How Hyper Capitalism has made Halloween more terrifying than its Pagan beginnings

AI is transforming customer service.

It's real and it works.

And with Finn, we've built the number one AI agent for customer service.

We're seeing lots of cases where it's solving up to 90% of real queries for real businesses.

This includes the real-world, complex stuff like issuing a refund or cancelling an order.

And we also see it when Finn goes up against competitors.

It's top of all the performance benchmarks, top of the G2 leaderboard.

And if you're not happy, we'll refund you up to a million dollars, which I think says it all.

Check it out for yourself at fin.ai.

Pierce the steeplechaser's earlope, you grawny brawn as welcome to the blind by podcast.

If this is your first podcast, consider going back to an earlier episode to familiarize yourself with the lore of this podcast.

Thank you all for the wonderful feedback for last week's podcast.

Last week's podcast, I kind of pulled it out of my hole.

It was...

I did a walking tour.

I did a walking tour of Limerick City.

And I freestyled.

I just freestyled.

Because I've been away in Spain.

I went for a little holiday in Spain.

I had a wonderful time.

But I needed to have...

I needed two podcasts pre-recorded before I left for Spain.

I didn't have enough time really to put out two podcasts.

So...

I freestyled last week's podcast.

Rather than put out nothing.

I didn't want to miss a week.

I didn't want to miss a week.

So I put out last week's podcast, and the feedback was fantastic.

He really, really liked it.

So I'm thrilled that that's the case.

So I might do more walking tour podcasts if the fancy takes me.

I'd like to do a Halloween podcast this week.

I think I do a Halloween podcast each year.

I'm fascinated with Halloween.

It just stands out

from all the other holidays because

it's it's an Irish it's an Irish Iron Age festival that we still celebrate.

But what we understand to be Halloween now is completely disconnected from its roots.

Like we speak about the the Irish cultural footprint around the world.

Like St.

Patrick's Day.

That's kind of unique.

That's fairly unique and strange.

that Ireland has a national holiday, St.

Patrick's Day, and it's celebrated all around the world, even if you're not Irish.

When it's Paddy's Day, no matter where you are in the world, people are just going to go out and wear green and get shit-faced.

And that's fairly unique.

I can't think of...

I can't think of another small country who has a festival that's

as celebrated as as ubiquitously as Paddy's Day.

But then you take fucking Halloween, right?

Halloween is massive, fucking huge, way bigger than Paddy's Day.

But we don't associate it with Ireland.

If you went to America and said to the average American, are you aware that Halloween is Irish?

They don't have a clue.

If you went to fucking Ireland,

most people in Ireland, if you said, did you know that Halloween was Irish?

They probably wouldn't know either.

All traces of Irishness have been removed from Halloween.

So,

I mean Halloween now, I'd call it American.

That's what I'd call Halloween now.

Halloween right now, let's say the past 20 years, is...

It represents a very...

A very ugly...

A very ugly type of disposable capitalism.

Even more so than Christmas.

There's so much...

cheap disposable shit that's sold for Halloween.

There's so much waste.

I mean mean when I was at when I was a child in the 90s you could buy like plastic Halloween masks, shitty little plastic Halloween masks that were made in Ireland or England and if you had a few quid maybe a better rubber mask of a Frankenstein or a zombie and you'd hang on to it until next year and then the rest of the costume that you made

You had to be creative, you had to use fucking bin bags, rags, face paint, whatever.

If people wanted Halloween decorations, they had to be creative, they had to make things, they had to paint things.

There was no pumpkins when I was a kid.

Like fresh fucking pumpkins.

That didn't exist when I was not in the 90s.

People were not carving pumpkins.

What they were doing was

they'd have cardboard cut-out pumpkins that were painted orange, paper ones that you'd hang.

Actual big orange carved fucking American pumpkins.

That's maybe that's about 20 years old so when we when we were kids you'd dress up in a shit costume

I'd like I'd be half Frankenstein half fucking vampire I'd have a fr a shit plastic Frankenstein mask and then a black bin bag around my neck as a cape and that was my costume and I was a Frankenstein vampire you did trick or treat you knocked on people's doors.

No one had any sweets.

You were given monkey nuts or money.

That was it.

I sound like a fucking elderly man.

I'm aware that I sound like a very, very old man.

But this was the reality of Halloween when I was a child.

And then I got a little bit older, nine or ten.

And it stopped being about trick-or-treating.

It became about eggs and fireworks.

Eggs and fireworks.

Illegal fireworks.

Black cat bangers that would take your finger off and throwing eggs at buses, at people's houses

and I loved it because

I was shit at sports.

I was never any good at sports but I had a brilliant throw.

I had the best fucking throw.

I was known for having a good throw.

I was great at throwing stones.

I could throw stones farther than anybody else and I was really accurate too.

And I was brilliant at throwing eggs.

I have a pain in my shoulder, my right shoulder that comes back.

And I'm convinced that's from my childhood of throwing stones and throwing eggs.

And we used to throw eggs to get a chase.

I don't think we were dressing up we'd wear balaclavas, we'd dress up as the IRA.

We used to dress up as the IRA

and smoke fags and throw eggs at people's houses for no reason and throw eggs at buses.

And I used to be able to throw an egg farther than anybody else.

I can hear it now.

I can feel it.

A crisp, crisp fucking October 31st.

The smell of tarf smoke, tarf smoke and old coal, not the smokeless shit, dangling in the air like a bent curtain.

I used to buy pullets eggs.

My dad would call them pullets eggs.

They were size zero eggs, the small eggs.

And I would place the egg between my thumb and my index finger.

I'd pincer it and I'd hurl it into the air spinning towards the blackness of space

and then wait and I'd wait to hear the the satisfying pop of that egg hitting off somebody's fucking window.

I'm getting a little rush of adrenaline just thinking back thinking back of waiting to wait

to hear did you hit the fucking window because if you if you hit the if you throw the egg and it hit hit someone's wall or hit the brickwork the person inside the house doesn't know about it until the morning but when you hit the window when you hit glass

that's loud it frightens everybody inside it doesn't break the window they'll have to clean it off but when you hit someone's window and you frighten the family then it's taken personally then they take it personally and then that person they get out of the house they get into the car and they chase you and if they've got sons the sons get into the car too and you've got a family chasing you in a car through the neighborhood and you have to run like

because if they catch you they'll kick the shit out of you and it was terrifying it was awful it was terrifying but the rush of it was phenomenal and if you were really lucky the guards would show up the guards would show up and the guards would chase you and that was especially terrifying and electrifying and if you did this shit any other night any other night, wildly unacceptable.

No, you wouldn't, that's too bald.

But on Halloween, this was allowed.

And then you go throw eggs at buses, terrify the people sitting in the back of the bus at night time.

It's all bright on the inside of the bus and then you're hiding at the bus stop and you smash the egg against the window.

I was about nine or ten.

I used to love it because I was good at it.

I was good at it.

And I'd gotten a name for myself at being good at that.

And it all ended.

I suppose it was my last Halloween.

I was probably 13 or 14.

I probably told you this before, but I.

I had a dog who was my friend by the name of Jeff.

Jeff the dog.

And Jeff

was like a Dalmatian German Pointer mix.

But the thing with Jeff was consistently on an erection.

All the time he was on a dog erection.

And his penis used to

drool.

Dog pre-come.

But anyway, this one Halloween,

I was stocking up on eggs, you know.

I was really stocking up.

I think it was about 64 eggs.

And the rule was,

if you were a child, shops wouldn't sell you eggs in like three weeks before Halloween.

If you were a child, even if you were buying them for your mat, even if it was part of groceries, shops would not sell you eggs because they knew what you were going to do with them.

So I had to buy all my eggs in in September

so in my bedroom

in in like my sock drawer I'd 60 eggs I had 60 eggs in my fucking sock drawer and then my ma came in and she found them and she knew what I was gonna do with 60 eggs and she knew as well

they'd be rotting for like three weeks before I got to throw them on Halloween.

So my ma went apeshit with my 60 eggs

and she took 60 of my eggs

and made this giant omelette.

She made one giant omelette with 60 eggs.

It was about 7 inches thick.

And I had to go outside with the frying pan and the 7 inch thick omelette.

And she made me feed that 7 inch thick omelette to Jeff the dog.

And he slobbered on it with his his big pink lipstick dog Mickey

dripping pre-come on the tarmac.

And that was my last meaningful Halloween.

After that, Halloween just became a boat.

We'd go out drinking and we'd try to kiss girls.

That's what you do from about 15 onwards.

And if you're still throwing eggs at 15 or playing with fireworks, you were weird and you'd get arrested.

Now kids are still playing with eggs and playing with fireworks.

But today's Halloween is unrecognizable to the to the Halloween that I would have grown up with.

You don't see shit Halloween decorations anymore.

You don't see shit Halloween costumes

You don't see children wrapped in black plastic bags with terrible makeup You don't see bad Halloween decorations Now you see incredible Halloween decorations

Big orange bright Eddie D pumpkins and scary robotic skeletons with light up eyes and all the kids have the exact same costumes.

The visual standards have increased massively.

There's pop-up Halloween shops.

You can just walk in, you can buy whatever costume you like, not to keep but to throw away as soon as you wear it.

You can buy outstanding decorations for your front garden, robots, all really cheap.

No one's handing out monkey nuts to trick-or-treaters now.

They're handing out American fucking candy, that's the new thing.

In my duns this week, they're selling big novelty-sized bags of Reese's peanut butter cups just for trick-or-treaters, just for Halloween and Harshi's chocolate.

People are handing out American sweets as standard but nothing feels like Halloween anymore because

all of these costumes and these decorations are so mass produced that they start selling them in August when it's sunny and hot.

There's this shop in Limerick called The Range.

I fucking hate The Range.

It's a gigantic shop that sells cheap shit for your house.

I suppose it'd be like Walmart.

There's ranges everywhere.

It's almost a hardware store as well.

Everything is really cheap

and awful.

And if it ever breaks, they have no customer service.

You're fucked.

They're just too big.

But the range is the type of place that you'd go to.

to buy your cheap Halloween decorations.

Like really good ones.

Animatronic fucking pumpkins, big skeletons with moving arms.

You can walk into the range now, spend 200 quid, and have the type of Halloween display for your front garden that you would have dreamed of as a child.

But they start selling them in August when it's not Halloween.

And when you go into the range now, in October, when it is Halloween, they're selling the Christmas decorations.

It's Winter Wonderland.

It's Winter Wonderland, and October 31st hasn't happened yet.

So this

capitalism is removing all the fun from these festivals, that lovely feeling of, oh, it's Halloween, oh, it's Christmas.

They're giving us everything we thought we wanted and killing the magic.

I know Santa Claus isn't real, but nothing says Santa Claus isn't real than having all your Christmas decorations out on the first week of October.

And Halloween's over.

Halloween hasn't even started yet in the range and it's over.

It was over a couple of weeks ago because it's Christmas now in the range.

It was Christmas in home base.

I was in home base a couple of weeks ago.

It was Christmas in home base.

At the end of September there's a mass produced

high quality epidemic of decorations happening and I say high quality.

High quality compared to what we would have had as kids.

When we were kids big fancy Halloween decorations or big fancy fucking Christmas decorations and lights on people's roofs.

That was something you saw on TV.

That was something that only very wealthy Americans had.

Now anyone can have that, quite cheap.

And the same, the same animatronic plastic skeleton that I can buy in Limerick is the exact same animatronic plastic skeleton that you're buying in Australia or Canada or over in England.

And all of us are looking at Christmas decorations in fucking June.

and Halloween decorations in April and the mass production.

Yeah, it's higher quality, but it's ruining the magic of the seasons.

It's October

and they're already selling the big tins of Quality Streets.

Big plastic tubs of Quality Streets that you only saw in December that were desperately exclusive.

Again, I'm gonna sound like an old man.

I am an old man.

When I was a child...

When I was a fucking child.

Quality Streets, chocolates, came in a tin, a tin that that was made out of metal and it was so fucking expensive that it was bought once a year.

And this tin of sweets, this tin,

this religious object, this relic, was so important that when everyone had eaten the sweets on Christmas Day, you didn't throw the fucking tin out.

Your ma took that tin and said, wow, what a magnificent, wonderful container.

I'm gonna put knitting needles inside here.

And that's where your ma kept the the knitting needles inside the tin, the tin of Quality Street.

Do you think anyone's doing that now?

You can buy three giant fucking tubs of Quality Street made out of plastic for a tenner straight into the recycling bin.

And if you had knitting needles, like do you know why my ma had knitting needles?

To literally make clothes for people, to make people jumpers and scarves.

Most people who have knitting needles now, It's for the hobby of knitting and they have a dedicated knitting needle box with loads of plastic compartments that they were able to purchase quite cheaply.

They don't need a tin of quality street.

How did all this start to happen?

When did this type of shit start to happen?

How did it start to happen?

Particularly the decorations.

These really cheap but amazing decorations for Halloween.

The simple answer is China.

China entered the World Trade Organization in 2001.

China, China has a communist government

with a form of capitalism that is state controlled.

Over the past 20 years,

China built entire cities just for manufacturing.

China is the world's factory.

And when China entered the World Trade Organization in 2001, it opened itself up to the West.

and fueled our addiction, our addiction to consumerism.

And the relationship that the West has with China, it's completely unsustainable.

It's destroying the planet.

It's a good idea that Quaddy Street chocolates are something so exclusive and expensive that you buy once a year in a tin box.

Because that's how it was when I was a kid.

It's a good idea that it's so valuable that you hang on to the tin that it comes in to...

to repurpose it and use it for knitting needles.

Quality Street used to be made in Yorkshire.

The chocolate and the tins were manufactured manufactured in Yorkshire.

People were paid properly to make Quality Street.

So it was expensive.

It was exclusive.

You bought it once a year.

It was really special.

It was sustainable.

Now Quality Street is owned by Nestle.

The plastic tubs, they come from China.

And now your Quality Street is stacked 10 foot high in the supermarket in October and you can get two for a tenner.

and there's no value anymore and it's not special anymore and you might buy one this weekend even though it's not Christmas.

Not only does it remove the magic and the scarcity, it's unsustainable and terrible for the planet.

I'm supposed to be talking about Halloween, but I'm talking about fucking Quality Street.

But that's because the Quality Street is beside the Halloween decorations.

A few years ago, there was a woman in Portland, Oregon, over in America.

It's about 2011.

And I remember this because a friend of mine from school had moved to Portland, Oregon, and I was friends with them on Facebook and I remember them posting in 2012 that a woman in Portland, Oregon had bought some Halloween decorations.

They were big plastic tombstones.

The type that it'd look really cool in your garden now if you were doing Halloween decorations.

The type that you're gonna buy in your supermarket or your hardware store.

big cool fucking tombstones to put into your garden as halloween decorations so this woman bought these in Walmart or wherever the fuck in 2012 but when she opened the box there was a note inside and the note was written it was written in English in poor English and the note said

if you occasionally buy this product please kindly send this letter to the World Human Rights Organization.

Thousands of people here who are under the persecution of the Chinese Communist Party government will thank and remember you forever.

The note said that the tombstones had been made in Massanjia labor camp in Shenyang, China.

It said the inmates there had to work 15 hours a day seven days a week and if they didn't they would suffer torture and be beaten.

So this woman this woman in Portland, Oregon, she's buying these cheap these cheap Halloween decorations.

These tombstones, these incredible things that we're all consuming right now.

She's bought these things.

And now there's a note from a human being on the inside saying i'm a prisoner in china you have to help me i'm making these fucking halloween decorations i'm being tortured and it's these conditions that are causing a lot of the influx of really really cheap goods that we've seen over the past 20 years

there's forced labor camps in china whether it be that the Uighur Muslim population or this crowd called Falun Gong.

Thousands and thousands of people are imprisoned in China and sent to forced labor camps.

To keep the cost down to nothing at the expense of people's human rights, people are being enslaved basically or indentured, indentured servitude at least.

And a huge amount of the goods that we buy, Halloween decorations, Christmas decorations, our clothes, the shit that comes from China.

A huge amount of this from the manufacturing center of the world is actually made

under slave labor conditions.

But then shell companies are set up in the middle of all this.

A shell company is like a fake company.

These are set up to effectively launder these goods.

So when it comes to America, Europe, when it comes to us purchasing these goods that are made in slave labor conditions, the supermarkets that we buy them from,

in the West, we'll say, or the global north, they get to say, I don't know that these goods are made with slave labor how would I know that I bought it from this company you're gonna have to ask them so incredibly cheap cheaply produced

Chinese Halloween decorations are made at a gigantic scale and shipped all over the world and that's why whether it's Australia America Ireland we all have the same fucking decorations.

They're all really cheap and they're all pretty fucking cool too.

There's a good chance that it was that they're made with slave labor.

It's hard to really know.

This is this is this is the unconscious mind of modern capitalism.

We understand that dark forces are at play.

When it comes to purchasing the cheap goods that we enjoy, we know that some dark shit is happening.

In order for us to have a four foot light up pumpkin for 50 quid, that shouldn't exist.

It didn't exist when I was a kid.

It would have been too expensive.

It would have been unthinkable.

But now the unthinkable can be purchased for our entertainment and thrown away and bought again next year because that's how cheap it is.

And like I said, I first heard that story about the woman, the woman who bought those Halloween decorations, the tombstones.

And she found that letter, that letter from the person who was being kept prisoner and forced to make the tombstones.

I first heard that in 2012, because a buddy of mine had moved to Portland.

And it used to to pop into my head every Halloween every Halloween when I would see Halloween decorations when I'd go to the hardware store in the summertime in fucking August

and there's a big huge plastic jack-o'-lantern I'd think of that story

and this year I decided to fucking follow it up I decided to follow it up And it turns out that they found the dude, they found the dude who was the prisoner who had sent the lady that note because she'd gone to the papers about it it was widely reported in 2012 this fella had since gotten out of the labor camp and had seen her story and had seen that she had found his note so he contacted her and then journalists got involved to find out his story so it was a man in china called sun ye

and in 2008 he was arrested for being a member of an organization called Falun Gong.

Now I don't want to get into Falun Gong.

That's a separate podcast, that's too big a rabbit hole once I fucking go down it.

Basically China is quite authoritarian.

There's a one-party government.

Falun Gong is like a new religious movement, hundreds of thousands of people.

The Chinese government made it illegal and then sent hundreds of thousands of Falun Gong supporters to forced labor camps.

They also do it with Uyghur Muslims.

So this fellow Sun Yi was sent in 2008 to one of these forced labor camps where they were making Halloween Halloween decorations.

Now, he's Chinese.

He'd never seen or heard of fucking Halloween.

He would look out the window of his dormitory and he'd see people carrying skulls and bones in the distance and he thought they were human bones.

He thought he was at some type of extermination camp and then suddenly he found himself working 17-18 hour days with no pay making tombstones.

Tombstones, tombstones, tombstones.

He didn't know what he was doing.

He didn't know what they were for.

It was known as the ghost job.

He was said to have the ghost job.

He was getting freaked out and then he asks one of the guards, said, What the fuck am I doing here?

And one of the guards had a bit of knowledge and said, it's for the West.

In the West, they have some type of holiday where they celebrate death or skeletons.

Halloween they call it.

So this fellow was under such harsh, terrible, inhumane work conditions making Halloween decorations for the West that one day he decided, I'm gonna write notes in English into these fucking decorations and hide them in the boxes and hopefully someone will report this labor camp.

Now what happened to Sun Yi?

As soon as he started speaking to Western journalists, within months, Chinese agents showed up

and then suddenly he died of a kidney disease.

Now one thing and I have to say it.

All of that may very well be 100% true.

But also,

anything you read in the English language about China right now could very well be Western propaganda made up or planted by the CIA.

Because that's literally what they're doing now.

They're spending billions on that.

On anti-Chinese propaganda.

And this story...

This story about forced labor, Halloween decorations, your man sending the note, coming clean, suddenly dying.

It probably is true, but it also works.

It works as anti-Chinese propaganda.

So if it works that way, then I have to have a degree of criticality towards it.

What I'm teasing at with all this

is Halloween is particularly rife for exploitation with this new form of hypercapitalism that we have.

It's a holiday that's mostly mostly celebrated by children.

It happens on the same date once a year, so it's incredibly predictable.

It doesn't really change.

Scary shit.

Skeletons, spiders, pumpkins.

So for mass production within capitalism, Halloween is perfect.

Same with Christmas.

Just keep churning out the plastic fucking skeletons, the tombstones, the pumpkins.

Every year, guaranteed big bucks.

Send the designs to the factories in China, china put in the orders don't worry about how they make it they're gonna do it real cheap and that satiates our desires to have big giant fucking plastic pumpkins with lights inside them but my hot take is that the darkness

and evilness of this particular type of hyper capitalism the slave labor is actually after realizing

the pagan Irish roots of Halloween.

So Halloween wasn't called Halloween in Ireland a couple of thousand years ago.

It was called Sowhan.

It was a harvest festival.

It was the end of the harvest when winter comes.

It was like the ancient Irish New Year.

And when the old year died and the new year was born, there was one day there where the veil between our world reality and the other world was very thin.

If you go deep into Irish mythology, you look up, we'll say the Book of Invasions and the story, the mythology, the mythology of how people came to Ireland.

The Book of Invasions will say that

there was a race of people on the island of Ireland called the Tuahaday Danin and these were magical creatures, very powerful magical creatures.

But then when humans came to the shore of Ireland there was a great battle and the humans won.

And the humans drove the Tuahade Danin, this magical race, underground into the other world, where they became a dark force, unseen.

We knew they were there, but they were unseen.

Sometimes they might pop up and trick us, or harm us, or steal our children.

They became the fairies.

So within Irish mythology I have this this persistent paranoia of

there's another world, a parallel reality with these fairies who are a race of people that we humans have defeated but these fairies they can come back at any time and especially they can come back on the night of Samhon Halloween when the veil between the other world and our world is thin the fairies the scary fairies can walk the earth they can pop up so we're gonna light bonfires and we're gonna gonna dress up as scary monsters to confuse those fairies on halloween night and those traditions go back to the iron age you know that's irish traditions and if you you can visit where halloween happened like this is what i adore about ireland just go up to rascommon go to ross common go to a cave there's a cave in rass common called the cave of the cats only gat

and and this is where halloween comes from this one cave it's it's a limestone

it's it's a narrow cave that you can go into I was in there last summer it's run by a fella called Daniel Carly he's a he's a historian and an expert a fascinating person and he's sound go up to Daniel tell him blind by sent you you can go you can go to where fucking Halloween started thousands of years ago in this one cave in Ross Common called the Cave of the Cats.

And the front of it looks like fuck all.

It looks like a fox's hole it's tiny you wouldn't even think it's a cave but then you you get muddy then you go into it and it's this deep limestone crevice and and just just as you get into this cave there's an inscription in awam

this inscription could be thousands of years old

awam is

It's a writing system that we had in Ireland before Latin script.

Now we couldn't write books with it, because Ireland was an oral culture.

We couldn't write books with it but we did have a system of writing that was used on stone not to tell stories but to declare ownership.

And what this owam script reads it says Freyak son of Maeve

but the Maeve they're referring to there that's fucking Queen Maeve from the town

This cave, this cave is only a 10 minute walk from Rath Crogan.

Rath Crogan is the giant hill where kings were made,

where they crowned kings in Ireland, going back a couple of thousand years, before the Brits, before Christianity.

But Rath Crogan is also the hill where you can tell the epic story of the time in the absence of writing by reading the landscape.

But the other thing about this cave

where Halloween starts.

So Maeve,

Maeve isn't just a queen in a story.

Maeve is the goddess of the land.

So this cave may very well be her vagina.

Within Irish pre-Christian beliefs, there's a strong chance that the land was the goddess, the goddess Maeve up in Connacht.

And the king was married to the land.

The king was married to the the goddess of the land.

And the fertility of that land, the health of the people, the health of the cattle, that that was the fertility of the land goddess.

But if we're to go back,

we'll say the Iron Age origins of Halloween and how it relates to this one cave in Rascommon and how it's told in Irish mythology.

So Sowhan, the 31st of fucking October, right?

This is the end of the harvest.

So the food is harvested.

and now you're getting ready for winter.

And on this one day, this one night in particular, the scary fairies and the polka can walk the earth.

So, the story goes: is that these horrendous demons they showed out of this cave, terrifying demons, and these terrifying fairies showed out of the cave, the only gat cave in Ross Common.

And the first demon to show out of this cave on Halloween night is the Ellentrekin, which is a three-headed monster, and it rampages all across Ireland and tears the leaves from all the trees and lays bare to everything.

And then the next monster

to fly out of this fucking cave, out of the earth,

are these flocks of birds, terrifying crows, demonic crows,

and they wither all the plants and strip the leaves and bring ice to the land.

And then finally,

the last demons demons to leave this cave to come from the other world

on Halloween night are these herds of supernatural pigs.

So, thousands of these supernatural monster fairy pigs roam Ireland.

They come out of this cave, they roam Ireland and they eat everything, they kill all the crops, they destroy everything.

And then they go back in, and the next morning you wake up, and it's winter.

And that's really what the story of Halloween is.

That's what it is.

Going back fucking 2000 years.

It's wonderful, interesting stories that let our ancestors know.

Winter is coming.

It's the end of autumn.

The harvest is done.

And now shit's about to get cold and everything's going to die.

And you better take in your cattle and you better get warm.

And you better make sure that your food is stored from the harvest.

Cause fucking winter is coming.

And they rationalized and explained the death and darkness of winter through these stories of demons

shimmering in from the otherworld this this race this race of supernatural demons that the irish had beaten in the past they're gonna come back every year for one night and all the wonderful summer that you had and the warmth and the crops that's fucking gone Because for one night they're gonna fuck it all up and now you're back into winter.

So it's useful storytelling.

in the absence of writing in the absence of clocks calendars

it's very useful storytelling that lets you know about the world that you're living in and that's where halloween comes from it comes from that and we held on to those traditions and those beliefs over thousands of years because it was so important because it's around the the harvest festival and also they're great stories they're wonderful stories and we like frightening ourselves and great terrifying change happens every winter things get dark and we love to have stories so that we can navigate

the frustration of uncertainty so that we can know like Jesus Christ imagine living 2,000 fucking years ago and winter comes you can't grow any food you don't have science

You'd start thinking to yourself fuck it.

I hope this winter isn't forever.

I hope the sun is going to come back.

I hope it's going going to be spring again.

So you have these stories to go.

Yeah, don't worry.

Of course spring is going to come back.

It's just last night.

The fairies got to blow off steam.

They do this every October 31st.

They do it.

It's normal.

It's a cycle.

It's what happens.

So we kept those traditions.

Then Christianity came about, changed it around.

It went from being sowing to all Hallows Eve.

We kept some of those traditions and it became about worshiping saints.

And then the Irish took it to America and the Scottish did as well because you have to remember, for about 300 years, from the 5th to the 7th century, the western part of Scotland was known as Dalrieta.

It was an Irish kingdom where Gaelic was spoken.

So Halloween was Scottish too.

So Halloween moved over to America with the massive amounts of Irish emigrants that went there from the 1600s onwards.

It was practiced by the Irish.

We used to carve turnips as jack-o'-lanterns.

We didn't have turnips, so that turned into fucking pumpkins over there.

And when Halloween,

like, how did Halloween become this huge global thing that we have today?

How did it become mainstream American culture and now mainstream global culture?

World War I

and the flu pandemic of 1918.

So, between 1914

and 1920

80 million people died in the world.

People in America lost loved ones in World War I and also the fucking flu pandemic.

The flu pandemic of 1918, the Spanish flu as they called it, it was like COVID.

It was like the COVID pandemic, except it was 1918 and it was way worse because there was a war going on and people didn't have

vaccines, didn't have the science we have today so there was mass deaths so because so many people in England and in America had lost loved ones between the period of 1914 and 1920 there was collective grief and people started getting into spiritualism it was known as

Ouija boards seances It wasn't considered weird witchcraft anymore.

It got kind of mainstream.

Your man

Arthur Conan Doyle who wrote fucking Sherlock Holmes he used to do speaking tours about it so so society in America even the Protestants it became kind of normal to want to believe that your your recently dead relative who died from the fucking flu pandemic or died in World War I

it became acceptable to believe that their ghost walked among us and that we could use Ouija boards or have a seance to communicate with the ghost of a person you loved.

30 years previously, especially the Protestants, that was fucking witchcraft.

That was witchcraft.

You didn't entertain it.

That was blasphemy.

That was witchcraft.

1920, it became kind of...

It's okay to entertain this.

Horoscopes.

This isn't black magic anymore.

Maybe my dead brother is here.

I've got so many unanswered questions.

He died young.

I want to know what he was thinking.

So it's said that

this period of of the popularity of spiritualism because of the pandemic and world war one

this laid the cultural foundations for halloween to become popular in america now it wasn't a weird holiday that the dark poor catholic irish are celebrating and lighting bonfires now the more middle class protestants in america are going what's this you've got this

there's this festival that happens on october 31st

where our dead relatives can walk among us really that doesn't sound so witchcrafty anymore maybe let's have a bit of fun so halloween starts to become part of american culture then

and then by the by world war ii

world war ii sugar was was rationed and then when world war ii ended Sugar wasn't rationed anymore.

So there was an explosion of sweets and chocolates.

And that led to trick-or-treating and fucking sweets brands deliberately targeting children.

And from there,

Halloween becomes an American holiday.

Like, let's be honest.

Halloween as we know it today is completely American.

It becomes an American holiday that's then sold back to the rest of the world.

It's sold back to us in Ireland.

And we've forgotten that it was fucking ours from the Iron Age.

But the hot take that I'm getting at,

Halloween has now intersected with with hyper capitalism the things that made it attractive to our Iron Age ancestors Which is it happens on the same day every fucking year.

It's predictable.

We need this thing as a calendar That's also the same thing that makes it predictable for the speculative forces of the market to invest in it.

So like I said Halloween every year we know we can make a lot of money.

Let's just make tons and tons of fucking Halloween decorations over in China.

The worker.

The worker in the forced labor camp in China who doesn't even know what Halloween is, who's living in a strange liminal purgatory where he's making tombstones that he doesn't understand.

He has become the fairy.

He has become the hidden dark forces of Halloween.

He's the unconscious mind of capitalism.

He's in that liminal world in the prison camp, where we in the West don't really know if it exists or not.

Just like the other world, we have a feeling it does exist, but we don't like to think about it.

It's scary.

And he's writing little notes and putting them into tombstones in the hopes that someone will read it.

Like a ghost or a poker

trapped in the liminal other world.

Trying to communicate with our world right now.

Hypercapitalism has made Iron Age pagan fucking Halloween a reality.

It's not just stories anymore.

Tortured souls are trapped in hell, in hell on earth, to make our Halloween decorations.

And they're trying to let us know that they're suffering.

So that's my hot take for this week.

Let's have a little ocarina pause.

I'm in my office with my giant big fucking ocarina that never works.

A real Lemonade Pet Insurance Review by Madison H.

You know, I thought it was a little ridiculous to get pet insurance, but I really didn't want to not take my little kitten to the vet because of money.

In the last eight months, I've taken him in six times because of ear infections and saved literally hundreds of dollars.

You may even need to get surgery, and I couldn't consider it without Lemonade's help.

I recommend Lemonade to all my friends constantly.

And now I'm recommending it to you.

Check it out at lemonade.com slash pet.

It's Stock Up September at Whole Foods Market.

Find sales on supplements to power up for busy weeks.

Plus, pack your pantry with pasta, sauce, and more everyday essentials.

Enjoy quick breakfasts for less with 365 by Whole Foods Market seasonal coffee and oatmeal.

Grab ready-to-heat meals that are perfect for the office and save on versatile no antibiotics ever chicken breasts.

Sock up now at Whole Foods Market, in-store and online.

You buy a pair of socks, that's two socks.

You buy a pair of Bombas socks, that's four socks.

Because one purchased is one donated.

Socks are the number one most requested clothing item in homeless shelters.

So when you buy a pair of super comfortable Bombas socks, you're also donating a pair.

Bombus customers have powered over 150 million donations.

So Bombus would like to thank you 150 million times, but we only have like 30 seconds.

Go to bombas.com and use code AUDIO for 20% off your first purchase.

That's B-O-M-B-A-S.com and use code Audio at checkout.

I suppose I won't be bothering any dogs with that.

Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page.

patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast.

If this podcast brings you mirth, merriment, distraction, entertainment, whatever the fuck, please consider becoming a patron.

This podcast, it's my full-time job, it's how I rent out this office, it's how I pay all my bills, this is how I earn a living.

This is a 100%

listener-funded podcast, and I'm not beholden to the whims of advertisers.

They can't tell me what to fucking do or what to talk about.

Each week I turn up and I speak about what I'm genuinely passionate about.

That's what I do.

And that's only possible because of patrons.

So patreon.com forward slash the blind buy podcast.

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 it, don't worry about it.

You listen for free.

Listen for free.

Because the person who is paying is paying for you to listen for free.

So everybody gets the exact same podcast.

I get to earn a living.

What more could we want?

Gigs.

Australia and New Zealand 2025.

That's now sold out.

My next gig, I believe, is fucking

Vicker Street on the 19th of November.

Very few tickets left for that.

Come along, that's going to be a lot of fun.

Wonderful Vicar Street November gig.

Tuesday night.

It's going to be great.

February, 9th of February.

Leisureland Galway.

Glamorous stuff.

Then

more glamorous shit.

I mean

on the 21st of February up to Belfast and the waterfront theatre on the 28th of February 25

anything else

that's about it is it all right

so listen regarding this week's hot take

I'd have loved to have had another day and no I'm I'm literally just back from Spain.

I'm just back from Spain.

And I've been thinking about all that shit.

I said I was going to take a week off.

It wasn't my fuck taking a week off.

I was over in Spain

thinking about Halloween.

Halloween decorations back home.

My head was in the range thinking about shit Halloween decorations.

So I'll be honest I would have loved to have had about another day to refine that hot take there.

But I'm just back from fucking Spain.

And also, I don't know if you can tell, but

winter has not been kind to me with coughs and fucking colds because I've got another sore throat of an agonizing swollen tonsil that made this week's podcast quite difficult and sore to do.

See normally I've got four or five days to do a podcast so if I do I might do one take and do an entire podcast and go do you know what that could be better.

So I redo it the next day and refine it and refine it until I'm happy with what I put out.

but I had less time to refine this one.

And tomorrow I'm going to put this out and then I'm going to wake up tomorrow and be pissed off with myself because some other hot take will jump into my head and it'll be too late.

I've had people complaining about my voice.

My voice when I'm a bit sick.

What can I do?

There's nothing I can do.

With radio stations,

if the fucking radio presenter is sick, they ring someone in and they come in and do the radio show instead.

I can't do that nor would I want to.

So I'm just gonna turn up and do it with a sore throat.

That's what I'm gonna do.

There's nearly 400 episodes.

you can go and listen to an earlier episode if you like where i don't have a sore throat it's just what happens i haven't gotten a sore throat in about four years

it's the fucking pandemic the pandemic is over

and and whatever it is about this year in particular people are obviously mingling more and the coughs and coals are back so i'll bid you farewell now i have a very special guest next week Killian Murphy is coming onto the podcast next week.

I recorded it already We'd great crack.

Killian's not too fond of doing interviews.

But we we'd wonderful crack.

We just spoke about art and creativity.

That's it.

Speak about art and creativity, nothing else.

So I'll be showing you that next week.

An interview with the magnificent Killian Murphy.

Okay, dog bless.

Hug a worm, rubber swan.

Visit Onegat Cave up in fucking Ross Common because

it's one of the fucking most incredible sites that we have in Ireland.

We've got Onegat Cave where Halloween started and then you've got the hill of Rathcrogan.

You're talking about a history as rich as the fucking pyramids and it's just up in Ross Common.

I have a documentary coming out next month.

It's about the history of the

Irish writing, but I go right back to the 500s.

And

I spend a lot of time on that hill in Rathcrogan learning about how an epic like the Tawn can be written using the land instead of fucking paper.

And I spent some time inside in that cave.

But go up and visit that place if you want the day out

and chat to Daniel Carly.

Get him to give you the guided tour.

The guided, he's an expert and he's sound.

Get him to give you the guided tour of that cave and the Rathkrogan Hill.

Dog bless.

Okay, real talk.

Quitting or cutting back on nicotine doesn't have to mean changing your whole vibe or skipping out on your friends.

That's why I'm into Quit with Jones.

They make discreet, great-tasting nicotine mints.

So when everyone else heads out for a smoke break, you're still right there, fresh breath and all.

Plus, their app is actually helpful.

You can log your mints, track your progress, connect with other quitters in the community, even play this one-minute game that helps cravings pass.

And with the combo of digital support and nicotine replacement, studies show people have way better chances of sticking with it.

If you're ready to take a step toward quitting or just cutting back, go to quitwithjones.com/slash/fresh10.

You can take the free quiz and get $10 off your personalized quitting journey.

That's code FRESH10.

And just a heads up, the mints contain nicotine, which is an addictive chemical.

Jones is FDA approved for 18 years and up.

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash?

Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies.

Try it at progressive.com.

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates.

Potential savings will vary, not available in all states.