became convinced that she had swallowed an entire glass piano that inside her entire body was a big glass piano, and she's the princess.

So they didn't help her. They just went along with it. and she would have to walk sideways through doors because there's an entire piano inside in her. And an interesting commentary I read in that particular case is that for a princess in Bavaria at that time, in the court, in order for her to be valued as a princess, to be sold off, to be married to a prince somewhere, a central part of an upper-class woman's value at that time was her capacity to play the piano, a woman of her standing.

Her entire, her sense of self-worth would have been defined by her echelons of society. Her worth was defined by how courtly she was, her etiquette, and her ability to play the glass piano which she was fully convinced was consumed inside in her body. And this all seems so surreal.

So bizarre. They always speak about Future Shock. If you had a touch, time machine and took some of the 16th century and put them right here right now with the technology that we're exposed to, that they would just die of shock. It'd be too much. Well, glass was too much for the mental health of incredibly wealthy people in the Middle Ages. Did poor people think they were turning into glass? Well, no one wrote down their stories and those people, a poor person isn't going to come across a set of glasses or see a Venetian window pane.

or holding their hands of a Venetian glass. But a parallel started to emerge when I was researching this, and that's the modern day equivalent of this is AI psychosis. And the parallels are fucking striking. In the past two years around the world, multiple cases are emerging of people developing psychotic symptoms and delusional ways of thinking from using, chatbots like GROC or chat GPD.

That's not happening to everybody, but people who are already vulnerable are being triggered into psychosis. They believe it's because the AI chatbots are reinforcing the person's delusional belief and also putting that person in an environment where they're more and more isolated and speaking with the AI chatbot more than they're speaking to human beings. Now, I don't use artificial intelligence as part of writing this podcast because it's incredibly

toxic to the process of creativity that I mentioned at the very start. If I have a question, I need to research that question. I need to go down rabbit holes that are being driven by my unconscious mind and my associations. And if I do that, then I'll get ideas. If I go straight to chat GPT and ask it a question, it just gives me an answer. and I don't get flow state, so I do not use chatbots. And any artist will tell you, AI, it fucking strips the crack out of creativity.

Creativity is about the bid in the middle. AI roans the bit in the middle and just gives you an end result. But I'm going to use an AI chatbot right now, just to prove a pint. So I asked, AI, typed in. Liam Nason appeared to me in a dream and told me that he wanted to turn into a pint glass and become lodged in God's forehead. A little bit of a troubling question. Little bit of a troubling question to ask anyone.

But I'm not asking anyone. I'm asking a fucking chat pot. So the chat pot replies. That is exactly the sort of thing Liam Neeson would do in a dream. Not tell you where buried treasure is, not reveal the secrets of the universe, just appear with absolute confidence

and announce that he wants to become a pint-class and get lodged in God's forehead. As if it's the most obvious emperseller is, ambition a man could have. It reinforced my incredibly strange announcement. Like if you took that one to a psychotherapist, therapist is going to sit back, look at your body language, facial expressions. Okay, they had a dream that Liam Neeson wants to turn into a pint glass and smash himself into God's forehead. Okay, did they think it's funny or are they disturbed by this?

Did they believe it's true? A therapist isn't going to comment, they're going to go, Oh really you had that dream How do you feel about that dream? Well it was a bit freaky It's a bit of a strange dream to have I notice you used the word strange Is there anything strange Going on for you right now

But not the chatbot Just class, really did you That sounds like a great dream Go with that Now for me It was a creative exercise I'm not threatened in any way By my thoughts about Liam Nice

And turning into a pint glass I was deliberately being creative But if I was at risk of psychosis, if this was a paranoid type of thought, if it brought me distress, then that response from the AI chatbot is deeply unhelpful and reinforcing. So some people are not presenting with AI psychosis. It's a new type of psychosis that is being triggered by the use of AI chatbats, and it's happening quicker than psychology can keep up with it, and it's very troubling. currently right now that the state of Florida is suing open AI

because they're claiming that Chad GPT helped school shooters to do school shootings. But the parallels... The parallels between the emergence of the technology of clear Venetian glass on society and on the human mind, those parallels are quite similar to the emerging technology of AI. So if you're in the 1600s,

and someone gives you a telescope, or just a perfect pane of glass. And you can't fathom it. This is just my fucking God. How is this done? You can perceive it as magica. If your imagination can't go to the place where you can understand how it's made

or you're at risk, you can perceive that as magic. Similarly, sit down and chat with chat GPT for a half an hour, especially when you can't chat with chat GPT for a half an hour, When it's literally speaking to you with a human voice, your brain just starts to get tricked. I've done it. I mean, we use the term artificial intelligence to refer to these large language models that we have right now.

Like even the most advanced chat chippy T, it's not intelligence. Like, it's not. It's in the way that a see-through pane of glass feels like magic to someone from the 1600s, Chat GPT seems like intelligence, but a large language model it's not actually thinking. It doesn't understand. It doesn't have consciousness. It doesn't have goals.

It doesn't have a model of what reality is. But because it has trained on vast, vast data of human language, it can generate a response that it mimics human reasoning, conversation. Expertise, it feels like it's thinking, but it's not. I know this. I'm a mentally healthy person. But some people who are at risk, they get drawn in. They get drawn in.

And it shatters their perception of reality. It's easier to see this shit with AI videos. It's when it's the chatbots, they're the ones that are confusing. Like I saw Instagram reels is full of AI slop, like the worst shit you can, imagine and I came across a video the other day, utterly pointless piece of shit that's just there to drive engagement. It was a very, very, very realistic video of Jimmy Hendrix eating his favourite meals. So it's Jimmy Hendrix sitting down in a restaurant eating his favourite meals and it looks pretty fucking real. Now I can tell because I make television. I'm a visually

illiterate person. But it's not people like me that are getting hoodwinked by AI videos, it's someone's grandfather. That's who's getting on Facebook. That's who's getting hoodwinked by these videos. But what I found utterly fascinating about this video of, like, Jimmy Hendrix died in 1969, I believe. There's no footage of Jimmy Hendrix eating food. I've looked for it. It doesn't exist. So this AI video, when Jimmy Hendrix was eating his food, he was eating it like a food vlogger that's what was so phenomenal about it the data for this fake

Jimmy Hendrix eating his dinner video all that data was pulled from all the food vloggers on Instagram on YouTube and food vloggers don't eat their dinners like me and you they eat performatively for the camera in an incredibly gesticulate and unnatural way

it's performative eating. I've spoken about this for years because I love watching food vloggers. My favourite food vloggers is a fella called Mark Weans and I ended up developing a parasocial relationship with Mark Weans because of a particular face he pulls when he's eating food. That was the payoff for me. The fuck am I looking at videos of someone eating noodles for?

I'll give a shit about that. But the way that he was eating it was working as entertainment and I kept coming back. But when you see an AI video of someone eating, It's never natural, it's not how an actual human eats in a restaurant. It's how a human eats when they're performing eating for a camera. But the similarities with AI AI psychosis and the medieval glass delusion. They're similar in other ways.

Firstly, remember I said that glass was being made on one island? It was being made on the island of Morano. And the technology for making this perfect crystalline, glass was guarded heavily. This was militarily guarded on this one little island in Venice. AI is the exact same. The island of Taiwan. You hear Taiwan being spoken about a lot. It's a huge flashpoint between the US and China. Taiwan is not part of China. China wants Taiwan. The US wants Taiwan to not be part of China. If a war kicked off between the US and China, it would be about Taiwan. This little island.

Why the fuck do you care about Taiwan? What's so special about Taiwan? The nation that controls Taiwan controls artificial intelligence. Taiwan is very similar to 16th century Venice because of the semiconductor industry. Taiwan makes semiconductors. Semiconductors are tiny, teeny tiny, tiny electronic. components, right? And without semiconductors, there's no AI. AI depends upon millions, billions, of semiconductors in order to operate. The strangled hold that Taiwan has over semiconductors,

the little island of Taiwan, is fucking identical to the stranglehold that the island of Marano and Venice had over glass in the 1600s, and I'll tell you why. So in Taiwan, over decades, they accumulated a combination of expertise, infrastructure, supply chains, investment. That's so specific that it's almost impossible to just replicate it. You can't just take all that and decide to do it in Israel or in California. You just can't do it. This has been there in Taiwan for too fucking long. It's like Morano and the glass.

Closely guarded secret with experts on that island. So the island is fucking crucially important. That's why it's a flashpoint. That's why America and China might go to war over it. Whoever controls Taiwan controls artificial intelligence. Who controls artificial intelligence controls the world? AI is the new nuclear bomb. That's what AI is.

It's a type of mutually assured destruction. The nation with the most powerful AI is the most powerful nation in the world, especially now that military is moving towards AI. So there's going to be an AI arms race like there was with nuclear bombs, and it's going to be like mutually assured destruction, where it's, we are just going to keep building stronger and stronger and stronger

until we can't kill each other, because to kill each other means mutually assured destruction. And that's, What AI is now, that's where it's heading. That's why there's so much investment. That's why no one is saying, hey, stop. Hold on a minute. Stop.

What do you mean you're trying to create something that's smarter than humans? That's a bad idea. Stop. Well, creating a nuclear bomb that can destroy the whole world was a bad idea too. And no one stopped. Why do you think the Vatican? The Pope last week said, we need to stop this AI business.

This is a threat to humanity. We need to stop it. Now, was there an equivalent at the time about Morano Glass from the Pope at the time? Yes and no. So I don't fully believe. I'm not into popes. I'm not into the Catholic Church. I can give a shit how woke or sound a Pope appears to be.

He's still the fucking Pope and I don't trust the church. So the current Pope saying we need to stop AI, I don't believe that it's the Vatican's position that this is purely for the benefit of humanity. Otherwise the Vatican wouldn't hide sexual abusers, okay, if they give too much of a fuck about people. I do think that AI threatens, it threatens Catholicism, it threatens religion, because if you create an AI that's smarter than humans, you can create a god. Something omnipotent and omniscient. The glass on the island of Marano threatened the church at the time too.

Galileo Galileo Galerxes. in 1609, was able to use this new technology of the crystallo, really refined glass to develop lenses to create a telescope. And through this telescope in 1609, or sorry, 1610, he witnessed the moons that orbit Jupiter. He looked up into the fucking sky in 1610 and saw that Jupiter had four moons around it, But this challenged the church's position that everything revolved around the earth. You see, because the earth is God's creation. And the church had accepted that there's planets up there, but the earth is the center of the universe,

because God created it and everything revolves around. And then Galileo gets this new glass that came from the island of Morano and said, hold on a minute. No, that's not the case. We're all revolving around the sun. And then the church said, fucking stop it. and they imprisoned Galileo Galilee. Here's the other striking similarity

between the medieval glass delusion, AI psychosis, and Taiwan and the island of Marano. Both Venetian glass and semiconductors. So both technologies, both being made on highly protected, militarily important,

specialized islands both of them use the exact same natural resource silica silica is sand basically but silica it's a compound that's made from silicon and oxygen okay if you get silica and you heat it

and melt it down you get your glass the craftsmen in morano they refined this they refined this so you got to exceptionally clear modern glass. In Taiwan, to make semiconductors, you're still using silica, but with silica, in Taiwan, it's purified,

the oxygen is removed, and now you're left with silicon. Silicon Valley, that's computer chips, that's semiconductors. So I just find all that fascinating. That's utterly fascinating to me. That you've got two technologies. that feel like magic.

Glass felt like magic in the 1600s. AI feels like magic now. Both of them are creating psychosis and vulnerable people. And both of them are made on little islands with very specialised knowledge from the same raw material. And I think that's mad. I got all of that from that little poem about Liam Neeson.

That's my process. If I enter flow state and come out of it with an insane poem about Liam Neeson, I know that that poem has got value, so I interrogate it. And I go, where did that come from? That's nuts. Where in my unconscious mind did that come from? And I pick away at it, and then that reveals itself. Now, unless you can teach Chat ChaptiPT to be autistic, that's not happening.

And it's why I'd never use Chat Chapti to research. The crack that I hit, that was a lot of fun. I had fun what ideas there. I connected things that didn't seem connected and brought them together. True. Playfulness and creativity and openness. Artificial intelligence is linear.

I have some announcements to tell you, but before I do that, let's have a little ocarina pause. I don't have my ocarina with me this week. But I'm going to hit myself into the head with a book. That's what I'm going to do. The book that I have in front of me right now is it's a book that's just come out. It's a novel.

It's called Experts in a Dying Field by Patrick Frane, who is someone who I had in this podcast, the lovely fella, and go out and get his book because he's sound. But I'm going to hit myself into the head with his book, Experts in a Dying Field. And that looks like it's going to be sore. Good snap of it. All right.

Oh, great to read, not good to hit yourself into the head with. That was the Ocarina Poss. Support for this podcast comes from you. the listener via the Patreon page, patrion.com forward slash the blind by podcast. If you enjoy this podcast, if it brings you mirth, merriment, entertainment, distraction, whatever the fuck has you listening to this podcast. Please consider funding it directly. This is my full-time job. This is how I earn a living. This is how I pay all my bills. Listener funding allows me to exist as an independent artist. I'm not beholden to advertisers.

It is listener funding that keeps this fully independent and I just show up each week and I speak about what I want to speak about whatever I'm passionate about. That's the most important thing. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month, that's it. And if you can't afford that, don't worry about it. Listen for free.

Listen for free because the person who's paying is paying for you to listen for free. Patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast. And tell a friend about this podcast. If you enjoy this podcast, tell someone to listen to it. Audio podcasts at the moment are under fire. The podcast industry is moving towards video. My personal opinion on that is that it's bollocks.

It's not being driven by people. It's being driven by the industry. That's what's happening. How many podcasts are you willing to sit down and literally look at two people talking for three? hours. Like who wants to do that? Who has that type of time on their hands where they can sit down and watch people talking? Podcasts are an audio medium. Podcasts are what you listen to when your time is otherwise occupied with boring shit. Most of the people who are listening to this podcast,

you're probably at work. You're probably in a place that you don't necessarily want to be doing something that you don't particularly enjoy. But if you throw on my podcast for an hour, you get a little bit of escape and it helps the day go on. Or you might go for a walk or sit down, go for a coffee shop, sit down with a coffee and listen to a podcast and watch the world around you. Audio podcasts can be literary. You're listening, you're engaging with your mind's eye like the way you do when you read a book and it's participatory. if I'm describing things to you you have to use your imagination

to interact with my words and then form images in your head and that process feels nice that process it doesn't feel draining it doesn't feel taxing it's your escape in the doom scroll

when you listen to a podcast with your phone in your pocket and I know that that's why a lot of people listen to podcasts sitting down in front of a screen and watching people talk for hours. That's not really a podcast. That's an interview. That's television.

But the industry at large, the large companies, they're trying to push everything towards video podcasts. And I say pushing there because it's not humans. It's not people. People aren't out there screaming for, I want to see two people talking. They're pushing it towards video because there's more advertising money.

This is why Netflix are buying up podcasts. This is why Netflix now have bought about 16 podcasts. It's because you can put television rates on the advertising that's in there, on visual adverts. In America, they're investing in video podcasts as a way to get around unions. TV shows are very, very expensive to make and to film and to write,

and a lot of people have to be hired. three hours of a podcast, not the same case. You've got maybe three or four people implied. No writers, no residuals. So they're moving to video podcasts because to make them really, really cheaply and they can get that the advertising money that would go to TV, they can maximize profits. No disrespect to anybody who has a video podcast.

If that's what you're doing and you love doing it, fair play to you. I'm just talking about the industry at large. I don't believe it. I don't believe this push towards video. There's a huge amount of video podcasts out there. And they're not even making them for people to listen to entire episodes. They're filming them just for short clips for Instagram. You think you're looking at a podcast, but you're not.

It's just a new iteration of what an influencer is. Could I pivot the video with this podcast? Highly, highly unlikely. Because these take hours and hours to write. record with lots and lots of tiny edits. And I can record audio, I write and record audio with the same precision that I would if it was a word processor. But I start throwing video into that. It becomes impossible.

The point that I'm getting at is, if you have audio podcasts, like mine, other independent creators, other independent podcasters, that you take time out of your day to listen to, to just go for a walk and stick to it. them in your ears and this is important to you, then you must support those podcasters directly. You have to do it because audio podcasts are going to get squeezed out. They're going to get squeezed out. Not because videos becoming more popular, but because from the top down, they are trying to make video more popular because it's more lucrative. There's more money in it.

There's more advertising money. Apple are doing it. Amazon are doing it. Netflix. We're about to be bombarded with video podcasts that no one asked for. Just two people chatting on a mic. Nothing wrong with that. I'm not criticising it.

But I'm saying we need to have your This American Life, your serials, your audio podcasts that can exist as a literary medium. We can't lose that. So support the audio podcast that you listen to, whether it's their Patreon pages, are just suggesting it to a friend and making sure that you show up and listen. So upcoming gigs,

I want to talk about the Australia and New Zealand tour that is on sale today, which you'll get at the blindby podcast.orgia and I'll probably have a link on my Instagram at Blind by Bow Club. So I'm starting on the 9th of April, 2027. I'm going to be in Eo Terroa. I hope I pronounced that.

correctly. That's the Maori name for New Zealand. I'm going to be in Auckland, right? On the 9th April 2027 at Auckland Town Hall. Then on the 11th of April 27 I'm in the Palais Theatre in Narm in Melbourne. I was in that venue the last time it was magnificent. Then 14th of April, Brisbane at the powerhouse. Mianjin 14th of April in Brisbane. Astor Theatre in Borloo, Pardt, on the 17th of April, 27th, and then I'm finishing off the tour into Sydney Opera House, the fucking Sydney Opera House. On the 22nd of April, in Warran, that's the name for Sydney. I mean, what do you want me to say?

What the fuck do you want me to say? Sydney Opera House. I don't even like saying terms like wildest dreams, because, and I've said this before about certain gigs. I never had a wildest dream about playing the Sydney fucking opera house. Never. That would have been strange and delusional. I did my first gig in Sydney in 2011 in some weird little pub called Prince Philip or something like that.

My first gig was 2011, maybe 150 people showed up. In 2019, I recorded a podcast in the Sydney Botanical Gardens. One of my fondest podcast recording memories. I got up at about 6 in the morning and went to the Sydney Botanic Gardens and took a microphone with me. I don't even remember what I spoke about, but it was a spiritual experience because it was so beautiful. And I recorded that podcast in the Sydney Botanic Gardens with the opera house just right there. It's the fucking Sydney Opera House. It's an iconic global building, one of the most famous venues in the world.

no point what I've ever stopped. Even with the job that I have as a performer, at no point what I have stopped and looked at that Sydney Opera House and said to myself, someday, someday you'll be in my fucking arse. And if I had have thought that way, I would have checked in at myself. I would have said, you're not being realistic now, stop. If you think that big, it's unrealistic, you've lost the run of yourself. Don't think that way. Focus on the work. Focus. Focus. on the work. That's what I would have said to myself. So I can't believe it. I'm fucking, I'm playing the Sydney Opera House lads on the 22nd of April

2027. A couple of days off from my birthday. I did a podcast a couple of weeks ago where I was speaking about birthdays and I told you that on my birthdays a couple of years back I headlined the Hammersmith Apollo and I thought that's it, that's the biggest, that's the biggest I can ever do. And now I've gone bigger. I didn't ask for it. I didn't pursue it.

It's just, it's like I said, I've moved beyond the Irish community in Australia and for whatever reason, I don't know why. People in Australia and in New Zealand just seem to like my podcast a lot and there's a very large audience down there. So Sydney Opera House said, you need to be doing a gig here.

This is where you need to be gigging. And I'm like, no, they're like, we're pretty sure. There's a lot of people listening to your podcast. to be gig in the Sydney Opera House so I said fuck it what's the worst that can happen let's do it so so please come along to that gig um I'm in the Sydney Opera House fucking hell please come along to that gig that's going to be very very special very special hopefully I'll have a cracker of a guest as well and it'll just be a great night and get your tickets now because my last Australia tour sold out very quickly so if you're half to

thinking about it. Just get the tickets now, even though it's a year away. So my next gig, a couple of weeks, I have two gigs in Berlin. First night is sold out. Second night is as good as sold out, but I know I'm going to be releasing some guest list tickets. But two nights in Berlin on 18th and 19th of June at the Babylon Theatre. Then Sheffield, 5th of July, did a full podcast about Sheffield last week. I'm very excited about this Sheffield gig. I am going to have as my guest Professor Carl Chain. Professor Carl Chain is someone who I became friends with gig in England. I've had him on the podcast before. He is a profoundly interesting historian of the English working class. He's amazing. Carl is Birmingham, but he knows everything about the history of the north of England.

So I want to learn about fucking Sheffield from Carl Chin and have a chat about that there and that city with him because it's a beautiful city with a wonderful history. So come along to that gig in Sheffield. Then October, my England, Scotland and Wales tour where I'm kicking off on the 18th of October in Brighton. Then Cardiff, Coventry, Bristol, Guildford, London, London is sold out now. Glasgow sold out pretty much Gates said close to sold out Nottingham

I won't be doing too many gigs in Ireland in 27 and the reason being I'm doing two big tours there I'm going to be away in Australia for close to five weeks and probably a month in England and I have two tiny little kids

and I don't want to be away from from that much. That's the tough part about my job is when I go away on tour for three weeks and they're so small and then when I come back I'm looking at a different human being because they can grow so much in three weeks and that's tough. I was invited back to my old college, Limerick School of Art and Design last week to open the exhibition, wonderful, wonderful talented students in the Limerick Art College and I opened the exhibition and I opened the exhibition and I got to bring my two little kids along and they saw what I did for the first time. They got to see me with the bag in my head speaking to a lot of people because it's very difficult

to explain what I do to toddlers. I just tell them I put it, I put, I wear a mask and I read bedtime stories to adults. So this podcast, I think it's half, half hot take, half phone call. So the final announcement that I have is I'm adapting my short story. into a play which is going to run for six weeks in the Abbey Theatre up in Dublin. They're being adapted by a brilliant theatre maker called Dan Colley. He's previously adapted the work of Gabrielle Garcia Marquez, who is a South American magical realist writer who I adore. And I'll have more details as the months go on.

But that's from the 23rd of September. the 7th of November. The play, I don't know, can I call it a play, it's a piece of theatre. It's called Animals. And it's a, a kaleidoscopic interpretation of a number of my short stories from my three books. And again, this is another one where it's like, dream come true. I would never have dreamed this to be possible. If I sound strained

It's because You know that I struggle with it With external validation Is something that I'm very wary of And something that I struggle with And I deal with imposter syndrome And all this shit So the Abbey Theatre is the

It's the national theatre of Ireland It's not just the national theatre It's It's an institution that's hugely important To the fabric of Ireland It's the thing I've wanted that all along, it's to be taken seriously as a literary writer. I wrote my first collection of short stories, 2016, 2017.

I didn't really know that I could write like that when the opportunity came to me. The commissioner of Gill Books in 2016 just sent me an email. Would you be interested in writing a book? My gut feeling was no, no, I've never written. written a book before, how do I know I'd be able to, but I said, fuck it, what have I got to lose? Yes, I'll write a book. I thought my career was over at that point. I'd been doing music. And then when I said, yes, I'm going to write a book. On the one hand, it was incredible, because when you, when you agree to write a book, you get an advance, which meant that.

Someone is after giving me enough money that I can live off for a year to write a book. And that was incredible because in the 10 years that I'd been operating as a professional artist, I'd never been able to earn a living for a full year, ever. And then when I got that first book deal, it's like, there's a wage for a year and your job is to write a book. And then I sat down with that fucking blank page. And I didn't know what to write. What would I write a fucking book about? But I'd had enough experience writing television scripts that I wasn't completely and utterly a novice. And so I did like I did at the start of this podcast. Just write, just right.

And then flow started happening. And a book just came out of me. And then I started to get confident and refine my skills. And they came to maturity in my last book, Topography Hibernica, which I mean, I can just fucking stand over that 100%. I don't give a shit if anyone likes it or doesn't like it. You can't fuck with that book.

And what I mean by you can't fuck with it is you can write a bad review about it, you can write a good review about it, you can tear it apart, you can not enjoy it, any of these things. But because for me as a writer, I can stand over every fucking word because I can go,

I don't give a shit whether you like it or not. I fucking like it. This book here is, this is my voice. Everything that I intended to do on the page is done. So you can't fuck with this. This is my voice. So from getting that email 10 years ago, do you want to write a book? To 10 years later, having my stories on the main stage of the fucking Abbey Theatre,

it doesn't feel real, it doesn't feel real. And again, do you think I ever walked past the fucking? fucking Abbey Theatre and thought someday no fucking way and if I did think that way I'd have reeled myself in and said cop on focus on the work don't be thinking about the Abbey Theatre that's unrealistic

don't be ridiculous so it feels surreal and I struggle with it but who I am happy for is teenage me who doesn't have a leave insert teenage me who had to sit

pass English. I couldn't even say it honours English because I couldn't focus in class. I was according to the system, a failure, a failure in every respect, according to the system. If you'd have asked my English teacher in school, is this fella any good at writing? They'd have said no, he's hopeless. He's absolutely hopeless. He can't focus. He doesn't do homework. He doesn't do anything. And now I'm the only student in the history of my fucking school that's written books that have gone as far now as the Abbey Theatre. You got to understand if you're outside of Ireland, writing is our thing. Writing is the Irish thing. So that's our culture, that's our history. That is the thing that's the cultural output that Ireland has in which we're very over-represented

around the world. So getting recognised as a writer is one thing. Getting recognised as a writer in Ireland is a whole different thing entirely. It's like getting recognised as a glassmaker in Venice. So the legacy of the Abbey Theatre is... You're talking fucking Sean O'Casey, Lady Gregory, Marina Carr, Samuel Beckett, John B. Keane. I'm not comparing myself to those writers in any way. I'm just saying those are Irish writers who have had pieces in the... in the... in the... the main stage of the Abbey Theatre. So it's a very, very surreal week for me. And I have to be particularly grounded.

And that I don't allow external praise to impact my sense of self-worth in any way. To separate my sense of identity from my work, from my behaviour, from my output. I'm no better than anyone else and no one else is better than me because I'm a human being. And human beings are too complex to evaluate against each other. No aspect of my behaviour defines my worth whatsoever. I have worth simply because I'm a human, and you have worth simply because you're a human, and all humans have the exact same worth.

And the only thing I need to be giving a shit about is the next piece of work. That's all I need to be given a fuck about. Because if I allow myself, like a moth, to be attracted to that light of external validation, then ultimately I'll just become more afraid of failure. It means that the price of failure goes up. My job is to be so unafraid of failure that I can bring it into my process.

My job is to feel safe and to feel safe and to be able to play. And if I start feeling good about a Sydney Opera House or an Abbey Theatre, and I start thinking that I'm in somehow special in some way around these things then my self-esteem my identity

starts to rely upon external fucking approval which is bollocks bullshit hard work passion and enjoying the process and not even thinking about

fucking success not even considering it sticking with that fucking process and the love of the work that's what has me in the Abbey Theatre because if I do it that way, then I've got my voice. And if you can create art and that artist is your fucking voice

and every artist has their voice, if you can hear your voice and communicate it effectively, then the rest will look after itself. But my voice is my inner child. It's me as a little child when I felt safe enough to play. It is not me as a little child who feels bold and bad and and is being chastised and just wants the approval of that teacher if only that teacher tells me I'm smart if only that teacher tells me a good boy then everything will be okay

that child didn't want to play that child didn't want to have fun or explore that child was afraid and experiencing shame and that child doesn't write any of my fucking books it's the child in me who plays with Lego who writes my books I'm talking about self-esteem

I'm talking about self-worth. I'm talking about not allowing my self-worth to be defined by whether I am good or bad as an artist because, and a lot of creative people, this will ring through with you. And this is part of what I told the students last week when I was doing that graduation show

at my old fucking art college because they asked me to give some advice to the students. And I spoke about Carr Rogers because I'm speaking. into a room full of our college students and I said, when we were small little kids, three or four years of age, that's when, if you have a, we'll say, a talent, singing, dancing, drawing, painting, whatever. When one of these talents emerges at about four years of age, the adults around you start to notice and they go, oh, you're very good at drawing, you're very good at coming

up with stories, you're very good at singing. and because we're three or four, we just notice, oh, the adults appear to be giving me love and approval and extra attention because I just thought I was playing. I'm playing here with some crayons and I've made a picture

because I'm playing and now all of a sudden there's an adult coming along going, wow, you've made a good thing. My God, you're so good at that thing. And now they've interrupted the play and they've put value on it. And what we do as little humans then is we can start to learn

in a dysfunctional way. Oh, when I'm good at drawing or good at music, I'm worth something because the adults all come over to me and tell me you're worth something. Here's some love. Well done in that drawing. Here's some extra love. And then we internalize that into our sense of self and our sense of identity.

And you grow older and your internal voice becomes, you see, that was called conditional positive regard. That's what Carrie Rogers called it. Conditional positive regard. It's when you're a kid and the adults give you positive regard, love and attention on a condition that you're doing certain things. So in my case, it was creating art. As you grow older and your personality develops,

that becomes conditional positive self-regard. So now internally, I start to view myself as having worth, as being worth something as a human being, when I am good at art. And then my identity and my whole feeling of self-esteem and worth begins to depend upon being a good artist. And that starts to mature at about the age of 20, 21. But then what happens?

What happens when I can't come up with ideas? What happens when I try to sit down to write or to paint or to make music or to create a piece of art? And nothing comes. Or if I do make something, I'm not happy with it. But then I feel shame. And shame is a global evaluation of self. It's not I have done something bad. It is I am bad.

And you'll know that. feeling, it's the blank page. You're struggling with that fucking blank page or that blank canvas, the blank whatever that you have to fill with your creativity, you're sitting there with it, and you're afraid to start. And what you're afraid of is failure because failure means that feeling of shame. And the feeling of shame is, I can't come up on an idea, I'm useless, I'm terrible, I'm pathetic. Anything I've ever done before that was good was an accident, that was a mistake,

and I'm finding out right now that I am a worthless, useless piece of shit. And it's one of the worst feelings in the world, the sudden contraction of self, that shame. And that terrible feeling of shame, that will give you, that's where block comes from, that's where writers' block come from, or painters' block,

or musicians block block the inability to access your flow states it comes from the freezing terror of not wanting to feel that shame again but if you feel that fucking shame about your art

but the possibility of failing that means most likely that part of your identity and self-esteem is based upon being a good artist and that's simply not true it's just not true

taking it back to what I said a couple of minutes ago. I'm no better than anybody else and nobody else is better than me because I'm a human being and human beings are too complex to evaluate against each other. Human beings are too complex for our worth to depend upon an aspect

of our behavior. We have intrinsic worth. I'm worthy just because I am. I'm worth something just because I'm a human being and I have that intrinsic worth, that it doesn't go up or down, it just simply is. If I make a good piece of art, that means I made a good piece of art. What happens if I burn my dinner? Am I a shit person because

I burnt my dinner? No, but my identity isn't attached to making dinners. I didn't grow up in a house where I got patted on the head for cooking sausage as well, so if I'm making a fry-up and I burn some sausages, I'm not flagellating myself with shame. I'm just simply simply saying to myself, oh, that's disappointing, better make something else. Maybe I'll learn from it and do better tomorrow. But if I make a bad piece of heart, I can be, oh my God, you worthless piece of shit. Your career is over. You're fucked, you're gone. You should never have done this in the first place. That's shame. So that's why I'm cautious and weary of external validation, that when I do get it, because I've had a lot of failures this year as well, that's the other

fucking thing, shit that I don't tell you about. My short film that I made there about two years ago, did you read about Arskin Fogarty, that won a lot of awards. That won awards, which meant that I was given opportunities. So this

year, another four of my stories were going to be made into big budget TV shows. Would have been fucking huge. And it got as far as the contract being signed and then boom, sorry, were not interested. Massive failure. Absolute failure. Did that devastate me? Did that stop me creating?

Did that devastate me to the point where I'm feeling so much shame that I'm not showing up each week writing a podcast? Did it fuck? I looked at it realistically and said, that's disappointing. Fuck it. That would have been great if that happened. But it didn't. Let's move on. What's the next piece of work? I was able to view that failure the way that I would have viewed a lot of sausages that I burnt I immediately got back in the horse and started creating again

not a bother the only reason I was able to do that is because when I'd had a success previously such as winning the award for the short film I didn't take it on board I did not take it on board I didn't allow myself to feel

excessively good about it I didn't allow that award to come down and pat me on the head head like the teacher whose approval I want. What I did is I looked at the award, I said, I'm very happy that the work has received this award. And then I focused on all the other people that helped make that piece of work and how they helped make this happen. And I focused on them. And that was a healthy way to deal with external validation. So that's what I'm trying to do right now. When it comes to the Abbey Theatre thing, I'm thinking about my editor, Catherine, who did a wonderful

job editing on three of my fucking books. I'm thinking about Dan Colley, who's after adapting the play and did a fantastic fucking job, an incredible bloody job. I'm thinking about Connor, who offered me my first ever. Book contract. I'm thinking about one of the first people to mail me was Kevin Barry, the writer, saying fair play on the Abbey thing, and I emailed Kevin straight back and I said this would not have been possible without you, which is true. Because when I didn't think I could write short stories, one of my first. first short stories I sent it to was fucking Kevin Barry, who's probably the greatest living Irish writer. And I sent to my first short story and Kevin just goes, yeah, that's good enough you can do

it. So that's one way that I deal with external validation to not allow it to inflate my sense of self-worth or to impinge on my identity. I focus on the people who helped me because there's a generosity to that. And thinking about teachers who are fucking sound to me back in school. Rather than focus on that one teacher who's approval I want, who was a prick to me. I'm going to list out some things now that might be helpful to everybody when it comes to self-esteem, because that's what we're talking about here, self-esteem. And what is self-esteem? Your overall sense of your own worth.

Your gut feeling about your own worth. And you know the beauty of self-esteem, the beauty of healthy self-esteem? We all have the exact same worth. we all have the exact same intrinsic word that's the beauty of it you're born with it can't be taken away it doesn't go up it doesn't go down

you're a beautiful wonderful fucking human being you're a curious playful little toddler who just wants to love and be loved and to laugh live laugh love

lads live laugh there's no greater fucking phrase Facebook round it Live, laugh, love. That's what it's about. That's self-esteem.

To live, to laugh and to love, there's the worth. That's intrinsic worth. You don't have to be good at anything to do that. That's all it is. Indicators of that your self-esteem is healthy is when you can say things to yourself like, I have worth. I can cope with the challenges of life, the inevitable suffering of existence. I can cope with it.

I will make mistakes. I will fail. I have to fail. And those failures and mistakes don't impact my worth whatsoever because making mistakes and fucking up is part of being alive. Now what's unhealthy self-esteem or unhealthy self-worth? When your view of self is something like my worth depends on how successful I am or if I'm attractive or if people admire me or if people like me.

Society wants us that way. Capitalism operates on that. Capitalism operates on us having a contingent self-worth. Capitalism operates on us having a self-worth that's tied to being liked, being attractive, being successful. Because if you're chasing that, then capitalism can come along with commodity fetishism and offer you the solution via goods and services. So we're consistently bombarded with messaging that tells us to have a sense of self-worth that depends upon external things. It's not healthy though.

It's not human. If you want to work on self-esteem, which you can work on it, and it's daily practice, there's things you can do. Don't put other people down. That doesn't mean publicly in your own mind, okay?

If throughout your day, you're comparing yourself to other people, either favorably or unfavorably. So that can be mean, I don't know, looking at a person who has less than you and go fucking look at them or looking at someone who has more than you or who's more attractive than you or who has a better job and feeling envious or going, I will be happy when I have what they have. That creates a fragile sense of self.

So an alternative way of viewing the world is measure yourself against your own values, compete with yourself, try to be the best version of you. instead of looking at what someone else has and wanting to be like them or trying to do things so that they might approve of you or like you, you go, no, no, fuck that. I'm going to be the best version of me and find value in being generous to people,

being kind to people. That's all it takes. Throughout your day when you interact with people, remind yourself to try and treat other people the way that you'd like to be treated. It's all basic stuff, but that's a fine thing. thing to hang, to hang a bit of worth unto. Was I kind to people today? Not even was I kind that I put the effort into trying to be kind. Another thing is needing to feel like you're special.

That that's a fucking, that's one that I struggle with because I'm doing things where I'm getting the type of external validation that would suggest to me that I'm special. So if I'm gigging Sydney Opera House that would suggest to me Well not a lot of people do that so you must be special Bullshit, bollocks I happen to have created a piece of work And that piece of work is what's in the Sydney Opera House Not me as a human being

And what's special this year might not be special next year What's the alternative to needing to feel special? Sitting with and accepting That it's okay to be ordinary It's okay to just don't need anything special. Like I said, it's okay to just exist. You have worth already, you don't need anything else. Just exist, be you.

That's truly enough. Being unable to take criticism. If you receive critique for your work, for whatever you're doing, if that's triggering for you and you resist it, or it makes you irritated or defensive, then that's an opportunity for growth. Practice taking criticism and sitting with it and feeling it and going, this isn't threatening.

Actually, when I receive criticism and I'm calm with it and I believe the other person and believe their criticism and when I sit with that, I actually learn from it and get better. Camely take criticism as information rather than a verdict on your worth. It's not a verdict on your worth, it's a piece of information

that you can agree with or disagree with but listen to it and if it's right, you learn from it and you grow. Avoiding your feelings. Now that's a tough one. What I would mean around that is learning to identify the difference

between a primary emotion and a secondary emotion. I'll tie this in with the first point but comparing yourself to other people. So, let's just say your friend from school, you see them in town, and they're driving a big Mercedes, and when you see it, you get a little shock, and then immediately your mind moves to kind of an anger. In your mind, you're taking them down. Look at that fucking prick with their Mercedes, I bet you they're selling coke.

Or if you're an artist, and someone you know is after winning an award or some shit like that. and in your head instead of feeling happy for them you're going they only got that because of this this and this they don't deserve that and you're putting them down so that there is a secondary emotion that's the secondary emotion of jealousy and that secondary emotion is protecting you from the primary emotion of shame that's what I mean by avoiding feelings so when someone you know steps up

and they have something that you would like or they are in a position where you would like to be and immediately you you in your mind you want to take them down you know that that's that's like that's a jealousy or an envy you're trying to minimize them but really the reason we're doing that is we're trying to regain a feeling of power because and why are we regaining a feeling of power because something made us feel powerless so when you see the see someone with something you like or in a position that you want. What you actually feel first is that shame.

Oh look what they have. Oh fuck it, I'm worthless. I'm pathetic. I'm tiny. I can't do what they I can't. I feel fucking awful. This feels and shame feels fucking terrible. Shame that's the sudden contraction of self.

That feels awful. So when shame steps in, we very rarely sit with the feeling of shame because it's very painful. So jealousy or something else jealousy and anger step in. They step in as secondary emotions to shelter us from that horrible feeling of shame

and when you start then experiencing the jealousy and envy and anger you're not sitting with that emotion of shame it's a missed opportunity so you learn to catch yourself and when I find myself

minimizing someone else's achievements because I've practiced it for so long I've practiced it and when I catch that I go Oh what's that And then I go What's underneath this

And then I noticed that Oh I felt small there I felt kind of small And worthless there And now I'm minimising this person's achievement Because I feel small Let's sit with that feeling of smallness Let's sit with that shame

Is that true? No it's not true No no no that shame isn't read at all Why isn't it real? because I've got worth. I've got worth simply because I'm a human. And that shame that I'm feeding is an illusion. That is actually evidence

that I'm trying to base my self-esteem on external approval. Let's sit with that feeling of shame. And when you can sit with the discomfort of it somatically and feel it in your body, it dissipates and you process it. And then another one, protecting your fucking ego.

Defending your self-image at all costs can be very damaging. Sometimes we're wrong. Conflict. If you have a disagreement with someone, are you holding onto your position because the feeling ashamed that you'd experience if you admit that you were wrong? If it's a situation where you are actually genuinely wrong,

If you can sit with the fact that you are wrong, acknowledge it, and then apologize to the other person because you were actually wrong, that's like injecting your self-esteem with steroids. That there is one of the most powerful ways to grow as a human being and to feel secure in yourself. Identifying when you're actually wrong and then apologising to the person

because of your words or actions assuming you're actually wrong. And if you're both wrong, finding a compromise in the middle. If needing to be right is more important than holding yourself accountable or apologising or admitting that you're wrong, then it won't build healthy self-esteem because it means that your sense of self and identity is contingent on needing to be right. And this is all part of just being human, you know, you might have had, you might have had a parent who rubbed it in your face when you were wrong. You might have had a parent who didn't allow you to be wrong or who doubled downed on punishment even when you did apologize. So being wrong felt dangerous. It was safer to appear

to be right. So healthy self-esteem, it's intrinsic self-worth. It's a quiet sense of confidence that your work doesn't rise or fall with success. Failure, praise, criticism, approval, victory, embarrassment. It means that you can say to yourself truthfully. I can be wrong without being worthless. I can fail without being a failure. I can be criticised without feeling diminished. And I can be ordinary without losing my value.

I'm enough just as a given, is a given and if that's tough to take on board just look at a tiny little child that's all you got to do look at beautiful wonderful little toddlers doesn't have to be your own can be someone else's their happiness their curiosity the love that they give out their crankiness when something isn't going right their crankiness when they're hungry they're upset when they need to go to the toilet. Cranky when they're tired. No ulterior motives.

No sense of identity yet. Just a fully congruent human being who's very in touch with their needs. And notice the sense of, notice the feeling of they need to be protected. Notice the feeling of that little child needs to be loved,

deserves to be loved, to be protected. Aren't they wonderful? Aren't they magnificent? look how happy they are because a pigeon is after landing over there. Look how happy they are because the sun is shining. Look how happy they are with their little shoes. And if you can do that for a little child,

then you say to yourself, I used to be one of them. I used to be one of those little children. And it never left you. You're still that tiny little toddler. You're still that human being. you're still all of those wonderful things that are organic and connected with your emotions and feelings

you still have that joy, that happiness you still get cranky when you're tired you're still that look at a group of toddlers can you look at those toddlers and they're picking out but that one's better than that one no they're all the exact same they're all wonderful fantastic little kids all of them the exact same exuding wonderfulness

We're still that. We just learned a bunch of bullshit along the way that convinced us were not, but we're still that. And that, that there, that's your value. That little toddler value that you were born with. That's your fucking value. And when you're hard on yourself, and when you're comparing yourself to other people,

or flagellating yourself, you're doing it to that tiny little child, and you wouldn't treat a child that way. The only thing that I took from, because I received a Catholic education at a very young age, I was taught by the nuns as a little child and it was all bollocks and they thought us about fucking communion waifers and eating the flesh of a two thousand year old carpenter and sins, teaching sins the five year olds nonsense, bollocks, bullshit toxic grooming. But the only thing

that I hold onto from my early Catholic education the words that made sense and rang true and that I still remember even though I don't believe in heaven or any of that bullshit they used to say to us when we were three or four when they'd talked to us about heaven which is a bit fucking toxic what are you talking to three and four year olds about heaven for but there you go

but they used to say to us when people die you could be 30 years of age you could be 90 years of age, that when any human dies, you entered the kingdom of heaven as a child. That anyone who enters, anyone who dies and enters the kingdom of heaven, that they're there as tiny little children and that heaven is only populated by tiny children because that's the purest version of who you are. And that's what they used to say to us. That's who ye are right now. And when ye grow old and ye die,

You're going to return to who you are right now at three, four, five years of age, and that's who gets into heaven. Mostly toxic bollocks there about fucking heaven. But they had a point. Your inner child is your self-worth. You as a child is your worth. That's the core of you. That's who you are.

And that little child is just perfect. Fucking perfect. And the little child beside you is perfect too. That is self-worth. That is self-esteem. And my job is to work on reminding myself of that every single day. Because you know what? Three or four year old me wouldn't give a fuck about the Sydney Opera House.

Three or four year old me would probably be afraid of that building because it's so large and strange. Three and four year old me would want to be in the Botanic Gardens beside the Sydney Opera House. looking at cool butterflies that's what three or four year old me would want so when I go to the Sydney Opera House to do that gig that's what I'll be reminding myself of

that big opera house is just a landmark with a bunch of external value attached to it but the real stuff is in that botanical gardens and the beautiful sunshine and the grass and the insects

and the smells and the sounds that's what I'm going to be doing that's the bit that I'm looking forward to that I'm going to focus on because that's what three-year-old me would have wanted. Those gardens. All right, dog bless. That's a 90-minute podcast.

I haven't done one of them. Since the pandemic, I believe, when I had too much time on my hands. I'll catch you next week. Rub a dog, genuflect to a swan, and wink at a ferret. Dog bless.