The history of Ginger Nuts and understanding the Human Condition via the Temptation of Christ

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Pluck the Lenten pigeon drenched in St.

Vincent's piss, you humpbacked Endas.

Welcome to the Blind By Podcast.

There's long evening sun outside.

You can't hear that fucking truck reversing, can you?

There's also a fucking truck reversing.

Can you hear that?

I'm gonna turn off the limiter.

See if you can hear the violence of that sound.

There's been a truck.

Can you hear it there?

Can you hear that?

I've got the limiter turned off.

I've had that all day long.

Not even reversing.

The truck isn't even reversing.

It's cleaning a window.

There's men cleaning a window on a tall building.

And here we go.

You get that intermittent beeping.

They're not even reversing.

This, this.

Now there's a seagull getting involved.

So it's quite a noisy day.

I've just turned off my limiter so you could hear that properly.

I'm going to turn the limiter back on.

Now,

I use a thing called a limiter, which technically cuts out background noise.

but it impacts how I speak.

When I use a limiter, I have to be careful not to breathe audibly because you get a weird sound like this.

You see that?

And I can't laugh.

That's the limiter up at 100.

I can't laugh.

So what the limiter does is it only picks up when I'm speaking, but then anything that's breathy, it cuts it out.

So if I breathe like,

it cuts it off.

And then when I laugh,

it sounds like if a cheese grater could masturbate.

And then this is what it sounds like with no limiter at all.

You're just bare back in the environment there.

You're getting everything there, see?

The sound of my annoying fan, the sound of my computer.

And luckily

someone could fart next door and you'd hear it.

Now, I'd prefer to record like this, because you hear all of my voice, but then you get background noises.

So all you have to do is turn the limiter back on so you get this.

But that's too much limiter, so let's go.

About here, here's okay.

But still, I have to be careful with anything breathy.

So all day I'm dealing with the sound of a beeping, reversing truck, which is getting in the way of recording.

The truck isn't even reversing.

It's lads washing the window of a large building.

The truck is stationary, but they have the beeping noise on as if it is reversing.

And that truck beeping noise, the reverse beeping noise,

it's known as the backup beep.

Invented by a fella called Matsubaru Yamaguchi in Japan in 1963, and it's the same backup beeping noise everywhere around the world.

And there's arguments that it doesn't work anymore.

That in an urban environment you hear so many trucks beeping and backing up every single day that we just ignore the noise.

And also, it's a very easy noise for birds to mimic.

So, half the time, when you think you hear a truck reversing, it's a blackbird, a blackbird mimicking the sound of the truck reversing.

And now we've got a siren.

Let's just let the siren do its thing.

Before we turn the limiter back on, there we go.

But yeah, you get birds, you get blackbirds in particular,

mimicking the sound of the backup beep from trucks.

And we don't really know why blackbirds do this.

I read a very interesting study about mockingbirds in Texas over in America.

But mockingbirds,

they imitate many sounds.

Mockingbirds will imitate the sounds of other birds and whatever sounds they hear in their environment and as with blackbirds it's the male it's the male who who sings who sings all these songs and and the theory is is that

a male mockingbird the more songs and the more sounds that this mockingbird can imitate then the greater that mockingbird's territory and the more resources that it has access to it's like the mockingbird's song it's listing out everything everything that it knows and everything that it's heard.

A bit like a hipster, a bit like a hipster who's trying to impress a woman with how esoteric his knowledge of music is, or how many films he knows, or what books he's read.

And the researchers arrived at this assumption because they found that the male mockingbirds in this area of Texas, the ones that had the largest repertoire of mimicked mimicked noises and songs, they also were the ones who had territories that were larger and richer in food and resources.

So the...

Can you hear it?

Can you hear that beep?

So the blackbirds...

The blackbirds that are fucking mimicking the sound of that backup beep in Limerick City, They're trying to attract a female blackbird, especially at this time of year.

And they're they're saying, like, did you know that the backup beep was invented by Matsubaru Yamaguchi in 1963 in Japan?

But the female blackbird doesn't want to hear that.

What the female blackbird wants to hear is the blackbird doing impressions of frogs.

Because if the blackbird is doing impressions of frogs, then what he's saying is, I live near a fucking pond, I do.

with an endless supply of slogs and snails and flies and insects because I live beside a pond, and to prove it to you, here's the noise of a frog.

That's gonna get a blackbird his hole.

Not, do you like the sound of this truck?

Well, babe,

listen to this.

Bape, bape, bape, bape.

Climb into my nest and we have a fuck.

That's what the blackbirds are saying.

That's what they're saying.

And then the female blackbirds are like, what the fuck are you talking about?

I don't care about trucks or lorries or the beeping noises that they make.

I'm a blackbird.

I don't even know what they are.

I don't even know what these things are.

I want to kill a snail with my beak and eat it.

Tell me about snails.

And then the male blackbird is...

He's like, I don't know anything about snails.

I live in an alleyway in Limerick City.

I don't know about snails.

I can tell you about some bins and car alarms.

Maybe a siren.

I could have a a crack at a pigeon.

Are you sure?

Are you sure you're not interested in...

Listen again.

Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.

You're not into that, no?

But noise pollution can actually

harm the reproductive behavior of birds.

Urban noise pollution and artificial noises can reduce bird populations.

They can reduce the fecundity.

of male birds.

The closest thing, within the next five years, within the next five years,

human men are going to start getting catfished by AI.

Artificial intelligence is going to get so good

that men are going to think they have an online girlfriend who looks like a real woman and talks like a real woman.

And he's going to be spending his money buying her gifts to try and impress the artificial intelligence woman that doesn't exist.

And that's what's happening to male urban blackbirds who mimic the sound of lorries that are reversing.

Female blackbirds aren't interested in hearing this and that's how those noises are contributing to biodiversity collapse.

I'm liable to go down to the two lads.

I'm liable to go down to the two lads who are washing windows and say that to them.

A

I can't record my podcast because you're beeping all day long.

B, you're cock blocking a lot of blackbirds.

You selfish, selfish men.

So I'm very happy this week'cause I've been nominated for two awards.

I made two pieces of television last year.

I made a documentary called Blind Boy, The Land of Slaves and Scholars.

And I adapted one of my short stories.

Did you read about Arskin Fogarty?

And I adapted that into a short film.

And I made them both

with my own production company.

I started a production company last year called Conla's Well,

which is named after the mythical well, the well of eternal inspiration where the salmon of knowledge lived and where the goddess Sinnon the poet

went to drink inspiration from the water and the well rejected her because she was greedy and it overflowed and carried her body all the way down through Ireland into the Atlantic to form the river Shannon that flows through Limerick City.

So I named my production company Cunla's Well after that well.

And having my own production company, it sounds fancy, but it's not that fancy.

It means creative control.

It means the only person you answer to is the commissioner and that's it.

You see how making television works is

if you're what's known in the industry as the talent.

Talent is the person who appears on screen or maybe the writer.

Let's just say you're a fucking comedian.

You're a comedian and you want your own TV show and you're up and coming.

Well, usually what happens is it's a production company that approaches you.

One of the many production companies comes to you and says, Would you like to make a TV show?

I reckon we can get it on BBC.

So you say yes.

And you're on the screen and you're writing, but it's the production company that's commissioned by the TV channel.

And your production company might be a pack of pricks.

They might not be interested in getting your vision on screen.

They might be interested in taking that commission and instead of producing the best piece of work, they want to take big production fees and then put fuck all money on screen.

You can lose a huge amount of creative control.

And all of a sudden, the work that you've been making by yourself on the internet, your stand-up work is really good.

But now this thing that you've made for television is not good at all.

And that's a very, very common story.

That's a very common story.

like i've had i've had production companies who i don't even know who i've never worked with go to television channels on my behalf without even telling me and they will go to a television channel and pitch a horrendous idea male mental health with blind boy blind boy goes up a mountain with a load of young men and they lift up logs and cry It's like reality television, but with men crying.

No mention whatsoever about underfunded mental health services or structural inequality.

Just performative, performative slogans and clichés about men's mental health and just opening up.

I've had a TV production company who I've never met go to a TV channel and pitch to them the idea of a TV show where I interview people and I take my bag off.

I'm not wearing a bag.

I'm using my real face.

An idea that I would never agree to, that I'd never do.

And then the TV production company would come to me and say, Hey, we got a commission.

This TV channel is interested in making this documentary that we haven't told you about at all, that we never contacted you about.

And then I say, Fuck off.

Please don't pitch ideas to TV channels without asking me first.

I don't even know who you are.

But then other times you get lucky and you meet a production company full of like-minded, creative, nice people who want to make good TV and that exists as well.

But I've been making TV since 2000.9 I think.

So that's...

Jesus 16 fucking years.

Christ.

I started young.

I've been making TV for 16 years.

So finally I'm bypassing all of that shit and now I have my own production company.

So if I make TV the only person I have to answer to is the commissioner.

So my production company has been nominated for two awards now.

I've only made two things with this production company this year, and they've both been nominated for awards.

So I'm very very happy with this information.

It's the RTS Awards, which is the Royal Television Society.

Which I don't know why it's called Royal, because it's Irish nominations, but I think they're the wing of a larger television society in which the Brits are probably involved.

I'm gonna have to just take the soup on that one.

So the documentary and the short film have both been nominated for awards.

But technically have three nominations because the short film has been nominated twice.

But it means that the short film and the documentary are going against each other in one category.

Now you know I don't like awards.

I don't like any type of external validation.

But these are these are industry awards.

So it means that it means that the film and TV industry have deemed these pieces of work worthy of being nominated for awards.

And there's a very practical benefit to that.

The only reason I make anything, the only reason I write books or make TV is so that I can make more.

I love the process.

I adore the process, particularly writing.

I love writing for television.

I love writing with other people for television.

I love working with

really talented, passionate people.

I love it.

The bit when everything's finished and I can see it on a screen, that's actually the saddest part.

That's the least enjoyable part.

The enjoyable part is the journey and the process.

That's what I live for.

And I make things so that I can make more things.

And getting industry awards, that's what brings more projects.

It's that simple.

Getting industry awards means that something else would probably get made in the future.

That's all I want.

What is the next thing?

What's the next project that gives me personal meaning?

Where I get to wake up in the morning and say, today I'm going to do something that I love.

And this thing that I love doing is also the reason my bills are paid.

So I want to do that for as long as humanly possible.

Until I die, ideally.

Especially with books.

Because my favourite thing in my writing books is my favourite thing in the whole world.

I fucking adore writing books.

and I write books so that another book gets commissioned.

But with this TV shit in the production company, I'm taking stories from my books that are written and then adapting them for television with other people.

And I want to speak again about humility and failure and the importance of failure.

About one year ago, maybe 14 months ago, I did a podcast.

about failure.

About if you're working in the creative industry, you must fail.

You have to fail.

You have to fail frequently.

And what will keep you from creating is the fear of failure.

But failure is inevitable.

You must fail all the time.

So, like a year ago,

one of these projects that just got nominated for an award, did you read about Erskine Fogarty, the short film?

I'd spent about two years

adapting that from a short story into a script.

And a year ago, it had been almost commissioned.

as in

all that needed to be done was the ink had to be signed this was getting made

loads and loads of effort two years two years of adapting this thing from a story into a script and then at the very last minute at the very last minute they pulled the plug on the commission the tv channel that was commissioning it pulled the plug The worst thing that can happen to have the plug pulled on a huge project with two years of work to have the plug pulled just before you're about to sign the contract.

That fucking happened.

That happened.

One year ago, I did a podcast about it.

When it happened, I told you.

That's failure.

That is crushing failure.

That's what that is right there.

First time that ever happened to me.

I was 24.

I just made a TV pilot for Channel 4.

I spent 18 months writing the script.

We got it filmed.

Everything done.

The pilot was made.

Channel 4 were like, We love it, we love it.

This is gonna get made into a TV series.

Yeah, most likely this will get made into a TV series.

And then, just before it was gonna get made into a TV series, the commissioners changed, and the commissioner axed the project.

Two years I worked down the drain, didn't know what I was gonna do with my career, thrust me into a deep fucking depression.

Really, really upsetting.

I really took it personally because I was like 24, 25.

Crushed me.

Same thing happened last year.

The exact same thing happened last year.

I spent ages writing and developing a script.

Shorefire commission, ready to sign the fucking contract and then boom, it's all pulled away.

Did I go into a deep depression when that happened last year?

When the exact same thing happened last year?

No, I did not.

I was disappointed.

I was appropriately disappointed and inconvenienced.

But did I tell myself, you're a fucking failure.

You're never going to work in television again.

You're toxic.

You have no talent.

You're useless.

You didn't get a commission because you have no talent.

You have failed.

You failed to get a commission and you have failed because you are a failure.

That's the shit I told myself when I was 25.

And that type of negative self-talk.

I then start experiencing feelings of depression.

And now my entire worldview becomes negative.

I become afraid of failing again.

I don't want to try again.

It's too scary.

Why did I say to myself last year?

Fuck it.

This is what happens in the industry.

That's disappointing.

But it's just failure.

Happens all the time.

I have to fail.

I must fail.

And because I looked at it through that realistic, that realistic lens, now I'm not depressed.

I'm appropriately disappointed.

And I'm solution focused.

And I said to myself, fuck it.

I thought that was going to get commissioned and it didn't bollocks that disappointing I wonder can I salvage anything from the rubble here where are the positives well the positives are okay I just spent two years writing a script it didn't get commissioned but at least I've got a fucking script that took two years to write let's see if anybody else wants it and my production partner who adapted the script with me just shopped it around and says look we've got a full fucking script does anyone want it and then screen ireland came along and said yeah fuck it we'll take that.

Let's make this.

So we did, and now one year later, what was a crushing failure is now being nominated for an award.

That's a success.

And then next year, I might have another failure.

And the point I'm trying to make is there's no such thing as failure.

There is no such thing as failure so long as you keep trying.

It's especially true for art.

It's especially true for anything creative.

But on a long enough time scale, there is no failure that isn't also a gigantic gigantic lesson.

Like not getting that Channel 4 series in my mid-20s that crushed me.

Was that a failure?

No, it fucking wasn't.

I had the opportunity to learn how to write scripts for two years.

Doesn't matter that it didn't get commissioned.

Even though it failed, I got to write a script for two years and have it and run it past fucking professionals and make it into a pilot and work with a lot of professionals and learn and watch.

There's no such thing as failure.

Whatever the fuck you're doing, just stick at it, just stick at it.

And when it and expect failure, and then when it does fail, you say, great,

I just failed.

Where are the positives?

What can I do next?

How can I get back up?

The only failure is doing nothing because you're scared to try.

That's it.

And I'm not sucking my own float here talking about getting nominated for an award.

What I'm trying to do is I'm trying to illustrate how this theory is actually true.

I did the podcast a year ago where I told you I've just had a crushing failure where something I've worked on for two years has not gotten commissioned.

I'm really disappointed.

And now a year later the project got commissioned somewhere else and it's up for an award.

I could have done nothing because I was scared to try.

I had a choice.

I could have chosen.

I could have chosen to have said

I've just worked on something for two fucking years and it didn't get fucking commissioned.

They told me it's because they didn't have the money, but really I know it's because I don't have any talent and they didn't believe in me.

This is hopeless.

What's the point?

What's the point in spending two years working on something only to get it rejected at the last minute?

Why does this always happen to me?

Why am I so unlucky?

I'm the most unluckiest person in the world and bad things always happen to me because I'm a bad person.

And I have spoken to myself that way in the past past when I fail.

And one reason is because of a lack of humility, placing my self-worth, my self-worth, my identity, and my self-esteem into external achievements.

When I was 25 and I got that fucking commission from Channel 4, the pilot, I thought I was the shit.

I was deeply insecure.

And I allowed the external validation of that to soothe and bam,

to temporarily soothe my deep insecurity the little boy the little child in me who wasn't good enough in school who failed his leave insert who the teachers said was stupid when i was in my mid-twenties and i got that channel 4 commission and it got written about in the paper i let it all temporarily reassure and soothe that wounded child.

I measured my self-worth against my achievements.

Oh, you've just been given a pilot by Channel 4.

Not many people get that opportunity.

You must be fucking brilliant.

You must be an amazing person.

You must be a good person.

You must be a genius.

All harsh shit.

All a big load of fucking horse shit.

And then when it fails, now the work hasn't failed, but I've failed as a human being.

And it hurts so bad.

And when the rejection came, when the failure came, I would have said things to myself such as, you're a failure, you have no talent, you've been found out,

you're inherently unlucky, bad things happened to you.

All the teachers who called you stupid were right.

The principal who expelled you, she was right.

You've just failed now, you've made a fucking idiot out of yourself, you've disappointed everybody.

You're a bad broken person.

And anything good you've ever done before has been an accident.

And that sent me into a spiral of creative block for like a year where I couldn't create because I was terrified terrified of failing.

I did nothing because I was scared to try for about a year and I can't get that year back.

So what didn't that happen last year?

Two years of work.

Commission pulled at the last minute.

Failure.

Well my attitude towards that failure was much more flexible and realistic.

Actively practicing humility.

None and my work doesn't define my worth as a human being in any way.

If I write a good book, if I write a book that I'm not happy with, all it is is work.

None of it has to do with me as a human being and my value as a human being.

I just got nominated for two awards.

I'm conscious and aware that that's an achievement.

I'm conscious and aware that that is an achievement.

That's hard to do.

There's a lot of competition.

And also, they're the first ever things I've produced.

I don't give a fuck.

None of that makes me a good person.

None of that makes me better than anybody else, more important than anybody else.

None of it.

Stories that I write, films that I make, whatever, these are just aspects of my behavior.

They're just aspects of my behavior.

They're pieces of work and they have nothing to do with me as a human being.

It's not really that important.

What's important is the daily mindful effort of treating other people the way that I'd like to be treated.

Because that is effort.

That is effort.

Sometimes we get angry, pissed off, frustrated, and we're not as nice to people as we'd like to be.

So the the daily active, self-compassionate effort of treating other people the way that I'd like to be treated, I'd like to focus on that.

That's what I want to focus on.

And if I get nominated for an award, I'm only happy because it probably means I get to make more work.

But if I identify with that award nomination and start to say, oh look at you, your class you are.

I must be better than other people because society says that this is an achievement.

That's a very intoxicating drug and I have to resist that temptation.

I have to resist the...

you see see it's a temptation because like i said

that temporarily soothes my insecurity it temporarily soothes my insecure child where it's something i've started to do recently and it really really works Instead of temporarily soothing my insecure child, I try to be kind and compassionate to future me and I find that really works.

So if I want to be kind and compassionate to future me, then I'll view an award nomination realistically.

This is a pat on the head for a job well done, for a piece of work.

I'm not getting this award.

A piece of work is getting this award.

That's it.

And I'm going to have other pieces of work.

that don't get commissioned that people don't like and that'll be viewed as shit and a failure because failure is inevitable that's what happens And my pieces of work have nothing to do with my value as a human being.

And if you want to practice compassion for your future self, I find it incredibly useful.

You start off simply.

And what I mean by that is

most people struggle with smartphone use in bed, right?

That's very common.

We all get stuck on Instagram and TikTok when we're lying in bed.

and we should be going to sleep.

You make the decision to go to bed nice and early.

You feel great.

Fucking hell, I'm in bed.

Early.

Wonderful.

Can't wait to sleep.

And then you whip out your phone and now you're on TikTok.

And now it's three in the morning.

It's three in the fucking morning.

And you're awake and you've done nothing but scroll through TikTok.

You wake up the next day exhausted.

You're cranky all day.

You're not present.

You're thinking negatively.

and you feel like shit because of what you did the night before.

So tonight, when when you're saying to yourself, I actually really want to go to sleep tonight.

I don't want to scroll through TikTok or Instagram.

I don't want to be looking at my phone screen.

I want to go to bed and be rested.

When that little temptation comes up where you're like, fuck it, I'll just do five minutes, just five minutes of TikTok.

It'll be grand.

Think of future you tomorrow and say things to yourself like, Jesus, this is really mean.

Why am I doing this to that person?

They're not a bad person.

And you're thinking about future you almost as a separate human being.

They're not a bad person.

They're a nice person.

Why would I punish that person with sleep deprivation?

That's really mean.

Why would I do that to that person?

They don't deserve that.

They deserve a

good night's sleep and to have rest and happiness and to be able to enjoy their day.

Why am I doing that to this person?

And if you can practice that little

that little thought experiment, that mind exercise, where you look at potential actions now as

being mean,

doing something mean and nasty to future you, you're not going to go near that phone.

You're going to put it down and you're going to, you're going to go to sleep.

And it's a very useful, that's a really useful exercise in self-compassion.

This episode has turned into a phone call.

I'd actually plan on speaking about Christ, Christ's 40 days in the Desert, this week because it's coming up to Lent.

But anyway, look, I'm glad to be nominated for awards.

I'm glad that the work was considered good enough to be nominated for awards.

And it's not just me up for awards, it's an entire team of people who did wonderful work.

And I would like to win these awards

just for the practicality of it creating more opportunities to be creative.

For one of the categories you can vote if you like.

Just go to my Instagram, Blind by Boat Club on Instagram.

And at the top of my profile, there's saved stories just underneath my profile picture.

And one of these saved stories says vote here.

So if you click on that, you can actually vote.

And what I will say about the vote is,

so did you read about Arsene Fogarty and Blind by the Land of Slaves and Scholars?

they're actually competing with each other for the same award the people's choice award so i would ask ask if you could vote for Did You Read About Arsene Fogarty, please.

Because what I really really want to do is I want to take my short stories and turn them into films and television.

I do enjoy making documentaries but I'd rather be behind the camera.

I don't even like being on fucking camera to be honest.

I like writing and making podcasts.

So please vote for Did You Read About Arsken Fogarty?

and the Royal Television Society People's Choice Awards if you are voting.

Let's have an ocarina pause.

This is another fucking phone call podcast because I've been up the walls with gigs, gigs, and another very exciting project that I can't tell you about just yet, but you're gonna fucking love it when it's done.

But I was up in Belfast all weekend, gigging and working.

Had a wonderful podcast in Belfast.

Let's have a little ocarina pause.

I've got my large stone ocarina, which makes a baritone sound, doesn't interrupt any dogs.

Sounds like a distant ship.

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that was the ocarina pause you would have heard an advert for some bullshit support for this podcast comes from you the listener via the patreon page patreon.com forward slash the blindboy podcast if you enjoy this podcast if it brings you mirth merriment entertainment distraction whatever has you listened to this podcast please consider paying me for the work that I'm doing because this is my full-time job.

This is how I earn a living, it's how I rent out this office.

It's how I have the time to record and write this podcast, and it's why I turn up every single week, every single week to chat to you because I'm so grateful that the podcast exists, and I never take that for granted.

So, all I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month, that's it.

But if you can't afford that, if you can't afford that, if you don't have the money, you can listen for free.

Listen to the podcast for free.

everybody gets the exact same podcast i get to earn a living patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast and if you're using an iphone and you're signing up to the patreon for the first time don't use the patreon app on the iphone because apple are greedy bastards and they take 30

so if you are signing up to patreon for the first time try and do it in a browser not on an app upcoming gigs killarney Killarney Down Kerry this Friday.

I'm in the iNeck.

Now that gig is sold out, but I was holding back about 30 tickets for the guest list.

I'm now going to put those tickets out to sale because there was too many people who couldn't get tickets to the gig.

So if you want to come to Killarney on Friday, there's now a few tickets left.

Next week, Thursday the 13th of...

Are we March?

13th of March.

We are in the Cork Opera House.

The wonderful, wonderful Cork Opera House at the Cork Podcast Festival.

I love the Cork Podcast Festival.

Check it out.

Then at the end of this month, I'm off to Australia and New Zealand.

That whole tour is sold out.

I can't fucking wait.

I can't wait.

I hope I get to go for a run in the Sydney Botanical Gardens just by the opera house.

I remember I did that.

The last time I did a live podcast in Australia was probably 2020.

And I remember saying at the time that my if I had a version of what heaven could be it'd be going for a run listening to music in the botanical gardens in Sydney hopefully I can do that this time for Melbourne

loads and loads of my listeners have requested that I speak to a fella called Tyson Yuncaporta loads of people have said that me and him would have a good chat So if anybody knows him personally, tell him I'm looking for him.

Then I'm back on the 23rd of April Limerick fucking concert hall sold out can't believe that and then June my big tour of Scotland and England I'm in Bristol Cornwall Sheffield Manchester Edinburgh Glasgow York London East Sussex also known as Becks Hill and Norwich

and you can get those tickets on fan.co.uk forward slash blindbuy and a lot of those gigs are setting up very, very quickly.

And fuck it, I have a gig in Derry.

I have a gig in Derry in September that I keep forgetting to promote.

But if you're around Dairy in September, I know it's six months away, come to my gig in Derry in September.

I'm in the Millennium Theatre.

Wonderful venue.

Last week I did a podcast about Madeira Cake.

I spoke about how

my mother,

when I was a kid, Madeira cake was the choice of cake and how it used to frustrate me because it's such a plain austere cake and my ma would say to me we're getting Madeira cake because any other type of cake would be extravagant and so many of you had the exact same experience.

It wasn't just a fucking Irish thing.

Americans were calling it pound cake.

There was a different name for it in Australia but Madeira cake appears to be ubiquitous and it's the cake that your mother buys when she's pretending that she's not buying cake.

And something else people started bringing up with me was gingernut biscuits or ginger snaps as they're known outside of Ireland.

Ginger snaps are

they're just one up from a digestive.

We call them ginger nuts.

It's not gingerbread although it tastes like gingerbread but they're round biscuits.

They're quite hard.

They're just sweet enough.

and they taste like ginger.

And these were these were the austere biscuit treats that my mother would buy.

Cause you're not getting like a mikado, which was an elite sweet biscuit, almost a cake, marshmallow and jam, profoundly tasty.

You're not getting a fucking mikado or a Viscount.

They're not even fancy anymore, but when I was a kid, Viscounts, Jesus Christ, these were mint chocolate biscuits individually wrapped in file.

Once a year, that's it.

So the sweet biscuit of choice was the ginger nut, or the the ginger snap, as you might call it.

The Madeira cake of the biscuit world.

And because so many of you were bringing up gingernuts to me, I wanted to look into the history of fucking gingernuts.

It's very, very interesting indeed.

So, to go to the roots of the gingernut biscuit,

it comes from medieval funeral traditions.

So, there used to be a thing called a funeral cake,

and this was present in a lot of medieval European cultures.

It was kind of half pagan, half Christian.

When a person died

their dead body would be laid out

and people would

make a bread or a cake like the dough not baked yet.

They'd get the dough of some bread or a cake and they'd put it on the chest of the corpse and as the yeast in that bread would rise people believed that

the bread was rising with the sins, the sins of the dead person.

So that if you let the bread rise on a corpse's chest when it's lying in wait before burial, all that person's sins are filling up, filling up this yeast, and then they'd bake it.

But also, and this is medieval times,

dead bodies were anointed, okay?

And the anointing of a dead body was embalming didn't exist.

So some dead bodies were covered with oils with strong smelling spices to hide the smell of decomposition.

And these funeral cakes

that were rising on the chest of a corpse, that the yeast was rising, sometimes these cakes, they started to be flavoured with spices that were associated with anointing.

So cloves were used, caraway seeds, and ginger, lots and lots of ginger.

Ginger was very popular in medieval Europe.

So now you've got this ginger-flavored cake, this funeral cake, rising on a corpse's chest, rising and absorbing the sins of that dead person

into the fucking cake.

And it's flavoured like ginger.

Then it's thrown into the oven and it's baked and this is the funeral cake.

And it was presented at the wake for the dead person.

But in in England,

England, very much Wales, and parts of Ireland,

some communities had an individual known as a sin eater, often an incredibly poor person in the village, and their job was to be a sin eater.

And what this meant was

this person

would call around to the wake where the dead person lay,

and the cake that had risen on that dead person's chest had absorbed all the sins.

So, the poor sin eater,

who didn't have any money, would eat the cake full of that person's sins.

So, the sin eater was eating the sins of that person, this ginger-flavored cake.

They're eating that person's sins and then absorbing the sins into themselves.

So, the person who's dead now gets to enter heaven with no sins, because the poorest person in the village is after eating all their fucking sins.

And then, once the sin eater was finished, and it's like that's it now, I've eaten all the cake, yum, yum, yeah, I can feel all their sins inside me, definitely.

I have their sins, then everyone at the wake

would like be overcome with this contemptuous hatred.

This they would contemptuously look down, they'd look down on this poor person,

this poor person who was who was willing to eat cake and absorb someone's sins, and then they'd kick the living shit out of the fucking poor sin eater.

The sin eater would be forcibly removed from the wake, full of the dead person's sins, and then the bereaved party, the friends and family of the dead person,

would spit at and shout and beat the sin eater and banish them.

So that tradition of these ginger cakes that rise on the chest of a dead person and absorb all their sins.

Over the centuries, by the time you get to the Victorian period, you now have funeral biscuits, which are what we would now call ginger nuts, ginger snaps.

So there were these biscuits with a strong, sweet ginger taste that were hard to bite.

And people at funerals made them into like little skulls, or they might have Bible verses on them, or even an image of the person who died.

And these Victorian funeral biscuits, they'd either get eaten by the mourners, or they'd keep them as souvenirs from the funeral to remember the dead person.

And those biscuits eventually became gingernuts, ginger snaps.

The hard ginger biscuit that you buy, that's a little bit sweet that you're gonna have with your tea, you can follow a thread to the early Middle Ages, where there were were cakes full of sins leavened on the chest of a corpse and flavoured with the spices that you'd use to stop a corpse smelling.

So I got a newfound respect for fucking for ginger nuts or ginger snaps after that.

Now if you're listening to this podcast on the day it goes out today is the

Wednesday the 5th of March.

It's Ash Wednesday.

So today is Ash Wednesday.

Now you know I'm not into religion.

I'm not a religious person.

Christianity was something that was was done to me in school against my will.

But also,

you know I love mythology.

And at the end of the day,

the Bible is a gigantic book of mythology written by human beings from the Iron Age.

So I'm fascinated in that respect in the same way that I'd be fascinated by Greek mythology or Irish mythology.

So today is Ash Wednesday, which means that Lent.

begins today.

And when I was speaking there about that

medieval practice of the sin eater,

which was it was a bit of an outlawed practice in Christianity.

It was half pagan, half Christian.

It wasn't sanctioned by the church, it was a bit too weird.

Like there's a poor fella in the village, and he comes and eats a fucking cake on your dead man's chest to eat her sins.

And then, presumably, when the sin eater, the sin eater who has his belly full every week when people die, that sin eater then, when he dies, he goes to hell, he's got everybody's sins.

But that that sin eater most most likely comes from an Old Testament practice known as the scapegoat.

So like two and a half thousand years ago in the desert in the Middle East

what the people would do is they'd get two goats.

two goats that are related like brother and sister or whatever maybe twin goats

and they would kill one goat, they'd sacrifice this goat.

But then the goat that lived absorbed all the sins of the entire community.

And then they would get this goat that's alive and they'd just send it off into the desert to wander.

And that was the scapegoat.

This goat that wanders in the winder, the wilderness is hell, effectively.

This goat that has all the sins of the community wanders the hell desert.

And in the desert, in the Old Testament, in the wilderness, there's this a demon.

He's a fallen angel.

He's a bit like Satan.

But his name is Azazel.

And Azazel,

he was a fallen angel that gave humans forbidden knowledge.

So like Azazel was the one that showed humans how to

how to sin basically.

How to make weapons, how to commit adultery.

how to steal, whatever the fuck.

Azazel was the one that showed humans how to do this.

And in some stories,

the scapegoat that's sent out into the desert becomes Azazel, becomes this goat-like devil.

But anyway, the scapegoat, the scapegoat definitely inspired the sin-eater.

But most likely, too, the Old Testament story of the scapegoat probably inspired the story of Christ.

So today is Ash Wednesday.

And Ash Wednesday is the beginning of Lent.

And Lent is when

it's

it's the temptation of Christ.

So, Christ, like the scapegoat, fucks off into the desert.

Christ had just been baptized by John the Baptist, right?

And now that he'd been baptized, now he's going to be tempted.

The Holy Spirit doesn't take him towards safety, but takes him out into the unsafe, barren wilderness, the desert.

Now Christ is

wandering, he's not eating, he's denying his physical body all sources of stimulation and pleasure, food, drink, comfort, in order to achieve humility, to be free from desire, to be free from attachment, to abstain from wants, needs, ego, to strip himself down to nothing.

So now Christ is walking the desert 40 days and 40 nights, right?

And

he's freezing cold at the nighttime, he's roasting hot at the daytime, He's hungry.

He's at his absolute weakest.

He hasn't slept.

He's fucked.

And then when he's at his weakest in the desert, out pops your man, Azazel, the goat devil fella.

And he says, oh, it's Christ, is it?

The fella who can perform miracles, water into wine, loaves and fishes.

Alright, okay.

I seen you walking the desert here.

No food, no sleep, nothing, starving.

And then Azazel, the devil, he picked up a stone and said, If you're really, if you're really the Son of God, if you're as important as you say you are, turn these stones into bread.

And Christ said, Yeah, I am fucking starving.

I'd love some bread right now, and I could turn those stones into bread.

I could do it in two seconds.

Oh, it'd be so tasty, and I could eat all that lovely bread.

But then he goes, No, no, I'm going for something greater.

I'm gonna abstain from the bread.

No, I'm not doing it.

And Christ kept on walking, meditating, not eating, going about the desert.

And now Azazel, the goat devil fellow, was getting real pissed off.

And he did some devil magic.

And now all of a sudden they weren't in the desert anymore.

They were at the top of a very tall tower above a city.

And Azazel says to Christ, if you're the son of God, then you can jump off this tower.

Down to the ground and angels will come out of nowhere and they'll save you.

And what's being tempted there now is that's arrogance.

That's human arrogance is what's being tempted.

Thinking that you're brilliant, thinking that you're invincible, thinking that you're better than other people.

The arrogance of I'm the son of God, I can jump off this tall building and I can do whatever I want and the angels will save me.

That's hubris, arrogance, cockiness.

Thinking that you're better than other people rather than equal to other people.

That's what's being tempted there.

So Christ says says to Azazel the goat devil, go fuck yourself, you prick.

No, I'm not jumping.

I want to wander the desert for 40 days and 40 nights and not eat and abstain and achieve humility.

Alright, that's what I'm doing.

Now they're back in the desert.

Azazel is really pissed off with Christ now.

Nothing's working.

The devil goes off.

Azazel has a bit of a tink and he comes back.

And now he approaches with the greatest temptation of all.

Christ is wandering the desert,

very hungry, and then Azazel

waves his hands or whatever, and then before Christ, the desert changes, and what's in front of him is this beautiful city.

Gorgeous buildings, all the riches you can imagine, all the food you can imagine, the most beautiful women he's ever seen, fucking everything that he could possibly want right there in this city.

And Azazel says to him, you can have that.

I'll give you all of that right now every bit of it all you gotta do is worship me you can have all of that every pleasure you could ever want is yours just worship me and Christ says no off I'm not interested I'm here to wander the desert I'm here to achieve spiritual atonement and humility and then the angels came down told the devil to fuck off Azazel and and the angels gave Christ food and met his needs and he was happy.

And then of course at the end of that,

that's when he was crucified.

That's, he's the scapegoat.

He's the goat that

took humanity's sins and was sacrificed.

That's why they call him the Lamb of God, the sacrificial lamb of God.

The story is just, it's based on that much earlier scapegoat story.

And again, I reiterate, I'm not into religion.

But I view that story there as brilliant mythology.

Brilliant mythology that was written down by human beings that contains fuck tons of wisdom, that aligns with psychology.

The devil there.

That's our weakness.

That's our desire.

That's our insecurity.

That's our pain.

The first temptation.

Just because you can turn stones into bread doesn't mean you should.

Turning stones into bread there is it's giving into short-term gratification.

I mentioned earlier about

you're going to bait

and then you have this short-term gratification of fuck it, I'll just look at TikTok for five minutes.

Ah fuck it, yeah, go on.

I don't tolerate the frustration.

I give into that immediate gratification.

I look at TikTok.

Now I'm up to three in the morning.

I feel like shit the next day.

I'm tired and I'm self-flagellating.

I turned stones into bread.

because I could.

I chose the path of least resistance, the easy way out.

Choosing to not do that,

that's emotional resilience.

Choosing to not look at TikTok, choosing to not argue with a stranger online, choosing to not give in to a feeling of anger and say something mean to another person.

Christ's first temptation there is about emotional maturity, having the emotional maturity to notice the feeling of frustration, to tolerate that feeling of frustration because you want to be nice to your future self.

The second temptation.

Azrael, or whatever his name is, takes him to the top of a building and says, If you're the son of God, jump, angels are going to catch you.

Again, it's all emotional maturity.

It's humidity, arrogance, insecurity.

Nobody who's secure in themselves, who has strong self-esteem, thinks that they're better than other people.

Someone who has a narcissistic view of themselves, someone who consistently compares themselves to other people, whether that's by saying, I'm better than them or I'm not as good as that person, continually comparing or being jealous, temporarily soothing the feeling of insecurity by telling themselves that I'm fucking brilliant, I'm better than everybody else.

I can do what I like.

Being at the top of the tower and saying, I can fucking jump off, jump off if I want.

I'm special.

I'm brilliant.

I'm special.

The angels will save me.

Instead, you go, no, I'm a human being the exact same as everybody else.

Doesn't matter who the fuck I am.

Even though I'm high up, even though I'm at the top of the tower, up here at the top of the tower, looking down at everybody else.

I mean, that's a metaphor for status right there.

Even though I'm at the top, if I jump, I'm just a bag of flesh and bones.

I'm a human being the exact same as everybody else.

We're all equal when it comes to death.

That's what the second temptation is.

That's about humility.

I'm better than nobody else.

Nobody else is better than me.

Because all humans are equal.

We all have intrinsic value.

It's the exact same.

And we're all just bags of flesh and bones.

Life is uncertain.

Anything can happen.

The only certainty we have is death.

Everyone's gonna die.

And then the third temptation.

The devil says, there you go, Christ.

There's a kingdom for you with food, drink, women, everything, everything you want.

It's there.

You just gotta worship me.

Are you willing to have nice things if it means being cruel and mean to other people?

Would you like a life

with meaning in it?

With meaning where your happiness comes from simply just existing and being alive, and that's enough?

Or do you want to become a slave to possessions?

Do you want to become a slave to greed, jealousy, gossip, backstabbing, taking from other people to increase what you have?

Having a life full of things but devoid of meaning and humble happiness.

Do you want the end result?

The emptiness of the end result?

Or would you like to work on the emotional maturity

to pursue the present moment and enjoy what's happening right now?

The process and that one there is the last temptation.

And then the angels come along and they're sound to him.

And what that means to me is, like, I don't believe in fucking heaven and hell.

Heaven Heaven exists.

Heaven is the present moment.

If we can be free from

internal chatter,

negative thoughts about the past, negative thoughts about the future, and instead just simply observe and notice and be right now in the present moment, that's heaven.

The happiest moments of your life, you've been in the present.

You've been in the present moment in the here and now, enjoying whatever that was.

Hell

is when we're not in the present moment, we're not here.

We're off in the wilderness of our thoughts,

worrying about what might happen or ruminating about what already has happened.

So that's that there, that's the whole point of Lent and Ash Wednesday and all that shit.

Ramadam is similar.

It's an opportunity to abstain, to test yourself and achieve humidity.

And I don't want to be accused of Christianity there.

That's a brilliant story that was written by human beings who understood the human condition.

And that's what that is.

And you can go at that without needing any belief whatsoever.

Alright, God bless.

I'll catch you next week.

In the meantime, genuflect to a swan, rub a cat, marvel at some earthworms.

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?

Hey, a little play makes your day, and today it made the game.

That's all for now.

Coach, one more question.

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