Zen and the Art of repairing the Testicle Bicycle

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Speaker 2 Drag your gone ads on the lanky antelope, you scandalous Anthonies.

Speaker 2 Welcome to the Plime Boy Podcast. If this is your first episode, consider going back to an earlier episode to familiarize yourself with the lore of this podcast.

Speaker 2 Last week was the 8th anniversary of this podcast. Thank you to everybody for all the kind messages.

Speaker 2 And we begin

Speaker 2 the first week of year 9.

Speaker 2 This is year nine, isn't it? I'm shit at Mats.

Speaker 2 Is this year nine?

Speaker 2 If the podcast is eight years old.

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 2 This is the first week of year eight.

Speaker 2 And my podcast is old enough to have its first Holy Communion. My podcast is old enough

Speaker 2 to eat a piece of bread.

Speaker 2 Which has magically transformed into the flesh of a 2,000 year old carpenter. That's actually blasphemy there.

Speaker 2 You're not allowed to refer to it as magic. I got in trouble before for calling it magic.
What I'm referring to there is transubstantiation.

Speaker 2 The belief in Catholicism that a piece of bread can turn into Christ.

Speaker 2 The actual flesh of Christ, even though it still looks like bread. In substance, and you're touching it and you're going, it's bread.

Speaker 2 It's like, no, it's actually Christ. It's actually Christ.
It's a carpenter from the Iron Age. That's what this is.
You have to eat it now. And if you say, fuck off,

Speaker 2 there's no Christ in that, it's only bread, then you're a Protestant.

Speaker 2 That's what Protestants are. They protest that and a few other things.
But Catholics are like, no, there's a bit of bread here, and it's actually Christ.

Speaker 2 And when you eat that, then you have your communion,

Speaker 2 right?

Speaker 2 You have have a union, you participate in Christ.

Speaker 2 And this podcast is eight years old, so this podcast is...

Speaker 2 If this podcast was a human being, it would be preparing to have or may have just had its first holy communion, which is a particularly Irish way of aging a podcast.

Speaker 2 So when the priest turns the bread into Christ,

Speaker 2 if you refer to that as magic, that's blasphemous and disrespectful. But if you say that it's a miracle, then it's not blasphemous and disrespectful.
I suppose because

Speaker 2 magic, magic is a human being manipulating the fabric of reality, and then a miracle is God doing it, and God's allowed to do it.

Speaker 2 So I think that's why it's quite a lot to take on board, even now as an adult with faculties of critical thinking. What has me thinking about it now is...

Speaker 2 snails. When I was a child you made your first holy communion even even younger like five or six you had to make your first confession first

Speaker 2 where

Speaker 2 you confess your fucking sins you confess your sins where as a tiny child you're introduced to the concept of sin and you have to confess them to a priest so that your soul is clean enough to eat christ I'm still a little bit angry that that was part of my education at such a young age.

Speaker 2 And that wasn't my parents' fault, it's just what you had to fucking do. It's what you had to do.
The church was deeply ingrained in the school system when I was a child.

Speaker 2 So, I'm having extreme difficulty with my bicycle at the moment. My bicycle is broken, I can still cycle it, but

Speaker 2 there are serious issues. And the other day, when I was trying to investigate, you know, what's going on at my bike,

Speaker 2 I was down on my knees looking at the gears,

Speaker 2 the wheels, the pedals, going it's something going on with the chain.

Speaker 2 When I cycle too hard, if I press too hard on my pedal the chain slips and then my testicles slam down on the crossbar and I scream. I do it in public.
about four times a day.

Speaker 2 It's painful and it's embarrassing. So I was investigating my bicycle to try to get to the bottom of the this testicle business.
But while I was down there, I looked up

Speaker 2 and just underneath my saddle

Speaker 2 was a snail.

Speaker 2 She's been stuck up there all along and it wasn't just any snail. The snail was

Speaker 2 like white and dusty.

Speaker 2 And I went, wow.

Speaker 2 I've been cycling around on this bike and the whole time a snail has been just living underneath my seat, going with me everywhere and I never knew about it and I'm only finding out about it now.

Speaker 2 Isn't that incredible? And I reached up to touch the snail, to take it away from the saddle and then I thought, no.

Speaker 2 Now at this point I'm lying flat on my back looking up at the saddle from underneath the bicycle. Now I know what you're saying.
Blind boy, you're supposed to flip the bike upside down to repair it.

Speaker 2 I'm not a bicycle repair person. I'm terrible at this.
I'm being distracted by a fucking snail. I've forgotten about the bike now.
So I'm down on my back, just gazing at this

Speaker 2 calcified snail, this white, dusty snail, stuck to the inside of my saddle. And I reach my hand towards the snail's shell to pluck it, to pluck it away.

Speaker 2 And as I place my fingers around the shell and pull gently, I notice the resistance. This snail is really stuck.
It's not like a regular snail when you pick it up and move it. This snail is stuck.

Speaker 2 It feels dormant.

Speaker 2 And I also got a vestigial memory. I don't go around the place touching a lot of snails as an adult, but the vestigial memory, and when I say vestigial there, what I mean is

Speaker 2 a memory of touching snails, and I couldn't fully recall the context, a sense that this was once very important to me, and it's now no longer important or serves a purpose. But then it came back,

Speaker 2 and it would have been about the age, the age that I would have been when I was making my fucking first Holy Communion. I used to handle a lot of snails.

Speaker 2 You see, I'd neighbours.

Speaker 2 My neighbours had American grandchildren who were the same age as me,

Speaker 2 and they would come and visit Ireland every summer. Now again, this is the early 90s.
No internet. America was like Mars.
So when Americans visited Ireland,

Speaker 2 they were living five or six years in the future. Everything about them was different.

Speaker 2 Their claws, the things they spoke about, the films that they were watching, the TVs that they were watching, the music that they were listening to.

Speaker 2 Americans were fucking aliens from a more advanced planet. And that's how it was in the early 90s.
And my neighbors' grandkids would visit for like a month and tell me everything about America.

Speaker 2 Most importantly, they were playing with teenage mutant ninja turtle toys

Speaker 2 before we had it in Ireland. Okay?

Speaker 2 They had a Donatello and a Leonardo figurine.

Speaker 2 And they'd play with them.

Speaker 2 And they would describe to me this cartoon in America called the turtles which was the greatest thing in the world

Speaker 2 and I can't watch it I can't see it it's not on television I can't go to anybody and ask to see the turtles there's no internet it had to exist in my mind as a story that the Yanks were telling me about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles before it was in Ireland and then the Yanks left

Speaker 2 And they went back to New York and I was stuck in Ireland having spent a month hearing about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, playing with the Donatello and Leonardo, and knowing,

Speaker 2 because the lads told me there's four fucking turtles.

Speaker 2 Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo and Raphael.

Speaker 2 And their bandanas are orange, blue, red, and purple. So I'm obsessed.
I'm obsessed with this cartoon I've never seen. I'm imagining what it could be, what the turtles look like, what they sound like.

Speaker 2 All I have is the the memory of the two figurines that I played with but now it's all gone. It's all gone, the yanks are gone and all I have is my memories.

Speaker 2 So I said to myself the closest thing we have to turtles in Limerick is fucking snails. They're green and slimy and they have shells and that's the closest thing that we have here to turtles.

Speaker 2 So I went out in my back garden and I started collecting snails. And I got four of them, and I painted red, purple, orange, and blue bandanas on their shells.

Speaker 2 I was about five or six years of age, and I used my brother's airfix paints to do it. And these were my turtles.
Four living snails with bandanas painted on their fucking shells.

Speaker 2 And I used to bring them into school, and people would ask me, what the fuck are those? And I'd say, they're my turtles. These are the turtles.
Donatello, Michelangelo, Leonardo and Raphael.

Speaker 2 I had them in a lunchbox and of course everyone thought I was fucking mental. I'd say to the children, it's a cartoon, it's a cartoon in America.
What are you talking about?

Speaker 2 I'm like, in America, there's a cartoon called the turtles. But what are you doing with a lot of snails? They're not snails.
They're Donatello and Raphael. The fuck is that, you silly boy?

Speaker 2 There was no context. There was no internet.
It would have required another child to have either met Americans or been in America. The teenage mutant turtles didn't exist.

Speaker 2 Even though I later learned it was actually being animated in Dublin. It was actually being animated in Dublin.
The cartoon hadn't arrived in Ireland. The merchandise hadn't arrived in Ireland.

Speaker 2 Instead, I had four snails. and I was telling people, these are my turtles, all right?

Speaker 2 I was so adamant and so absorbed in the fantasy of it that people, they just eventually just went along with it. My family certainly at home, they just started referring to all snails as turtles.

Speaker 2 Now I think I've mentioned that story on this podcast before, a few years back, but the memory that actually did come back to me, which I didn't mention, was this was the time when I was

Speaker 2 training to make my first Holy Communion.

Speaker 2 And before you made your communion, like I said, you had to do your first confession. You had to confess your sins.
But you're fucking five or six. So the teacher's explaining to you what a sin is.

Speaker 2 And you're a child. So you haven't actually done anything bad because you're a child.
And there's no such thing.

Speaker 2 There's no such thing as a child doing something bad because everything a child does is an act of curiosity. Even if it's naughty or misbehaving.
A tiny little child can't sin. It's not possible.

Speaker 2 But every Friday, we had to practice confessing confessing our sins to the priest. We had to practice.

Speaker 2 Because eventually, in six or seven weeks' time, we were going to actually sit down with a fucking priest, go into a confession box, and then confess our sins to a strange man in an upright coffin.

Speaker 2 This was going to happen.

Speaker 2 So we'd have to practice our sins with our teacher every week. And sure, the biggest problem was, I don't know, I don't know if I did anything bad or not.

Speaker 2 Or I don't think I did anything bad this week, and then the teacher would give you sins, or the teacher would make you look through all of your behavior and figure out which could be contextualized as a sin.

Speaker 2 So anyway,

Speaker 2 the teacher basically said, look, what you're doing with those snails is actually a sin. Firstly, they're God's creatures.
So you took the snails out of the garden and now you have them in a lunchbox.

Speaker 2 You're painting them. You're interfering with God's creatures.
And then worst of all, God gave names to all the animals.

Speaker 2 God gave them their names, and these are snails, but you're calling them turtles. And then, of course, I'd go, no, miss, miss, these are the turtles.

Speaker 2 They're not snails, these are the turtles. And she'd go, I know, I know, but it's a sin.
Now she's clutching at straws.

Speaker 2 She's got a classroom full of children, and she's trying to teach them what fucking sins are, and she's trying to do her job. So

Speaker 2 she probably just says to me, Look, just confess to me that you've been stealing snails painting them and calling them turtles okay then i'll pretend that god is going to forgive you and then you go and just learn a few hail marys that's it this is just practice confession to prepare you for when you do meet the priest and have real confession and then you'll have better sins but right now it's practice and then i'm like i can still play with the turtles can't i and she's like yes you can look just confess that you've done it so we did that like these are my favorite ties Like I was obsessed with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Speaker 2 I hadn't even seen them yet and all I had was descriptions from the fucking Yanks. So these were very important.
These were my turtles. I mean this was a little religion for me.

Speaker 2 It was a little religion with ritual. And looking back,

Speaker 2 it was a bit like Christianity. I mean no one's fucking seen Christ.

Speaker 2 You just have someone describing how brilliant he was. Oh, he died for your sins, they nailed him to a cross.

Speaker 2 And now, all of a sudden, you've people making little figurines of the crucifix and trying to remember things and imagining what it'd be like to be near him.

Speaker 2 Sure, I was doing the exact same thing with the snails and the stories about the turtles. I mean,

Speaker 2 imagining what seeing an actual turtle cartoon would be like, that was my idea of heaven. I was like a Christian in rapture, imagining the kingdom of heaven.

Speaker 2 That's what the fuck I was, but these snails. So I keep bringing my lunchbox full of painted snails into school.
And that was grand until

Speaker 2 when we were training for confession, eventually, then you start doing fake communions in class. The communion, First Holy Communion is a big deal in Ireland.

Speaker 2 You dress up, you get money from your fucking relatives. It's your day in church, you have to walk up the fucking aisle.

Speaker 2 Ritualistically,

Speaker 2 it's quite important in Irish culture. I don't know what the crack is anymore, but when I was a kid, it was very fucking important.

Speaker 2 And you're a tiny child, and it's the first thing that you can't fuck up. You can't fuck up your communion.
This is, it's in the charts, it's really important.

Speaker 2 You have to walk up with your partner, and you have to put your hand out or your tongue out, and you have to get the communion off the priest. So, it was rehearsed to fuck.

Speaker 2 So, we used to rehearse getting the communion. I think it was every two weeks, and the teacher would come in with a biscuit tin full of communion wafers.

Speaker 2 But they weren't blessed, so they were just wafers.

Speaker 2 And this is when you're first introduced to the idea of transubstantiation.

Speaker 2 Even though we were five or six, we'd been going to Mass. People went to Mass on Sundays in those days.

Speaker 2 And the only bit you would remember from Mass as a child, because Mass was boring, it was a priest talking. You remember two things:

Speaker 2 when everyone shakes everyone else's hand, the peace be with you, bit. Everyone remembered that because you get to shake hands with strangers.

Speaker 2 And you remember the bit where some people walk up and get communion and others don't. And immediately you want to be part of that club.

Speaker 2 I want to be one of the ones who gets to walk up and eat whatever the fuck that white thing is.

Speaker 2 And then the teacher now is telling you that white thing that you see every Sunday, that's actually the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ. But she's saying that to five-year-olds.

Speaker 2 And now we're all going, but it looks the exact same as that wafer that's in your hand right now.

Speaker 2 That doesn't look like flesh and blood to me on Sunday. That looks like a wafer.
And then the teacher has to go, no,

Speaker 2 what you see in Mass. is actually the flesh and blood of Christ.
What I'm holding here is a wafer. Then why do they look the same, teacher? And then she goes, because of a miracle.

Speaker 2 The priest blesses these wafers and then God transforms them into the flesh and blood of his son and then you eat it. And you don't question it because it's a miracle.
It's gaslighting.

Speaker 2 It is mass gaslighting because everybody just goes along with it because you all want to dress up, make your communion, walk up the aisle and get money from relatives.

Speaker 2 So everyone goes along with this utterly irrational, absurd, ridiculous thing that they're telling children. But I was sitting at the back of the class with my lunchbox full of fucking snails.

Speaker 2 And then I start thinking, oh, so one thing can actually be another thing, even though they look completely different. One thing can be another thing if it's a miracle.
How could this be a sin?

Speaker 2 My snails are turtles. The way that that bread is Christ.
It's a miracle. I've performed a miracle.
Teacher, teacher, I've performed a miracle. My snails are turtles.
No, they're not.

Speaker 2 That's another sin. That's another sin that you can confess.
That's actually worse than the first sin. You can't perform miracles.
That's called magic. So is the communion way for magic?

Speaker 2 No, it's a miracle. If you're an elder millennial like myself or older,

Speaker 2 You'll be listening going. Yeah, I remember that.
And if you're one of the younger listeners, if you're like 20, then thank fuck

Speaker 2 things were different for you but i was the i'd said the last generation

Speaker 2 that had to deal with being taught by nuns pretty hardcore

Speaker 2 religious doctrine as as part of your school education and i got the soft end of it because as my ma used to say to me

Speaker 2 If I'd have been in school 15 or 20 years earlier, because I was so disruptive as a child, I could have been taken off her.

Speaker 2 I could have been taken offer and sent to a boy's home or an industrial school like that happened. I'm sure plenty of neurodivergent or strange or eccentric kids ended up in those industrial schools.

Speaker 2 And this is what came back to me when I was lying on my back,

Speaker 2 staring up at that chalky white snail

Speaker 2 stuck to the inside of my bicycle saddle.

Speaker 2 And the memory came back to me when I had my fingers around it and I was pulling. And what I loved, it was the tactile nature of it.
It was the feeling of the snail shell in my hand.

Speaker 2 Whatever that did to my brain, it brought back that old memory because it was about touch. And I decided I'm not going to remove that snail.

Speaker 2 That snail is, A, it's there for a reason. And B, I want to find out what that reason is.
So this snail now gets to live underneath my bicycle.

Speaker 2 My bicycle, which I slam my testicles off four times a day. I'm not removing this snail.
It chose that place. It's there for a reason.
I'm going to figure out what the reason is.

Speaker 2 And I give the snail a name. Its name is Sligo.

Speaker 2 Sligo is a place in the north west of Ireland.

Speaker 2 It's... I love Sligo.
It's magnificent. I gigged there about a month ago.
Sligo is like

Speaker 2 if they sold Galway in TK Max, Sligo town, it's it's very culturally Galway, but not Galway.

Speaker 2 The reason I called the snail that was stuck underneath my bicycle saddle Sligo is because the name Sligo means Sligock,

Speaker 2 and that means a place with a lot of shells.

Speaker 2 And what that comes down to is calcium.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 humans...

Speaker 2 humans have all of us had rubbish dumps. Humans have always had waste.

Speaker 2 But generally human waste, our food,

Speaker 2 our clothes, throughout history, before we discovered plastics,

Speaker 2 most of what human waste was

Speaker 2 would just decompose and disappear and we wouldn't have a record of it

Speaker 2 but when humans would eat crabs or oysters

Speaker 2 shellfish or snails when humans would eat snails or their relatives

Speaker 2 their shells would never decompose so what you end up with is it's called a midden and a midden is

Speaker 2 a unique archaeological feature

Speaker 2 it's shells it's it's a human waste dump made mostly of shells from crustaceans, from snails and it doesn't decompose and they're incredibly valuable because you're left with human waste that you can actually look at and touch and feel and study and that tells us a lot about the humans that lived there and

Speaker 2 what they ate and that's why Sligo is called Sligo.

Speaker 2 Because Sligo had a fuck ton of these middens.

Speaker 2 Like even there's a town up in Sligo called Ballasodair and it's built entirely on an ancient waste dump of shells. Now why is that important?

Speaker 2 Because you're dealing with like a Bronze Age rubbish dump.

Speaker 2 You can find out what type of boats people had 2000 years ago based on the type of shells that you're finding. The shells are placed on top of each other over hundreds and thousands of years.

Speaker 2 So you get a stratified layer. And then the shells themselves, they preserve geochemical data.

Speaker 2 So scientists can analyze the shells in a midden to find out what sea temperatures were like, what the seasons were like, what the quality of the air was like.

Speaker 2 You could find out if there was a volcano in fucking another part of the world that year because of shells are brilliant. And middens, ancient dumps of shells that don't decompose, are fantastic.

Speaker 2 And then...

Speaker 2 Sligo. Sligok.

Speaker 2 The name itself tells us the story.

Speaker 2 A place with an abundance of shells. So I named the snail that was stuck under my seat.
I called him Sligo the Snail. But naming the snail

Speaker 2 and making the choice not to remove it, to leave it there

Speaker 2 created a problem for me.

Speaker 2 See, the only reason I was even looking at the bicycle is I...

Speaker 2 I knew, look, if I can't fucking fix this,

Speaker 2 if this isn't something as simple as rearranging the chain,

Speaker 2 then I'm going to have to engage in the utterly

Speaker 2 impossible task of getting my bicycle fixed in Limerick City.

Speaker 2 And now I'd have to do it.

Speaker 2 Wherever I was going, I'd have to say to them, oh, by the way, there's a snail underneath the seat. Can you leave it there, please? If you're willing to fix the bike.

Speaker 2 And I say, if you're willing because...

Speaker 2 It's impossible to get your bicycle fixed in Limerick City.

Speaker 2 I can...

Speaker 2 I can get you crack cocaine.

Speaker 2 In the next 10 minutes, I can go out into the street and I'll get you two different types of crack cocaine.

Speaker 2 But I can't get my bicycle fixed in Limerick City. I could.

Speaker 2 There's a swinger sauna on the Bally Simon Road and I could go out there and have a threesome with a taxi driver and his wife.

Speaker 2 And I could do that quicker and easier than I could get my bicycle repaired in Limerick City. I could

Speaker 2 stand in the park in front of Arthur's Key Shopping Centre with a lit cigarette in my mouth

Speaker 2 and there's a craw there and that crawl will fly down and steal that lit cigarette out of my mouth quicker and easier than I can get my bicycle repaired in Limerick City. Because what's happened is

Speaker 2 independent bicycle repair shops can't stay open in Limerick City because the rents are so high. We lost our last great one six months ago.
Evolution cycles.

Speaker 2 There's one independent bicycle repair shop left, but that bike shop is so busy that you could be waiting.

Speaker 2 I've been waiting six weeks before to get a basic repair on my bicycle in that shop, so it's not an option.

Speaker 2 So what you're left with are two giant multinational bike corporations on the hostile hellish outskirts of the city who will most likely refuse to repair your bike and who can refuse to repair your bike if it's if it's not their brand and they're doing this to train force you to buy their bike brand and also I started thinking I started to see that the patterns emerging the correlation between snails and bicycles

Speaker 2 Snails snails are fucking fascinating snails are indicator species.

Speaker 2 Snails will tell us a lot about the wider ecosystem. They are detrovores.
They feed on detritus. They feed on rotting organic matter.
Leaves, twigs, bones.

Speaker 2 They help in the process of remineralization. Taking organic matter and converting it back into the chemicals that it's composed of so they can return to the soil as nutrients.

Speaker 2 Snails are essential for the remineralization cycle. Snails are like nature's litmus test.

Speaker 2 They immediately reflect the soil chemistry, or pollution, or habitat stability, or even the health of the general health of biodiversity.

Speaker 2 Snails can tell you what your cup of tea is going to taste like.

Speaker 2 Because snails have shells, and their shells hold a huge amount of calcium and snails absorb calcium through the food they eat and also through their feet.

Speaker 2 Snails have feet that just don't look like feet. If an area, if an environment has lots and lots of snails, then that means that there's abundant calcium in that soil.

Speaker 2 But if there's abundant calcium that means that the pH of the water is going to be hard water.

Speaker 2 That means if you've got a lot of snails in your area, you're going to have the type of kettle that gets lime scale really quickly.

Speaker 2 Because snails thrive on calcium, the availability of calcium in the soil. If soils become toxic or contaminated with heavy metals or pollutants, you'll be able to see this

Speaker 2 in a snail's shell because because of bioaccumulation, they'll take cadmium, lead, zinc, nickel, they'll take all these things into their into their fucking shells and it'll also show you a record,

Speaker 2 a record of the pollution of that soil over the year. So, snails can indicate everything about the health of soil and the health of an ecosystem.

Speaker 2 And if snails start disappearing, here's the mad thing: if snails start disappearing, you can then predict that the birds in the area will start to die. And it's like, why will the birds start to die?

Speaker 2 Because birds' shells, birds lay eggs, their shells are made from calcium, And most of the calcium that birds get, it's from eating fucking snails.

Speaker 2 So if the snails aren't healthy or snail populations are disappearing, you're gonna have birds who don't have enough calcium to lay eggs and then the bird population collapses.

Speaker 2 So snails are fascinating because they're they're indicator species. Their health indicates wider

Speaker 2 ecological collapse. Bicycles are indicator fucking species.
So I can't get my bicycle repaired in Limerick City. That shows a collapse of

Speaker 2 economic diversity. Okay?

Speaker 2 It's not about the bicycle. It's the fact that I can't get it fixed tells us about the financialization of property.
The rents are too high.

Speaker 2 Even though when there was a bike shop open in Limerick City, It was out the fucking door. Non-stop busy.

Speaker 2 The rain is really heavy on my tin roof here, lads, and we're just gonna have to put up with it. There's a storm out there.
We're just gonna have to put up with this noise.

Speaker 2 I'm being silenced by big rain.

Speaker 2 Fuck it, that's heavy, isn't it?

Speaker 2 I have to cycle. I have to cycle home in that in the dark and slam my testicles off my handlebar.
Fuck it, that's what being alive is about, isn't it?

Speaker 2 I want that. I want to suffer like that.
I want to find meaning in that suffering. Jesus Christ.

Speaker 2 The bicycle is an indicator species in Limerick City. I can't get it repaired.
Even with demand for bicycle repairs sky high.

Speaker 2 Even with that demand, it's not financially viable for a person to rent a property and open a business. That there is collapse.
That's economic and civic collapse.

Speaker 2 They're trying to build greenways, they're trying to build bicycle tracks.

Speaker 2 What fucking good is it when the average person in limerick can't get to and from work on their fucking bike that's collapse that's what that is

Speaker 2 the two large multinational corporations and the only reason i'm not calling them out by name is to protect the workers it's the only reason i'm not calling these fuckers out by name it's to protect the workers the kind people who work in there repairing bikes who have to turn you away because you didn't buy the bike in their shop.

Speaker 2 Bicycles are an indicator species and they're telling us what the fuck was that noise.

Speaker 2 I have a water bottle here, a water. There must be something happening with the pressure outside because of the storm.
Because of a water bottle that just did a violent click. That's very fascinating.

Speaker 2 The bicycle can tell us

Speaker 2 about the collapse that neoliberalism is causing. The rents are too high because

Speaker 2 the economy has shifted from production and repair towards extraction through rent.

Speaker 2 Neoliberalism shifts everything towards rent.

Speaker 2 Okay?

Speaker 2 Not just buildings, but the products that you fucking own. When was the last time you got a toaster fixed? You don't get toasters fixed anymore.
You buy a new toaster. I've got a washing machine.

Speaker 2 I have a washing machine. And if I want this washing machine repaired, it has to be repaired.

Speaker 2 only by the company that made the washing machine and in order to repair it I have to take out a subscription fucking repair service with the washing machine company so that they'll send someone out and if I don't I can get fucked.

Speaker 2 If you wanted to repair your washing machine or your toaster does the shop even exist in your city or there's a person in there who can just simply repair your appliance? No, it's gone.

Speaker 2 The last time a fella came out to repair my fucking washing machine He said to me one of the most common reasons he gets called out is because snails and slugs climb into the the washing machines looking for warmth, and their trails go across the circuitry on the inside, and that shorts the brains of the washing machine.

Speaker 2 Isn't that fascinating? In Limerick, independent bicycle repair shops, small-scale local labor, repairs of anything can't exist under high commercial rents because of the financialization of property.

Speaker 2 The goal of neoliberalism is that a small amount of companies

Speaker 2 own

Speaker 2 non-producible resources, land, location,

Speaker 2 and that they then rent these things out, forever rent. I don't own my fucking washing machine.

Speaker 2 I think I own it, but I don't because I have to be part of a subscription service if I want it repaired, and there's no other way to get it repaired.

Speaker 2 The financial ecosystem is effectively coercing me. It's putting my back against the wall.
Here's the situation I want. I have a bicycle.
I love this bicycle.

Speaker 2 There's a little snail that lives under the saddle. I'm happy with this bike.

Speaker 2 I use this bike every single day to get to and from work. It's essential to my life.
Because I use it so much, it breaks down frequently.

Speaker 2 Because I need it for my job, I don't have time to learn how to repair it myself. And I'm shit at repairing things.
And I'd prefer to pay someone else to repair it properly and safely.

Speaker 2 I can't really do that. What I can do is go to one of these large corporation bike shops.
They're going to refuse to repair my bike because it's not their brand.

Speaker 2 They're going to say we don't have the parts. We only have parts for our own bike.

Speaker 2 I'm going to be coerced into buying one of their bikes and then once I purchase one of their bikes, now I have access to repairs in their shop.

Speaker 2 But to simply go in and get it repaired every so often is quite expensive. So now they're going to say to me, you need to get our gold package or our silver package.

Speaker 2 This is a monthly fee that you pay. and once you rent this service from us, then it's cheaper for you to turn up and get your bike fixed whenever you want.
Now I'm renting a bike.

Speaker 2 That's the neoliberal model. That's not just bicycles that's fucking everything.
You see you might be thinking,

Speaker 2 what do I give a fuck about bicycles? I've got a car. This doesn't impact me.

Speaker 2 That's not the point. The bicycle is the indicator species, like snails.
Oh, the population of snails is declining.

Speaker 2 Oh, there's not enough snails anymore because there's not enough available calcium in the soil. Something's going wrong here.
I don't care about snails. Who gives a fuck about snails?

Speaker 2 But now you see, because there's no snails, now the birds can't eat their shells and now you don't have birds.

Speaker 2 The bicycle model that I just described there, where I'm being effectively coerced into buying a corporate bike so that I can sign up to rent their repair plan, okay?

Speaker 2 Which I'm being backed against that wall.

Speaker 2 That's what's happening with housing. You see, now it's a problem.
People are being coerced into renting forever. What would people like to do? I'd like to buy and own a house, please.

Speaker 2 Think of two average millennials.

Speaker 2 Oh, I'm a millennial. I did everything I was supposed to do.
I went to college. I have a job.
I have a partner. They've done the exact same thing.
Both of us together. have jobs.

Speaker 2 I think we could get a mortgage to buy a house. Let's go try and buy a house.
Oh, there's new houses being built. Uh-oh, can't buy it.
Why is that?

Speaker 2 All of the houses got purchased by an investment fund. What's an investment fund? It's a giant faceless pile of cash.
And they can buy houses for as much money as they want.

Speaker 2 Why would they want to do that? Well, they're buying them just to rent them. It's called a corporate landlord.
That's happening all over Ireland right now.

Speaker 2 So the bicycle. What's happening with the bicycle and the bicycle repairs? That's an indicator species of that.
And it was on my bicycle that I started to make those connections.

Speaker 2 I mentioned last week about hot takes.

Speaker 2 Like, I thought I was going to do a snail podcast a month ago, and I didn't do the snail podcast because it wasn't right.

Speaker 2 Sometimes I just have to let a topic sit in my unconscious mind, and then the hot take will reveal itself. And that's what happened to me this week on my fucking bicycle while I was cycling

Speaker 2 near the Bally Simon Road, near the Swinger Sauna. That's why I was cycling past the Swinger Sauna.

Speaker 2 Smashing my bollocks off the handlebar thinking I could go in there and have a threesome with a taxi driver and his wife easier than I can get this fucking bicycle repaired.

Speaker 2 So I'm cycling all around.

Speaker 2 The most hostile outskirts of Limerick City. And when I say hostile, I mean this is not designed for pedestrians or people on bicycles.

Speaker 2 Cycling on a broken bicycle through hard shoulders with trucks flying past me, no footpaths and that's what you need to do to get out to these corporate bike pricks.

Speaker 2 And while I was on the bicycle that's when I got the idea I was like fuck it this week's podcast needs to be about snails because ideas hit me when I'm on the bicycle.

Speaker 2 But often what I do is I'll scream out because I'm on the bike. I'll scream, hey Siri, this week's podcast needs to be about snails.
Siri better shut the fuck up now and not wake up.

Speaker 2 I say, hey Siri, this week's podcast needs to be about snails.

Speaker 2 But I'll be cycling and on a busy road and the wind is against me so I have to scream it. Hey Siri, this week's podcast is about snails.
Remind me of it in an hour.

Speaker 2 And I did that and as I did it I fucking pressed down too hard and then slammed my bollocks on the crossbar and startled a van driver and this area of Limerick.

Speaker 2 It was a very cyberpunk experience. I mean, it is

Speaker 2 to be in a suburban retail park, business park area is. We think of cyberpunk as flying cars, blade runner.
It's not. It's being on a bicycle, risking your life

Speaker 2 in a very weird corporate industrial park that's only built for cars. And I got so pissed off, I said to to myself, fuck it, I'm going into TK Max.

Speaker 2 I want to feel good. This is not a TK Max advert.
I don't know anything about TK Max. If they're ethical, unethical.
I'll just throw in a little fuck TK Max.

Speaker 2 Fuck TKMAX in case you think this is an advert. I'm just saying,

Speaker 2 it's a great place if you want to feel good. Isn't it?

Speaker 2 So I went into TK Max

Speaker 2 and again it drew me back to snails so heavily.

Speaker 2 So I go into TK Max to buy fancy shower gels. That's what I love about TK Max.

Speaker 2 Real fucking good quality shower gels because

Speaker 2 fancy shower gels are just too pricey. Like you ever went to Brown Thomas and he just, I'm not paying 40 quid for a fucking shower gel.
Are you mad? But I'll pay a tenner for it in TK Max.

Speaker 2 So I go into TKMAX to buy proper luxury shower gels for a tenor. Luxury shower gels that clearly have scuff marks on the side because they fell off a pallet in a warehouse.
I fucking love that.

Speaker 2 That makes me feel great. I feel great when I buy luxury shower gel for a tenner.

Speaker 2 So I found one. It was Korean.
And it was made from snail slime.

Speaker 2 And I smelt it in the shop. It smelled incredible.
It smelled like peach and lychee. And it was like a liter, a liter of luxury Korean shower gel made out of a snail's slime, snail mucin shower gel.

Speaker 2 And I couldn't believe the synchronicity of it.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, I'm buying this fucking Korean snail shower gel.

Speaker 2 But then I started to think more.

Speaker 2 Why do I need luxury shower gels?

Speaker 2 And it's not just I like them.

Speaker 2 I've got a lot of snails in my garden.

Speaker 2 There's a lot of snails in Limerick. fucking loads of them.

Speaker 2 Why do you think there's so many snails in Limerick? Because of all the limestone.

Speaker 2 Limerick is a porous limestone. Lime and calcium is very bioavailable in the soil and groundwater of Limerick.
Fucking snails love it. But the abundance, see I can read the snails like a book.

Speaker 2 I can look out into my garden and see all the snails and go, that's not a lot of snails, that's a novel.

Speaker 2 That's a novel in the same way that i can look at a lot of starlings and that's also a novel why are those snails a novel what story is it telling me that

Speaker 2 that pack of snails there in my garden is telling me a story about what my cup of tea is going to taste like and it's telling me a story about what my shower is going to be like my tea is going to be delicious

Speaker 2 because because i was raised on it drinking tea from an area of hard water that has a lot of calcium in it. I just love that taste.

Speaker 2 When I was on my fucking English tour and I was going to parts of the country in England and the tea was tasting weird, I knew I immediately went and checked the soil acidity and the areas that had an acidic soil, I hated the taste of the tea because I'm used to alkaline calcium flavouring my tea.

Speaker 2 I'm used to looking into the kettle which I can't get fucking repaired. I'm used to looking at that kettle.
and seeing limescale on the inside of it. That's cause limerick is limestone.

Speaker 2 It's an area of hard water and calcium, right? And the abundance of snails tells me that.

Speaker 2 Those snails also tell me you're going to have a shit shower. You're going to have difficulty washing yourself in the shower.
Why? So limerick, like I said, it's limestone.

Speaker 2 calcium leaches into the soil that then leaches into the water that we use so when you try to use soap in limerick or any area that has hard water

Speaker 2 you're more likely to get like soap kind of a greasy soap scum than you are to get bubbles and lather

Speaker 2 so it means if you're taking a shower in Limerick

Speaker 2 you need more soap to get clean you need more washing powder to wash your clothes and for me I can't use cheap shower gel I end up needing to go to TK Max to buy the fancy stuff because it's just better quality shower gel and now I get a good shower.

Speaker 2 But I found it so ironic that I'm there in TK Max and I'm buying Korean, Korean shower gel made out of a snail's slime and that's gonna get me nice and clean in Limerick City.

Speaker 2 But it's also the abundance of snails in my garden can tell me that about my water and I think that's beautiful. And I wanted to go out to my bicycle.
I purchased the shower gel and it's magnificent.

Speaker 2 It's fucking wonderful. I can't tell you the name of it because it's in Korean but it's Korean snail mucin shower gel in a liter bottle.
And I know the way TKMAX operates.

Speaker 2 It's probably in yours as well. I was procrastinating going to the big bike corporations to try and get the bike fixed out in the retail parks.

Speaker 2 But after I bought it, I wanted to go out to the fucking...

Speaker 2 to the bicycle and whisper to Sligo the Snail under the seat and say to him or her, oh no, snails are hermaphrodites actually, that's an interesting thing about snails. Snails are two genders at once.

Speaker 2 So Sligo the snail is a them.

Speaker 2 But I still I still hadn't gotten to the bottom. I set off on the bike anyway towards the first

Speaker 2 corporate bicycle repair shop.

Speaker 2 I'd love to mention their names, but I I'm not protecting the brands lads, I'm protecting the employees that work there.

Speaker 2 The lovely people who work there. who hate working there, I can't say that.
They do.

Speaker 2 These are bicycle repair people who'd love to be in, who used to be in fucking independent bike shops and are not anymore. These are people who want to repair your bicycle, but they can't.
They can't.

Speaker 2 Instead, they have to say, I can't repair your bike because it's not one of ours. But you can buy that one over there and I can repair that.
Anyway, why was this snail under my

Speaker 2 under my bicycle seat?

Speaker 2 And why was it dusty looking? And why did the snail look like it had been there for ages?

Speaker 2 Well, snails are doing a very interesting thing at the moment. They're waking up.

Speaker 2 So Sligo the snail, who's underneath my seat,

Speaker 2 they are actually...

Speaker 2 they're in what's called an an ep an epiphrahm right

Speaker 2 it's like a unique calcium cocoon that a snail puts around itself

Speaker 2 The snails do this twice a year, in the summertime when it's really hot and in the wintertime, so about come November they go into another epigram.

Speaker 2 It's a cocoon type of hibernation that snails do when it's just a bit hostile out for them but they need fuckloads of calcium in order to create this hard exterior and that's what's happening underneath my saddle and Sligo the snail is probably gonna wake up and come out of this epigram

Speaker 2 this week and I tell you why it's beautifully timed

Speaker 2 with the amount of leaves that are out there.

Speaker 2 So the snails awaken from their cocoons

Speaker 2 and then they gorge themselves. They gorge themselves right now on all of the leaves that are falling off the trees.
And they gorge themselves so that they can store all that energy for their

Speaker 2 I don't know, I don't think we caught it hibernation, but

Speaker 2 it's going to get freezing in November, like I said. And the snails are gonna form another cocoon.

Speaker 2 And they're just gonna

Speaker 2 find somewhere warm and do fuck all for winter and stick themselves underneath my bike seat. That's what they're gonna do.

Speaker 2 But right now they're waking up so that they can gorge on all of those leaves. Because that's the role of these snails.

Speaker 2 They're detrovores. The leaves are detritus, okay?

Speaker 2 And those leaves, like again, this is is the wonder and beauty of nature

Speaker 2 like those leaves took all of their nutrients from the soil nitrogen phosphorus potassium fucked loads of carbon from the air and that's stored in those leaves

Speaker 2 but that needs to return to the soil so the snail does the job of breaking that detritus down into small enough pieces so that the bacteria and fungus can once again return those leaves into the constituent chemicals that it makes it the nitrogen that the phosphorus potassium so that it can go back into the soil so that's what those snails are doing right now but

Speaker 2 they also need a fuck ton of calcium so that they can make their new ephogram their new cocoon and what I love about that is that's it's transubstantiation.

Speaker 2 Now in the same way that this is not an advertisement for fucking TK Max, it's also not an advertisement for Christ or Christianity. You know, I don't give a fuck about these things, but

Speaker 2 I re

Speaker 2 I mean look at the end of the day, when it comes to not just Christianity but any religion, you're talking about shit that managed to survive, you're talking about writing and ideas that have survived thousands of years.

Speaker 2 So, there's many different ways to interpret it.

Speaker 2 And obviously, I don't believe that bread turns into fucking Christ. But there's a way to look at that as a metaphor

Speaker 2 for just the wonder. And it has nothing to do with a creator, nothing to do with a God.
Give a fuck about that. I'm talking about nature, the ecosystem, what we can touch, the here and now.

Speaker 2 That a leaf will transform

Speaker 2 into nitrogen. potassium phosphorus and return to the soil

Speaker 2 to grow another tree and to become a leaf next year. That's the transubstantiation I'm into.
That's one substance transforming into another.

Speaker 2 That's the miracle, the miracle of nature. So, what you're gonna start seeing now, especially if you go out at nighttime right now,

Speaker 2 you're gonna see loads of snails on walls.

Speaker 2 If you're having a little nighttime walk now, listening to this,

Speaker 2 and the fucking clocks went back last week, it's cold and it's dark, and you're struggling to find beauty and to find peace in the here and now.

Speaker 2 There's your beauty, it's the snails on the walls. What are the snails doing on the walls? They're sucking minerals out of it through their feet.

Speaker 2 Snails climb walls because they're literally taking calcium and minerals out of that stone so that they can bring it into their shells. and also to form that epigram, that big thick calcified cocoon.

Speaker 2 So, these were all of the things I was thinking about this week, trying to get the testicle bike fixed.

Speaker 2 So, how did it go?

Speaker 2 I was refused, refused in both places. We didn't make that bike, we can't fix that bike, that's not our bike, we don't have those parts.

Speaker 2 We've got a bike that's very like your bike, would you like that bike?

Speaker 2 And the thing is, and you'll know if you're a 10-foot Brenda, I've already done it at the same fucking bike problem a year ago. I bought one of their fucking bikes.

Speaker 2 And I don't use it because it's a bag of shit. It's terrible.
So what I did manage to find is

Speaker 2 I was complaining about it on Instagram.

Speaker 2 So now

Speaker 2 one of the people who used to own an independent bike shop in the city and had to close is now gone black market. And they're just going to fix my bike black market.
That's what's happened.

Speaker 2 It's going to be black market bike fixing. So I'm getting my bike repaired next week illegally paying cash because the system has forced it underground and just to take it back to the snails.

Speaker 2 These giant corporate landlords,

Speaker 2 the huge investment funds that buy up swathes of property, expensive property, just to rent or sometimes sometimes not even to rent, just to hoard cash in there.

Speaker 2 In cities like London in particular, a giant investment fund will own huge office buildings that no one ever moves into

Speaker 2 just to own that property. We see this in Limerick.
Giant developments, new office blocks, no one moving in. Who's buying? Why build all these buildings that no one will ever live in?

Speaker 2 Why own all these office blocks that no one rents out? What's going on? And again, that's part of neoliberalism. It's shifting things towards.

Speaker 2 If you're in the middle of London or even Dublin, Dublin around Grand Canal Dock or parts of Limerick and you see a giant office block with nothing in there,

Speaker 2 that's just a giant pile of money. It's not a building.
It's a giant pile of money. Also what happens especially in bigger cities right?

Speaker 2 Huge investment funds are giant piles of cash. They have so much money that they will keep a property like a giant office block empty

Speaker 2 because they profit from scarcity. They'll keep property empty to artificially restrict the supply and this then pushes rents up around it because they own those buildings too.

Speaker 2 And then you and I walk around cities that feel empty and you're just left with this feeling of confusion of what the fuck is going on here. This doesn't make sense.

Speaker 2 Why are they building giant brand new state-of-the-art offices? But no no one's going in there. What is this? It's strange.

Speaker 2 And now in London,

Speaker 2 over the past six months, when people have started going into these empty office buildings,

Speaker 2 completely empty. No people.

Speaker 2 But loads of boxes.

Speaker 2 And when they walk up to the boxes,

Speaker 2 there's snails inside there.

Speaker 2 Snails having orgies and cannibalizing each other.

Speaker 2 The fuck is there boxes of snails doing in giant, giant, empty office buildings? What the fuck is going on? So the ultra-wealthy and billionaires and investment funds.

Speaker 2 Now they own all this property that they're deliberately keeping empty. These giant piles of cash.
But in London in particular, there's a tax.

Speaker 2 You pay a tax on your property if there's no one living in it. So you're penalized for vacancy.

Speaker 2 So what the investment funds and the billionaires they're after turning

Speaker 2 to people who are involved with the mafia, the Naples mafia, who are called the Nandretta. They're different to the Sicilian mafia.

Speaker 2 So basically they're turning their office blocks into snail farms

Speaker 2 because then it's legally considered an agricultural venture, like a farm. And then they don't have to pay that tax.
They don't have to pay the local taxes. So it's a way to avoid the taxes.

Speaker 2 The guy did a documentary for the BBC in 2019

Speaker 2 about

Speaker 2 this, about the early days of this.

Speaker 2 I went around the wealthiest parts of London and we looked at kleptocracy. We looked at how

Speaker 2 these giant towers of cash, these giant empty office buildings were being used to effectively launder dirty money. And now what's happening, and they used to do it through shell companies.

Speaker 2 That's this is why it's all connected. Shell companies.
Shell companies. So now what's literally happening is and this is

Speaker 2 I Don't know is it legal or illegal

Speaker 2 It's so novel it hasn't really been challenged. It's in a grey area if you set up any business and the purpose of that business is to avoid tax, then that's illegal, right?

Speaker 2 But it's being done out in the open. So how it works is

Speaker 2 if you're a giant investment fund in London and you own a huge office block that you're deliberately keeping empty, okay, and you don't want to pay property tax on that or you don't want to pay tax for it not having any occupants, you can then

Speaker 2 approach this fella who sets up a shell company and this is a snail farming company and and then all of it he then gets people to move into your office and they just put boxes of snails there and then they can tick and say this is actually a farm but the snails are having orgies and cannibalizing each other which means they're not healthy snails i asked collie ennis who's a snail expert if snails are cannibalizing each other is that natural behavior and he's like no if snails are cannibalizing each other they're starving so the ultra wealthy investment funds

Speaker 2 the ones that my bicycle are acting as an indicator species for,

Speaker 2 they're getting into snail farming to avoid paying tiny amounts of property taxes. This is the world we're living in.
This is what we're dealing with.

Speaker 2 And if you want to learn about that, that final fact there about the snails, the snail farms and the office blocks, that's just mad.

Speaker 2 And I want to give a shout out actually to the journalist who did the work around that, a fellow by the name of Jim Watterson. That's brilliant.
Original research there.

Speaker 2 And just

Speaker 2 type in Jim Watterson snail tax dodge or something at the Google and check out his article. Wonderful stuff.

Speaker 2 So I wanted to give you a full interrupted hot take this week because last week I kind of half took a week off.

Speaker 2 So I wanted to do that in its full entirety without breaking it up with an ocarina pause as a little treat. And now I think we'll have an ocarina pause.
I do have an ocarina.

Speaker 2 I can't play this one.

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Speaker 2 It sounds like it's being tortured. It sounds like an ocarina that's really in fucking pain.

Speaker 2 I'll need to figure that one out.

Speaker 2 Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast.

Speaker 2 This podcast is my full-time job. It's how I earn a living.
It's how I have the time and space

Speaker 2 to think about snails and bicycles and to find connections between those two things and then provide you with a

Speaker 2 written monologue podcast that requires time and space to fail

Speaker 2 and it's only possible because of patrons of this podcast because this is my full-time job. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month.
That's it.

Speaker 2 And if you can't afford that, don't worry about it. You can listen for free.
I want everybody to get the exact same podcast, whether you pay or not.

Speaker 2 The person who is paying is paying for you to listen to the podcast for free. And it's a model based on kindness and soundness.
Everybody gets a podcast, the exact same podcast.

Speaker 2 I get to earn a living. It's a wonderful model.
And it also means I'm not beholden to advertisers.

Speaker 2 This week, Louis Thoreau, who I'm up against for the Grierson Awards. Oh, that's another fucking story.
I'm gonna have to go to London for an award ceremony, lads.

Speaker 2 I don't go to award ceremonies, but this one,

Speaker 2 this is a pretty big one, and I think I kind of have to, and it's a big category, it's best presenter. So I think I have to go to that one, so I'm gonna have to fucking figure out how to do that.

Speaker 2 I wanna wear my plastic bag. for any bit where there's cameras and then disappear and be nobody.

Speaker 2 I don't want to wear my plastic bag all night at a fucking award ceremony, sitting at a bar or drinking soup through a straw. That's the thing.
So I need to figure this out.

Speaker 2 But anyway, look,

Speaker 2 Louis Thoreau this week on his podcast,

Speaker 2 he platformed Bob Villain.

Speaker 2 Bob Villain spoke about genocide, spoke about Palestine. Nothing he said was remotely controversial.

Speaker 2 Everything that Bob Villain said aligns with the findings of the International Criminal Court, the UN, but because Louis Theroux platformed Bob Villain, British Airways,

Speaker 2 dropped their sponsorship.

Speaker 2 And that's that's a way to coerce Louis Theroux and basically say, you better talk about what we want to fucking talk about and don't deviate from that.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 I'm not beholden to advertisers. Advertisers can go fuck themselves.
If anyone advertises on this podcast, they do it under my rules. Simple as that.
And no advertiser

Speaker 2 can

Speaker 2 tell me what to speak about or how to speak about or dictate the content in any way.

Speaker 2 Advertisers don't want podcasts about snails, bicycles and neoliberalism. I'm sorry to hear that, but this is a listener-funded space where listeners fund

Speaker 2 curiosity, playfulness and failure. Before I announce my gigs, I want to give a little shout out to a festival because my buddy Nisha is running this festival and he's been

Speaker 2 really sound to me over the years. He

Speaker 2 runs the minefield gigs at Electric Picnic and has been really sound to me over the years. So, he's running a thing called the Kenmayer Design Festival, right? The website is designkenmayer.com.

Speaker 2 If you're into design, graphic design, ceramics, the world of design, the 14th to 16th of November, go to the Ken Meyer or Ken Meir Design Festival.

Speaker 2 And there's a lot of speakers there who are speaking about design. Some people are really into that shit.
I studied graphic design in college. I fucking hated it.
Really hated it.

Speaker 2 But some people love design. Some people get very excited about typefaces.
Fair play to you. I never understood it myself.
but I believe you if that's what you're into. Okay, my geeks.

Speaker 2 This Halloween night, a couple of days away. This is my last gig of the year.

Speaker 2 I'm at the Poker Festival in Mead. Trim in Mead.
I know it's a little bit out of the way, but there are a couple of tickets left, right?

Speaker 2 Trim's a bit of a trek. But

Speaker 2 I'm gonna be chatting with the neuroscientist, Dr. Michael Keane, who is fucking fascinating.
and he specializes in the neuroscience of Irish trauma. And he also recently scanned my brain.

Speaker 2 He did an EEG scan on my brain and

Speaker 2 it was an incredibly helpful experience. It's an incredibly helpful experience and

Speaker 2 it's the reason why I had a decent hot take this week and I'll explain that in a few minutes.

Speaker 2 But if you're around for the Poker Festival in Meath, Halloween night, a couple of days away, come along, it'll be a good crack. Couple of tickets left.

Speaker 2 So then 2026, these are your the tickets you can get people as Christmas gifts if that's what you'd like to do.

Speaker 2 Getting someone a Christmas gift of a live podcast would be a wonderful, a wonderful gift for somebody. So anyway, look, when's my first one? 23rd of January 26, right? 2026.
Waterford. Theatre royal.

Speaker 2 Yum yum. Give me some Waterford.

Speaker 2 Waterford's odd.

Speaker 2 Waterford is like, it's like finding out Dublin. It's like finding out Dublin has a weird step brother that it didn't know about.

Speaker 2 Type of fellow who steals lead from the roof of churches to melt them down into tiny little soldiers that he takes very seriously.

Speaker 2 But you have a gig in Waterford there in January, then Vicker Street in February. That one is nearly sold out actually.

Speaker 2 There's only a small amount of tickets left for Vicker Street that's selling quickly. Vicar Street gigs are magnificent up in Dublin, what can I say?

Speaker 2 Alright, so that's gonna be early January there, or early February, sorry, for Vicar Street. Then Then Killarney in the Ineck.

Speaker 2 Carlo there on Saturday. That's fucking March, is it? Bollocks, I have a load of gigs in fucking February.
I'm a silly bastard, I am.

Speaker 2 Book too many gigs there for February. That's gonna be that's gonna be a tough month.

Speaker 2 Dublin, Belfast, Galway. Dublin, Belfast, Galway there in February.
Then

Speaker 2 Killarney in March.

Speaker 2 Cork there in March as well.

Speaker 2 Limerick University Concert Hall. Can't forget that.
On

Speaker 2 that the 9th of April. Or is that the 26th? I don't know.
Limerick University Concert Hall there in April. It's fucking ages away.

Speaker 2 Giant tour there

Speaker 2 of England, Scotland, and Wales in October 2026.

Speaker 2 Brighton, Cardiff, Coventry, Bristol, Guildford, London, Glasgow, Gateshead, Nottingham.

Speaker 2 You'll find those on fane.co.uk forward slash the blindby podcast or forward slash blind by.

Speaker 2 And I've my own website now as well. I shouldn't have even said that.
I've had such bad luck with websites.

Speaker 2 I've an attempt at a fucking website and there's a few dates on it, but I wouldn't trust the links. That's called the blindbypodcast.ie.
Have you anything else left?

Speaker 2 Next week's gonna be my Science Week podcast. Every year I do a podcast with Science Week where I get the wonderful opportunity to speak to a scientist in an attempt to democratize what they're doing.

Speaker 2 So I have a real treat in store for you next week. And if you want to find out about Science Week 25, you go to scienceweek.ie

Speaker 2 and you'll find loads...

Speaker 2 Science Week is starting from the 9th of November to the 16th of November. You'll find loads of brilliant free events all over the country that are about democratising science and it's brilliant.

Speaker 2 Science Week is absolutely fucking fantastic. So engage with it.
I wanted to close on

Speaker 2 thank you to everybody for being so nice about last week. I more or less took a week off last week.
The podcast that I did wasn't really a podcast. It was more of a

Speaker 2 phone call.

Speaker 2 But I really did need the week off.

Speaker 2 Because like I said I got an EEG scan of my brain

Speaker 2 And an EEG scan,

Speaker 2 it's a bit like a weather report, you know? It's like a weather report. It'll show you, it'll show you loads of wind and loads of rain.
But that's all it'll tell you.

Speaker 2 It won't tell you what type of rain or the strength of the wind or the ecosystem. It's just a little indicator.
And my scan showed someone who was very, very stressed. and hyper vigilant

Speaker 2 and it was actually wonderful it actually it was actually fantastic to see that.

Speaker 2 To see, oh, okay,

Speaker 2 this, I have a picture of how I actually feel.

Speaker 2 Because sometimes I don't experience stress as stress. I might experience it as excitement.

Speaker 2 But what I rarely experience is switching off, relaxing. That's what I don't do.
I'm thinking, thinking, thinking all the time, making connections, making hot takes,

Speaker 2 and I'm consistently in overdrive.

Speaker 2 But the beauty of...

Speaker 2 You know, I can take it back to the bicycle. I do keep slamming my testicles on that bicycle.

Speaker 2 But I didn't today.

Speaker 2 What I did is I had to change how I use the bicycle. So I'm very mindful about how I cycle that bicycle now.
I don't press down on the pedal. And I had to learn gradually not to do it.

Speaker 2 And now I'm forming a habit. I'm forming a habit of not slamming down on that pedal and then not injuring my testicles.
The brain is the same. Neuroplasticity.

Speaker 2 The neurons that fire together wire together. And that scan that I saw of my stressed out brain is a snapshot of how my brain was when the scan was taken.

Speaker 2 And I know,

Speaker 2 it's not even about knowing.

Speaker 2 There's overwhelming evidence, overwhelming, that the way to quieten a brain is regular meditation.

Speaker 2 And that's what I've been doing for the past five days.

Speaker 2 You see, my relationship with meditation has been on and off. I do it maybe once a week if I felt stressed.

Speaker 2 No,

Speaker 2 if I'm serious about self-compassion,

Speaker 2 then I need to be meditating. I need to make the space to meditate every single day.

Speaker 2 Just like if I've got a...

Speaker 2 My sciatic nerve. I had really bad sciatica there about two months ago.
Now I don't. Because I went to a physiotherapist's and I made the time to do my stretches and exercises every single day.

Speaker 2 and I recovered and the brain is no different.

Speaker 2 So I've been just 15 minutes a day

Speaker 2 I've been doing mindfulness meditations for 15 minutes every single day and I'm already starting to see

Speaker 2 the benefits of it even this early on. Just very simple things like

Speaker 2 being much less emotionally reactive.

Speaker 2 If an email comes in that's a bit stressful or annoying, annoying, any of the stressors of my day,

Speaker 2 I'm less reactive to these things.

Speaker 2 It's less likely for an emotion such as anxiety or anger to pop up and instead I'm just

Speaker 2 responding.

Speaker 2 There's a difference between reacting and responding.

Speaker 2 Reacting is when the emotion is controlling my behavior. Responding is when I'm in control of my behavior.
So every day I've found my 15 minutes to meditate

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 I've really watched myself around the excuses that I make.

Speaker 2 I was starting to feel guilty. I was starting to feel like 15 minutes of sitting there doing nothing

Speaker 2 was indulgent when I should be working.

Speaker 2 And I'd say to myself, you're wasting time. You have to write.
You have to get this done. You can't afford the luxury of 15 minutes to sit and do nothing.

Speaker 2 But seeing that scan on my brain, it was a wake-up call.

Speaker 2 But it was also very welcome. It was very welcome because I know the evidence and data shows regular meditation, a regular meditative practice.
And like it's fucking free. It's free.

Speaker 2 It's the most natural thing in the world. It feels amazing.
After four days of it, I'm really starting to enjoy it again like that's the thing getting back into meditation

Speaker 2 it's gonna be ropey the first few sessions and you're gonna get distracted and you mightn't go deep into that

Speaker 2 really skilled flow state where your breath is so low

Speaker 2 you're wondering how you're even breathing and I'm not there yet But in two weeks time maybe, I'll do a mental health podcast.

Speaker 2 In two weeks' time, I'll speak about meditation in order to help you for other people who want to get into it. And I'll do a little a refresher of psycho because here's the thing.

Speaker 2 I want to get into the meditation to calm my mind and then once my mind and my nervous system is calm then I bring in the psychology. Then I start challenging ways of thinking.

Speaker 2 about myself, about other people and I begin the journey of becoming a calm happy person again because I haven't really been a calm happy person since the fucking pandemic.

Speaker 2 That lockdown

Speaker 2 put me into a state of hypervigilance which I haven't really come out of and I'd say there's a lot of you that are the exact same.

Speaker 2 We don't talk about it anymore but

Speaker 2 Jesus Christ, there was 2020 the height of lockdown. A lot of us were in in quite a sustained state of terror for months on end because it was really fucking scary

Speaker 2 and some people were able to come away from it and other people's were other people weren't i didn't come away from it i stayed quite vigilant and then other people have lost their fucking minds completely and

Speaker 2 they're looking up at the sky for chemtrails all right that's all the time i have this week god bless I'll catch you next week. In the meantime,

Speaker 2 you know, don't go picking up snails.

Speaker 2 Just marvel at fucking snails. They're brilliant.

Speaker 2 And notice, notice snails climbing on walls. Alright, notice the snails climbing on walls and just say to yourself, I know what that snail is doing.
That snail

Speaker 2 is sucking calcium off that wall using its feet in order to strengthen its fucking shell, and some of that wall is gonna end up

Speaker 2 in a sparrow's egg.

Speaker 2 And isn't that amazing? And isn't that wonderful?

Speaker 2 And why the fuck do I need God or Christ or communion wafers or any of that shit when that's just there in front of me?

Speaker 2 All right, God bless you, glorious cunts.

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