The Mythology of Rain Smell on a hot day

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Fat rain droplets.

Violent rain.

Can you you hear that?

The type of rain that if you looked up into the sky,

you might acquire an eye injury.

Frightening rain.

There's not much I can do about it.

I've got a tin roof here in my office.

If you've been listening to the podcast recently, you know I've been having a fucking nightmare with sounds.

It's now it's quietening.

It's quite a down note.

That was phenomenal.

That was phenomenal rain.

That was

that's that retribution rain.

There's seagulls outside my window, pissed off.

Ever seen a seagull pissed off by rain?

I have.

I'm looking at one now.

I'm a bit annoyed.

Actually, I'm gonna open the window to see if I can get that the smell, the smell of petracar.

Hold on.

We're barebacking this week, lads.

I didn't put on a limiter, I just opened the window.

See, there's been a heat wave in Limerick.

Oh, the wind is coming in.

Yes, I can smell it.

Yes.

I wanted to begin this week's podcast by

Fuck it, let's not hide anything.

That was a magnificent torrent of rain that I just witnessed and recorded and ye heard.

And I opened the window there.

It's been very hot.

It's been very hot for the past three days.

It's been 30 degrees.

We don't usually get 30 degrees here in Ireland.

If you're from a hot country, you're thinking 30 degrees, who gives a fuck?

We're not accustomed to this here in Ireland.

We don't know what to do with ourselves.

It's very distressing when we get 30-degree heat.

We're not built for it in any way, shape, or form.

And I just open my window there so I can get that smell.

The smell called petricar,

which is

a floral, a type of floral, oily smell

that the earth releases after a dry spell and when you're suddenly hit with rain.

It's like the earth is letting out a sigh.

There's a sense of relief to this smell.

When you smell that oily petra car

after a deluge of rain,

you've got empathy with the ground for a little bit.

You just kind of know

It's the soil going thank fuck

thank fuck

because I was drying out there thanks for that

and that's what that smell is I'm gonna close the window now

I'm gonna turn my gate back on now

so now we've got a little bit more silence You'll notice the sound is clearer.

The sky is suddenly blue outside.

I fucking love a bit of rain in the summer I do.

And now my my office has been

vandalized

by the

order of Petracar.

The rain is returning now you can hear it.

We welcome the rain in.

We welcome the rain in this week.

I rushed to the microphone.

as soon as it began raining because I wanted to record in real time

me smelling Petracar.

I'm utterly fascinated by it.

It's like doing a line of nature.

It's pure and utter life.

It's pure and utter existence, vitality.

It's what I miss.

Like I was in San Francisco a couple of years years ago for about a week and it was really hot and then I went to Los Angeles

and I was left with a thirst

not a thirst for drinking a thirst for for breathing

Like the air in San Francisco and the air in Los Angeles is very poor

There's not a lot of trees

After about three or four days in Los Angeles and San Francisco

there's an anxiety, there's an anxiety with every breath that I'm taking.

Something is missing.

I'm longing for something.

And what I'm looking for is what I just experienced right there.

A big fat line of nature.

That's what that smell is.

Petracar.

That fresh, zesty, oily business.

I'm trying to describe what that smell feels like.

It feels like I'm back being a sperm.

I'm a sperm

and I head butt the outer layer of the egg just before I fuse with it for fertilization and that smell feels like the moment a sperm literally fuses with an egg.

The spark

that little spark, that's what the smell of petragor feels like when I do a big line of it like that by opening the window with that fat rain.

I knew by the go of that fucking storm.

I knew by the look of that storm that it was going to give me a big dose of that.

A big dose of that smell.

I'm only seven minutes into this podcast, let's

ye heard that rain.

That was

that's the sh the the most powerful rain that I've seen so far of 2025.

That's real that's summer business.

That's what that is.

And

right now, as I look out the window,

the sky is blue, the rain is gone,

and it's incredibly hot and sunny.

Again, it it's

the sun is fucking splitting the place,

and the rooftops

the rooftops are steaming like victorious horses.

Blue wisps of steam shimmering in the sun.

And in another...

In another seven minutes,

if rain doesn't come again, which I don't think it will, in another seven minutes, the whole place will be bone dry.

Fucking bone dry.

As if that never happened.

And then straight after that you could have hailstones.

You could have gigantic hailstones.

hailstones and you're freezing in a t-shirt.

Do you ever share a flat with a fucking lunatic?

Do you ever share a flat with a lunatic and you're there in the kitchen?

And then they walk into the kitchen

and they're slamming doors.

They're banging away at the dishes.

They're really fucking pissed off about something.

Fucking this, fuck that.

And then they storm out of the room.

And you're thinking, Jesus Christ, they're pissed off.

I wonder that I do something wrong.

And then they come back into the kitchen.

Like two minutes later, all smiles, completely happy.

Zero explanation or acknowledgement of the behavior you just witnessed two minutes previously.

All happy, absolutely fine.

And you don't even ask them why.

You just move on with your day.

That's what the weather is like in Ireland.

It's t-shirt weather now.

It's very hot, very sunny and very dry outside my window.

I wouldn't have it any other way.

I enjoy the

drama of that.

The fucking humour of it.

The ridiculousness of it.

I'll take that over.

I mean, nothing against Spain.

but like

it's just the same thing all the time it's just lovely perfect sunny and dry all the time.

I don't want that.

I want my weather to feel like I'm in a house share with a lunatic.

I want to be accused of stealing a battery out of the smoke alarm.

I want the weather to

come home from work, announce that they're a born-again Christian,

and then never ever mention it again.

I want weather that makes up lies for no reason.

I want a gust of wind that tells me that it's cousins with the singer Darmot Kennedy.

And Petrocorf is the reward, the reward for all that chaos.

Petrochorf, it forces you into the present moment.

You can't get a bang of that

and not stop and notice it.

And then connect,

connect with the feeling of just being alive.

Being present.

Like I know there's Irish people listening to this now and they're in Australia or somewhere.

Well, not in Australia now, because it's winter over in Australia now, so you have a nice little bit of rain.

But I don't know if I have Irish people, you might be listening from Spain or you're listening from Italy, where you haven't had rain in a long, long time, and you're aching for that.

You're aching for the freshness of Irish fucking petracar.

What I adore about petrocar is

it's one of those smells that makes me ponder the very nature of reality itself

and how we perceive reality.

There's an idea in philosophy called Umwelt

and it was kind

by

this German biologist, fucking

Jacob van Eichskoll was his name, right?

and he came up with this idea of umwelt.

I could be pronouncing that incorrectly because I've only ever seen it written down.

I've never heard it.

It might not be pronounced umwealt at all.

But that in itself is like an example of umwelt.

So, umwelt is the idea that

there is a physical reality.

There is one physical reality.

But

different creatures experience reality differently

because of their unique sensory experiences of reality.

What I mean by that is dogs,

dogs experience reality very differently to how you and I experience reality.

A dog's experience of reality is determined very much by their sense of smell, which is so profoundly different to how you and I experience fucking smell that there's no real way for us to empathize and understand what what it's like to be a dog to experience life as a fucking dog.

Dogs are trained to to sniff out cancer, diabetes, epilepsy.

What what is what is it like to live in reality when you can smell disease?

Dogs

dogs utilize a thing called stereo sniffing.

Now we have that a little bit too.

It's the use of the left and right nostril to determine the location of a smell.

But dogs' ability to do this is unlike anything we could even imagine.

And dogs can smell time.

We use dogs to

track people who are missing, to follow scents, to do things that we can't do.

A dog can reconstruct a person's journey based on different intensities of smells.

They can read smells through time.

Dogs

use an incredibly complex form of storytelling with their fucking noses.

And my language,

I can't even communicate this to you with the limitations of speech.

But a dog can't read a book.

Because I've got language, I'm a human.

I live in a sea of fucking language, very different.

And I doubt you could explain to a dog.

You can't even fucking talk to the guns.

How am I going to

let a dog know what it's like to read, understand or write a book?

There's no way in.

You just can't.

You can't.

Would I get fully nude in front of the fireplace and start licking my testicles or screaming at the postman?

Saying to the dog, no, screaming at the postman, that's a bit like writing, but licking your testicles, that's like editing.

No.

Cause dogs don't understand metaphor, just forget about it.

There's no way.

but similarly

I'm very limited in understanding the complex stereo sniffing that a dog is able to get up to the canine practice of arse sniffing where dogs

insert their noses in another dog's arse that must be profoundly important

if their sense of smell is so good and they have to go right in there that must be very very important stuff i've no way of understanding that now dogs do have

they have a a unique olofactory system

and they have a thing called a vomeronasal organ which is specifically

it's it's for smelling arses and and detecting information in pheromones when a dog sniffs another dog's arse they're getting the the full biography of that dog where the dog has been, the dog's relationships.

It's a biometric scan, it's a biography, it's a lore.

If I was

nude and screaming at my postman like a dog,

and then I decided to run up to the postman and place my nose in his anus, that would be like me spending eight hours on his Facebook page, going through all his posts, clicking on all his friends and relatives, and forming a vast biography of this postman, which might be a good way to explain Facebook to a dog.

What is reality like when smelling someone's arse is like spending eight hours on their Facebook profile?

Language and empathy fails me.

This is umwelt.

This is umwelt.

There's a shared reality, a concrete reality, but different creatures experience it very differently depending on their senses.

The rain is back.

The rain is back.

Let's open the window.

I'm waiting for it.

No, not this time.

Not this time.

I only got the petrochar, the first bit of wait

Not really.

I have only the freshness of rain, which is beautiful, but not Petracar.

Not this time.

We got that 15-20 minutes ago with the first deluge, but not this one.

Not this new bout of rain.

I'm just getting freshness of rain.

Bees can see an ultraviolet.

Bees have a UV vision, right?

Ultraviolet light.

They can use it to detect nectar.

See what flowers are fucking the best ones to go into.

A bee experiences reality very, very different to me and you.

They see an ultraviolet light.

I have no way to understand this, to empathize it.

I'm using the I'm doing the best that I can using language.

But again, I can't explain language to a fucking bee.

This is umwelt.

Um

snakes, snakes see an infrared, a completely different experience and perception of reality to me and you.

Salmon, salmon can use smell

to sniff out the river that they were born in.

Fucking miles away, a salmon can sniff out its barth river.

I can't stick my nose into the air

and smell where the maternity hospital was that I was born in.

I can't sniff out my maternity hospital.

But I can use language to tell you that I was born in the Limerick Maternity Hospital.

And I can use use those words and you can listen to it and you and I can have a shared idea of what the Limerick Maternity Hospital is.

It's designed in a modernist style.

Aphex Twin was born there too.

You see the salmon, the salmon is using its nose to sniff out its barth river.

Which is phenomenal.

Like holy fucking god.

You mean there's a salmon on the other side of the world and it can smell the river it was born in because it needs to return there to spawn?

But I've just used words and language to tell you where I was born born, and I can use words and language to get back there if I want to.

That's umwelt.

All these different creatures existing within an ecosystem, but having completely different

sensory experiences depending on what benefits our survival within that ecosystem.

Bees need ultraviolet.

They need ultraviolet to identify flowers.

We need language and words and systems of communication for things like culture.

A really famous example is

sharks can sniff out a drop of blood from several miles away.

So if you just put a drop of blood into the sea, a fucking shark will smell it miles away and will come and get you.

And that was that was popularized, I think, because of jaws.

I can't even imagine that.

I can't imagine what it's like to smell under the sea and to be able to smell blood from that far away.

That is mad.

What must that be like?

But here's the thing.

That smell, Petracar,

the oily wonder,

the the the the

the line of nature that I sniffed when I opened the window, that smell that we all know after it rains, a human being's sensitivity and ability to smell that is 10,000 times more powerful than a shark's ability to smell blood in the fucking water.

And I'm not putting that out of my hope.

That's research that was published in the Journal of Nature Microbiology in 2020.

We human beings were...

I won't say tormented by that smell, but that's the little spectrum of reality that we exist in.

That's the umwelt.

We are freakishly, extraordinarily sensitive to that smell, the smell of petrochar.

What's that about

something about that smell

is essential to our survival the the human animal something about that smell is essential to our survival now petrachar

it's not it's not just one compound petracar is like

the name that describes the experience

So when it rained outside there and I opened the window and you got it live of me sniffing that and going, holy fuck,

and being really present with it, that experience,

that was the petrocar.

It's a beautiful word because the word wasn't, it wasn't actually coined until the 1960s.

A chemist,

a chemist called Isabel Joy Bear,

she was Australian.

She was the first scientist to go, the fuck is that smell?

What the fuck is that smell

that occurs after it rains?

And can we find out what it is?

So she did a lot of experiments with soil and with rocks and managed to replicate the smell in a laboratory.

And then she named that smell Petracor.

And

for me,

the name she chose

is just as brilliant as the research she did.

because

so Petra means stone but Ichar

Ichar is from Greek mythology and Ichor is the the blood of the gods it's this incredibly precious fluid that that's in the veins of gods in Greek myth and it's why humans can never defeat the gods and Ichor is is

toxic to humans too.

So so if

even if a human was to to fight a god in Greek myth and cut them, if the Ikar got on the human, it would kill the human.

But also,

Ichar

was used in Greek myth to give life to inanimate objects.

And one of my favorite stories around this Ikar substance is

the story of Talas.

So, this story was written down

nearly two and a half thousand years ago

in a book called Argonautica, right?

And

that book is it's an epic, it's an epic story about Jason and the Argonauts, right?

Who are just these they're heroes and they sail all around Greece in in search of fucking the Golden Fleece, okay?

But one little episode within this book is the story of Talos.

And what I adore about the story of Talos is

you could nearly argue that it's the first ever science fiction story.

It's...

the story of Talos is very similar to Blade Runner.

So Talos is

a fucking robot.

Effectively.

He's a giant

bronze guardian of the island of Crete.

So Jason and the Argonauts are in their ship called the Argo.

And they're after getting the golden fleece.

I'll deal with that in a different episode.

It's near the end of their epic journey.

And you think everything's over and the lads are after getting the fleece.

And then they decide, fuck it,

we'll go to Crete to chill out.

Because this ship is in shit.

So as Jason and the Argonauts

Sorry lads, they're seagulls going fucking ape shit in the background.

I don't know if you can hear them.

They're really bastards.

So Jason and the Argonauts are in their ship and they're about to approach the shore of Crete, this island Crete, okay?

But

on the island of Crete, it's being guarded by Talos.

Talos isn't human.

Talos is, I suppose, what you'd call an android.

Talos is

a robot made out of pure bronze, designed to look like a human being.

Massive now, like a huge bronze statue.

Massive, but designed to look like a human being.

And he was forged by the god of craftsmanship, right?

But the thing is,

he's this big bronze robot that looks like a human.

But the gods put a single vein containing Ichor, the blood of the gods, into Talos's ankle.

And this made Talas move around as this bronze statue, this robot, this android.

Ichor, the blood of the gods, is deadly to humans, but it can be used to make inanimate objects come to life.

So that's the deal with Talas.

And Talas...

is programmed to do one thing and one thing only and that's defend the island of Crete because

Talas isn't a human it's Talas is an android an automaton and as Jason and the Argonauts ship starts to approach Crete and the ship is in shit as well so they really have to get to Crete because the ship's gonna sink so they must get to the island of Crete but they can't because the bronze android Talos is throwing rocks at them.

So Jason and the Argonauts are like we're gonna have to defeat this giant bronze android.

So they throw spears at him, they do everything, nothing is working.

How are we gonna defeat this

robot?

But then

on the ship with the Argonauts, right, is a woman called Medea.

And Medea was like

a poet, a poet, or a sorceress.

And Medea looks at this giant robot defending the island and she starts to think

I know that that robot is is not a living creature

I can see that it's made out of bronze

but it's defending the island it's moving and she thinks

I wonder does that robot know that it's alive

I wonder does that robot

think that it's human?

She goes to Jason and she says, listen, stop throwing spears at the big robot.

I've got an idea.

And Jason goes, alright, work away.

So Medea starts to

try and talk to the robot as he's defending Crete to try and talk to Talas.

And she gets inside his head.

and starts asking all these questions about his fears and, you know, what's it like being there on the island do you not get lonely why are you defending the island why

and talos is like well it's my job this is my job to defend the island and then she says well what what like what would happen if you were to stop and then he goes i can't do that i could die

and then she goes oh

you're afraid of dying you're afraid of your own mortality like a human you're afraid of dying

and talos Talos, the android, is like, yeah, I'm afraid of dying.

This bronze robot

thinks that it's human.

And then Medea looks at Talos's ankle.

This big, huge android, fucking bronze statue.

She looks at his ankle and she says to Talos,

you see that there on your ankle, that vein.

That vein of Ickard, the blood of the gods.

Now Medea, she's smart.

She's really fucking smart.

So she can see, she knows by looking at his ankle, that there's a vein of Ichor, the blood of the gods.

So she's going, alright, I see what's after happening here.

The gods are after getting a bunch of bronze, which is rocks effectively.

It's just metal.

And they've put their blood into it, Ichor, in this vein, and that made this robot.

come to life.

That's what's happening here.

Okay.

So if I can get rid of that Ichar

then the robot's gonna die.

So she says to Talos, the big android robot, she says to him,

if you take that vein off your ankle, you'll have immortality.

That's what's holding you back.

The gods are lying to you.

They're lying to you.

Take that out and you will live forever.

And Talos goes, Really?

Yeah, I promise.

So Talos goes and he does it.

He takes the vein out of his ankle and the Ikar, the blood of the gods, drains from his body and goes into the soil and then suddenly Talos is just a bronze statue.

The life is gone.

And I adore that story.

I love that story.

That's written down 2,500 years ago.

And

that's science fiction.

It's not...

magical, it's not fantasy, it's whoever wrote that.

It's probably an oral story from Crete that got absorbed into Greek mythology when it was written down.

But whoever wrote that,

they're thinking about the possibilities of technology.

They're looking around them and they're seeing statues, statues made out of bronze, and they're going, This statue looks like a human.

What next steps are needed to make that statue a living thing?

What is it?

I've seen dead bodies.

What is it that makes a corpse alive?

What is that thing?

What is that thing that makes life happen?

What is that spark?

And then they've gone one further and they're thinking of the ethical implications of making artificial life.

If I could get a statue, give it Igar, right?

The blood of the gods, and now I have

a robot, an android,

a human figure that I've made that appears to be alive, an artificial intelligence.

What if that artificial intelligence begins to develop emotions and

knows that it's alive and is afraid of dying and has desires and needs and becomes human effectively?

Ethically, what does that mean?

So, that story there is fucking science fiction.

And

the reason I said it's so similar to Blade Runner is

Talas the android

thinks that he's human, thinks that he's human, and his humanity in the story is defined by the fact that he's afraid of dying.

He's terrified of dying.

And that's the plot of Blade Runner.

The plot of Blade Runner, which is set in the past now of 2019.

But Blade Runner is about androids trying to find immortality because they're afraid of dying, that they're programmed to die.

But anyway, that's what makes the name Petracar

so beautiful.

And why

I think that

the choice of that word kinding that word is is just as important as the discovery of what it is because

petrachor means the blood of the gods gives life to rocks when it rains on the earth and we get that smell and we we as humans respond to that fucking smell

You don't know what the fuck it is, but you know it's something good

It's something good when you smell that.

It is the smell of life.

It's it's it you're doing a line of nature.

And that's Petracar.

The blood of the gods, the rain, hits the ground and wakes up the stones.

It imbues the stones with life.

A murmuration of starlings darkened my window with a shadow there as I said that.

It's evening time now.

The sun is is coming down and the

the fucking the starlings are out for their evening marmoration flying around the place.

I talk about fucking umbelt and starlings, those starlings that I'm looking at now outside my window, flying above in the air.

First off, starlings see in ultraviolet light.

Secondly, like those starlings right now, what those starlings are doing.

They are doing their marmoration.

They are synchronizing their movements to create the shape of a giant bird of prey.

Fuck it, they're talas.

The starlings are talos.

So,

when you see the starlings in the air, like a shoal of fish, I've spoken about this before, but they are literally trying to make themselves look like one giant bird.

A big giant bird.

Why?

So they can scare off their predators.

Now the sad thing here in Limerick is that their predators don't exist anymore.

The hawks and the ospreys that prey upon those starlings are extinct, but they do their marmoration anyway.

It's almost like a religious ritual at this point.

So the starlings can all synchronize together to form a giant bird.

They're not using language, they're not talking, so I don't know what that mechanism is that allows them to synchronise like that.

And then the other thing with starlings is...

They're migratory birds.

Seagulls are going ape shit on the roof now that I'm bigging up the starlings.

Literally banging rocks on the fucking roof, whatever they're doing.

But the starlings, right?

Because they're migratory, because they...

The seagulls aren't enjoying this.

Do you hear them?

Starlings,

because they make migrate halfway across the fucking world, they have magneto reception, right?

So starlings can...

I don't know whether they see it, whether they hear it.

The Earth's magnetic field.

Starlings are sensitive to the Earth's magnetic field and that's how they navigate.

And even more complex than that, and this is evidence-based, in a starling's eye there's these things called cryptochrome proteins, okay, in their retinas.

And when

that's hit by blue light, it splits the light into two unpaired electrons, right?

That are quantum entangled.

Starlings have like a quantum computer in their fucking eye and this allows them to read the Earth's magnetic field and we don't even have technology that can do that yet.

What is it like?

What's it like to be a starling?

What is the experience of reality like to be a starling when your fucking eye has a quantum computer that's sensitive to the art's magnetic field.

The magnetic field is out there now.

I can't fucking see it.

Like what is the Earth's magnetic field?

It's...

So, inside the middle of the Earth,

there's all this liquid iron, the core of the Earth, and this sloshing around creates this

magnetic field completely invisible to me and you.

Because humans, we don't have eyes that can see the magnetic field, but it's there.

And it's very important.

And what the magnetic field does,

it protects the Earth from solar radiation like do you ever look at the moon or mars and wonder why is there fuck all there why is there nothing why is there nothing on these planets because they're they're they're sterilized solar radiation the radiation from the sun kills everything it bleaches the surface and nothing can exist so the magnetic field that the starlings can can i can only assume see using quantum physics in their eyes.

That magnetic field protects life on earth.

And without that magnetic field,

soil would be sterile.

There'd be no life

at all in the soil.

But that brings us back to the petrochar.

Where does the smell actually come from?

Well, like I said, petrochar is the name.

It's the name for the experience of that smell.

But what you're really smelling is is it's a compound called geosmin.

It's the earthy smell.

Geosmin is...

it's what makes beetroots taste that way.

Do you ever eat a beetroot and it's a bit sily?

That's geosmin.

It's present in

certain vegetables have it.

And geosmin, again, it comes from Greek, it means earth smell.

and the the aroma of geosmin it's a huge component of of petrochar

but geosmin specifically

that's the thing that we're really sensitive to, that humans are very sensitive to.

Like, in the way there, that I said, starlings have a way of seeing the Earth's magnetic sphere.

We can't fucking see it, it's there, we can't see it, but starlings live in a reality where this is very present and part of their existence.

You and me,

we can smell this geosmin.

We can really fucking smell this geosmin.

geosmin.

It's produced by streptomyces,

which are

they're bacteria in soil

which behave a bit like fungi.

Do you remember the podcast I did a couple of weeks back where I spoke about the priest's grave?

Up in Fermanagh in Ireland, there's a little churchyard in a place called Boho and in this churchyard is the grave of a priest and in the 1800s this priest the fuck was his name can't think of his name this priest was a healer and then local folklore emerged that the soil on his grave is a type of folk medicine that if you can take some of the soil from this fella's grave put it under your pillow say a few prayers it can heal illnesses and that's just a folk tale but then microbiologists actually investigated and tested the the soil on this priest's grave and it contains these streptomyces

which are

numerous bacteria in the soil and it's where we get a lot of antibiotics from and this this priest's grave up in the north that has very rare types of streptomyces

that might

help us in the future when it comes to antibiotic resistant bacteria.

But anyway, there's hundreds of species of streptomyces.

They are bacteria that exist in soil.

They help with

decomposition.

Like if

a plant decomposes and goes back into the soil, we know that that plant contains nitrogen, phosphorus, all of these beneficial chemicals.

Well the streptomyces, these bacteria, that's what helps to break the plant material down so that these nutrients return to the soil and fertilize, make that soil fertile so that new things can grow.

That's what streptomyces do.

A lot of them, when they come in contact with fresh water, with rain, they release these aromas, these compounds.

They release the geosmin, the thing that me and you can fucking smell.

The petrichor.

The petrichar.

The thing that I smelled at the start of this podcast when I opened my fucking fucking window, the smell that you know when I describe it to you when the rain happens after it's been dry for a while.

It's these tiny bacteria in the soil releasing this compound when they come into contact with fresh water.

But why

if a shark can smell fucking a drop of blood

over a few miles in water, why are human beings ten thousand times more sensitive to the smell of geosmin?

It's what helps the human animal to find sources of fresh water.

You know who else is very sensitive to the smell of geosmin?

Camels.

Camels in the desert can use their noses to find an oasis of water from 50 miles away.

We come from Africa, the plains, the grasslands.

You've got dry seasons that last for fucking weeks, hundreds of miles away.

There's a rainstorm and the ground soaks up that rain and now it releases into the fucking air the petrochar and that travels on the wind again hundreds of fucking miles and humans smell it and when they smell it they get that feeling of vitality.

Oh my fucking god, what is that?

And we seek it out.

And what you find when you follow the smell of the petrochar across hundreds of thousands of miles is you get everything necessary for human survival.

You have a fresh water source.

You have a fertile soil full of these streptomyces, these bacteria that give soil fertility.

You have food growing out of the earth.

You have animals that are eating that food.

You're doing a line of nature.

That's what that smell is.

It's that smell is from an evolutionary perspective.

It's everything that reinforces

the survival of a human being and a human,

a group of humans.

Fresh water, fertility, that's what it is.

And it's especially strong after

a period of drought.

Like I said, I'm here in Limerick.

It's been roasting for the past.

Three or four days really really hot.

Everything is very dry.

And then that first rain hits and I'm overwhelmed by that that oily earthy smell fucking floored by it you can't ignore it I promise you you have never once in your life never once in your life have you ignored that smell this that the oily smell after the rain you always take a moment to clock it and there's your reason why And I'm not a scientist, but I do know how to research.

So nothing I've said here today isn't backed by, we'll say rigorous sources.

Okay, let's have an ocarina pause.

I know it's 45 minutes in, it's good to have an ocarina pause a bit earlier.

I just didn't feel like interrupting myself there.

I enjoyed those tangents that that little hot take took and I didn't want to interrupt it.

So let's have an ocarina pause now.

I don't have an ocarina, I'm in my office, as you can tell by the fucking seagulls.

I have

a little packet of chewing gums that I'm going to shake, and then you're gonna hear an advert for some bullshit, all right?

Popsicles, sprinklers, a cool breeze.

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This is my full-time job.

This is how I earn a living.

This is how I rent out my office.

It's how I pay for everything.

This is

This is the Patreon of the reason that I have the

time to do the amount of research I did for this week's episode to make sure that if I'm going to speak about quantum entanglement in the in the eye of a starling that I can spend a bit of time researching it and making sure is is this legit?

Is this solid?

Similarly

I can't just pull Greek myth out of my hole.

I need to go and look at as many different translations that I can get my hands on so I can tell the story to ye properly.

I write this podcast and writing takes time and

that's all possible because of listener funding.

So 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.

You can listen for free.

You listen for free because the person who is paying is paying for you to listen for free.

Everybody gets a podcast.

I get to earn a living.

It's a wonderful model based on kindness and soundness.

Patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast.

Please become a paid subscriber and also

if you are becoming a new Patreon subscriber do it in your browser or the browser on your phone.

Don't do it via the iPhone app because Apple will take 30%.

I forgot to plug my gigs last week.

Completely forgot to plug my gigs.

I had some very pissed off promoters reminding me that I forgot about this.

I don't have many gigs coming up.

I do have, am I at a fucking festival?

Very shortly, I'm at the Altogether Now Festival, okay?

If you're coming along to that in Waterford, the Altogether Now, I don't even know what I'm gonna be doing, it'll be good crack, whatever's happening.

But if you see me on the bill at All Together Now,

come along, come along to the gig, all right.

Uh, my gig gigs

September On the 19th of September, I am up in Derry in the Millennium, right?

The Millennium Theatre.

Can't wait to gig in Derry.

I have a wonderful guest for Derry, by the way.

Vicar Street on the 23rd of September.

That's a beautiful Tuesday night, Vicker Street gig.

Wonderful, relaxing Tuesday evening.

If you're thinking, fuck it, I'm not going to a gig on a Tuesday.

It's a live podcast.

It's like going to the theater.

It's like going to the cinema.

You could have work on a Wednesday morning.

It's grand.

Come along to a lovely relaxing Tuesday evening fucking live podcast.

You don't even have to drink.

And then...

Oh, Sligo.

Throw this one in at the very last minute.

Very last minute in Sligo.

This is a tiny gig.

I haven't been to Sligo in a couple of years.

Small gig, very few tickets at this.

The Hawkswell Theatre in Sligo.

I haven't even announced it, and somehow it's almost sold out already, okay?

But if you're in Sligo and you want to come along to a live podcast, that is what day is that?

I think it's the 8th of October up in Sligo.

Alright, God bless.

I really enjoyed this week's podcast because

I didn't intend this week's podcast to be about

the smell of rain about Petracar.

But when I opened that window, window this is the beauty of creative flow this is the beauty of creative flow you got to be playful

to write you have to be playful you have to leave yourself open

to anything and when that rain started i just said fuck it press record press record try you know that that petrochar is going to happen because it's been dry press record and try and record the experience of smelling it which is a silly thing to do it's silly and playful but by doing that I enter flow and now the podcast just it it reveals itself to me that's creative flow and also with flow you get wonderful synchronicities I wasn't aware

that yesterday for instance was St.

Swithin's Day

and today in Ireland is St.

MacDara's Day.

These are both hugely important days when it comes to rain.

Now don't be put off with the sainty part.

Don't be put off with the fact that this is tied in with the feast days of saint, that Catholicism is involved.

Fuck that.

We know the crack.

Often when you have a feast day that's associated with Christianity, it meant that there was a pagan tradition beforehand that people celebrated for a long time

and

anything to do with folk beliefs, mythology, quote-unquote pagan beliefs and the weather, there's usually a legitimacy to it otherwise the stories wouldn't survive for as long as they survive.

Like I mentioned before the Ocarina pause.

That priest's grave up in Formana where people were, you know, for hundreds of years taking the soil from his grave.

for its healing properties and then scientists test the soil and it turns out that it has bacteria that could save us from the next fucking pandemic.

Yesterday was St.

Swyden's Day, 15th of July.

St.

Swyden's Day if thou dost rain for 40 days it will remain.

St.

Swyden's Day if thou be fair for 40 days twill rain nay mare.

If it rains on the 15th of July on St.

Swivin's Day then The legend holds that it's gonna rain for the next 40 days.

St.

Swyven, he was a 9th century monk, Anglo-Saxon, over in,

he was the bishop of Winchester, that was it.

He was the bishop of Winchester in Wessex in the 9th century.

When Saint Swyden died, he made a very strange request and the strange request was,

I don't want to be buried inside the cathedral.

Don't bury me.

In a building, please, which was the, this is what you do with a fucking bishop.

You put him in a tomb inside a church.

Saint Swyden was like, fuck that.

put my grave outside where the sweet rain of heaven may fall upon my grave so swain saint which

is beautifully pagan i like that i like that so saint swithin was like bury me outside i want it to rain on my grave

but after he died and his funeral was coming up the new bishop Ethelwald, right, was like fuck that.

I know it's his dying wish, but he's a bishop you bury bishops in cathedrals you don't bury bishops outside like you have to realize like christianity was all about consecration concept and

physical spaces like churches were consecrated there was no demons in here and to be buried outside in nature it's a little bit pagany a little bit too pagan no bishops get buried inside in churches so the new bishop ethelwald was like fuck that i'm not respecting your dying wishes, Saint Swyden.

I'm gonna, I'm actually just gonna throw you into the church.

We're gonna bury you in the church, even though you want the reigns of heaven to hit your grave.

So, on the 15th of July, in

970-something, right?

So, over a thousand years ago, 15th of July,

the funeral happens.

They're bringing Saint Swithin's coffin into the church against his dying wishes,

and the funeral

it it pours down from the heavens.

There's a 15th of July rain

just like the one that I saw today.

Massive fat fucking county drops of rain.

One of them happens.

Like I would not when at the start of this podcast when I played that rainfall for ye I would not want to be outside in that.

Ye heard it.

I told you if you look up into the sky you could damage your eye.

It was one of them.

You don't see a lot of them.

Well on St.

Swyddens' funeral they got one of them and the funeral had to be abandoned.

It's like the rain came down from heaven and said this fellow wanted to be buried outside you prick.

What are you putting him in the church for?

Well God's rain said no fucking way and it kept raining for 40 days afterwards.

So that's where Saint that that's what started St.

Swithin's Day.

If it rains on the 15th of fucking July it's gonna rain for 40 days afterwards.

Today on the 16th of July in Ireland we've got Saint MacDarrah's Day.

Saint MacDarrah was a 6th century saint

from Connemara I believe.

I think there's a little island off Connemara called St.

MacDarrah's Island.

He was a 6th century Irish hermit right who lived on this island off Connemara and in Ireland he's the protector of fishermen.

But in Ireland, if today is the 16th of July, if it rains on the feast day of St.

MacDarrah in Ireland, it's going to rain for the next 40 days.

So in England, you've got Saint fucking Swyden or whatever his name is.

That's yesterday the 15th.

In Ireland on the 16th, we've got Saint MacDarrah.

Two Christian saints, both of them with near-identical legends of if it rains on this day, it is going to rain for the next 40 days.

Most likely...

These are pre-Christian tales.

This is myth.

This is folklore.

These are stories that the people of England and the people of Ireland had.

before these saints, but these stories became Christianized to make them acceptable.

Often feast days are old pagan festivals that just get turned into some Christian shit.

I can't say that with certainty about these two specific feast days because I don't think I've looked hard for the evidence.

I've looked hard like okay, okay, with Britain, saints within his Anglo-Saxon, so you're talking

9th century.

Britain was

Roman at one point, and in Greek and Roman culture you had a thing called augury, which was

like a seasonal practice of predicting the weather by looking at birds.

It was like a magical sorcery thing.

I'll do a podcast on it at some point.

But with Ireland, I don't know.

I can't find any pre-Christian myth.

around July 16th, St.

MacDara's Day.

But the stories are telling us.

The stories are telling us.

The 15th and 16th, if it rains heavily on these days, it predicts more rain in the coming month.

So what does science tell us?

What actually happens

around mid-July, 15th and 16th?

Well, there's this thing called the Atlantic Jet Stream.

Now it's not to be confused with the Gulf Stream.

The Gulf Stream is warm...

a band of warm water.

The Atlantic jet stream is it's like a river of air in the atmosphere.

But this jet stream tends to settle in the middle of July and this impacts week to week weather.

Whether it's going to be sunny, whether it's going to be rainy, what's really determining this is the Atlantic jet stream and when it tends to settle around the 15th and 16th of July.

Science tells us this, but before science, what have you got?

You've got St.

Swyden's Day and you've got St.

MacDara's Day.

The feast day is the 15th and 16th of of July.

Really interesting stories that can tell us something quite important that benefits our survival.

And that's the beautiful synchronicity of this week's episode.

I didn't know.

I didn't know that yesterday was fucking Sweden's Day and that today is St.

McDara's Day.

I hadn't a fucking clue.

I hadn't a clue.

Nature told this week's story.

Nature wrote this week's podcast.

I didn't know about these rain-specific feast days.

And this is what when I'm always talking about

and what I love about folklore and mythology and I'm always saying it, what I adore about it is

before writing, people held the stories in the landscape.

When you couldn't write your stories down, your mythology, the land would tell you the fucking stories.

And that's what happened this week.

The rain told me the story.

I know that sounds mad, but the rain told us the story this week.

Like what did I want to do this week's podcast on?

The guitar player from Limp Biscuit followed me on Instagram and

I started listening to Limp Biscuit when I was 16 because I fancied a girl who worked in a vacuum repair shop and I started listening to Limp Biscuit to try and impress her because she was a Limp Biscuit fan and

Wes Borland followed me on Instagram this week.

I was going to talk

about that.

Um,

I mean, I have to assume that Wes Barland is currently listening.

He just spent the last hour listening to a podcast about rain.

I have to now assume that.

Why else is he following me on Instagram?

That's all we've got time for this week.

Alright,

smell the Petra car,

rub a dog,

genuflect to a swan.

I'll catch you next week.

God bless.

Popsicles, sprinklers, a cool breeze.

Talk about refreshing.

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Coach, the energy out there felt different.

What changed for the team today?

It was the new game day scratchers from the California Lottery.

Play is everything.

Those games sent the team's energy through the roof.

Are you saying it was the off-field play that made the difference on the field?

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That's all for now.

Coach, one more question!

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