The Mythology of Rain Smell on a hot day

An in depth look at petrichor and mid summer rain Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:27Speaker 01

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• 1:11Speaker 01

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• 1:26Blindboy Boatclub?

  Greetings, you jangly Anthony's. Welcome to the Blind by Podcast. If you're wondering what that noise is, there's an absolute deluge outside my window. Very, very, very aggressive rain. The sky is silver. Fat rain droplets. Violent rain. Can you hear that? The type of rain that if you looked up into the sky, you might acquire an eye injury. Frightening rain. There's not much I can do about it.

• 2:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  I've got a tin roof here in my office. If you've been listening to the podcast recently, you know I've been having a fucking nightmare with sounds. It's now it's quietening, it's quietening down now. That was phenomenal. That was phenomenal rain, that was.

• 2:27Blindboy Boatclub?

  That's that retribution rain.

• 2:32Blindboy Boatclub?

  There are seagulls outside my window pissed off. Ever seen a seagull pissed off by rain? I have, I'm looking at one now.

• 2:41Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm a bit annoyed actually, I'm gonna open the window to see if I can get that, the smell, the smell of petricar. Hold on.

• 2:56Blindboy Boatclub?

  We're barebacking this week, lads.

• 3:00Blindboy Boatclub?

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

• 3:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  See, there's been a heatwave in Limerick. Oh, the wind is coming in. Yes, I can smell it.

• 3:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  Yes.

• 3:25Blindboy Boatclub?

  I wanted to begin this week's podcast by, by, uh, fuck it, let's not hide anything. That was a magnificent torrent of rain that I just witnessed and recorded and ye heard. And I opened the window there.

• 3:41Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's been very hot. It's been very hot for the past three days. It's been thirty degrees. We don't usually get thirty degrees here in Ireland. If you're from a hot country, you're thinking thirty degrees, who gives a fuck? We're not accustomed to this here in Ireland. We don't know what to do with ourselves. It's very distressing when we get thirty degree heat. We're not built for it in any way, shape or form. And I just opened my window there so I can get that smell. The smell called petricar.

• 4:17Blindboy Boatclub?

  Which is a floral, a type of floral, oily smell

• 4:25Blindboy Boatclub?

  that the earth releases after a dry spell and, and when you're suddenly hit with rain. It, it's like, it's like the earth is letting out a sigh. There's a sense of relief to this smell. When you, when you, when you smell that oily petracar after a deluge of rain,

• 4:47Blindboy Boatclub?

  you've got empathy with the ground for a little bit. You just kinda know. It's the soil going, "Thank fuck. Thank fuck. Because I was drying out there. Thanks for that." And that's what that smell is. I'm gonna close the window now.

• 5:11Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm gonna turn my gate back on now. So now we've got a little bit more silence. You'll notice the sound is clearer. The sky is suddenly blue outside. I fucking love a bit of rain in the summer, I do. And now my, my office has been vandalised by the odor of petracar. The rain is returning now, you can hear it. We'll welcome the rain in. We'll welcome the rain in this week. I, I rushed to the microphone as soon as it began raining because I want to record in real time.

• 5:55Blindboy Boatclub?

  Me smelling petracar.

• 5:59Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm utterly fascinated by it.

• 6:05Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's like doing a line of nature.

• 6:11Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's pure and utter life. It's pure and utter existence, vitality. It's what I miss.

• 6:21Blindboy Boatclub?

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

• 6:30Blindboy Boatclub?

  And I was left with a thirst, not a thirst for drinking, a thirst for, for breathing.

• 6:39Blindboy Boatclub?

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

• 6:46Blindboy Boatclub?

  There's not a lot of trees. After about three or four days in, in Los Angeles and San Francisco, there's an anxiety, there's an anxiety with every breath that I'm taking. Something is missing. I'm longing for something.

• 7:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  And what I'm looking for is what I just experienced right there. A big fat line of nature. That's what that smell is. Petricor, that fresh, zesty, oily business.

• 7:22Blindboy Boatclub?

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

• 7:27Blindboy Boatclub?

  It, it, it, it feels like I'm, I'm back being a sperm. I'm a sperm and I headbutt the outer layer of the egg just before I, I fuse with it for fertilization. And that smell feels like the moment a sperm literally fuses with an egg. The spark, that little spark, that's what the smell of petricor feels like when I do a big line of it like that by opening the window with that fat rain. I knew by the go of that fucking storm, I knew by the look of that storm that it was gonna give me a big dose of that, a big dose of that smell.

• 8:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm only seven minutes into this podcast, let's. Ye heard that rain. That was, that's the, the, the most powerful rain that I've seen so far of, of 2025. That's real, that's summer business. That's what that is. And.

• 8:33Blindboy Boatclub?

  Right now, as I look out the window.

• 8:37Blindboy Boatclub?

  The sky is blue, the rain is gone. And it's incredibly hot and sunny again. It, it's. The sun is fucking splitting the place.

• 8:50Blindboy Boatclub?

  And the rooftops. The rooftops are, are steaming like victorious horses. Blue wisps of steam shimmering in the sun.

• 9:03Blindboy Boatclub?

  And in another, in another seven minutes. If, if rain doesn't come again, which I don't think it will. Another seven minutes, the whole place will be bone dry. Fucking bone dry, as if that never happened. And then straight after that, you could have hailstones. You could have gigantic hailstones and you're freezing in a t-shirt.

• 9:28Blindboy Boatclub?

  Do you ever share a flat with a fucking lunatic? Do you ever share a flat with a lunatic? And you're there in the kitchen. And then they walk into the kitchen. And they're slamming doors. They're banging away at the dishes. They're really fucking pissed off about something. Fucking this, fuck that. And then they storm out of the room. And you're thinking, Jesus Christ, they're pissed off. I wonder that I do something wrong. And then they come back into the kitchen. Like two minutes later, all smiles, completely happy. Zero explanation or acknowledgement of the behaviour you just witnessed two minutes previously.

• 10:11Blindboy Boatclub?

  All happy, absolutely fine, and you don't even ask them why. You, you just move on with your day. That's what the weather is like in Ireland.

• 10:22Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's t-shirt weather now.

• 10:25Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's, it, it very hot, very sunny and very dry outside my window. I wouldn't have it any other way.

• 10:34Blindboy Boatclub?

  I enjoy the, the drama of that, the fucking humour of it, the ridiculousness of it. I'll take that over.

• 10:46Blindboy Boatclub?

  I mean, nothing against Spain, but like, it's just the same thing all the time. It's just lovely, perfect, sunny and dry all the time. I don't want that. I want my weather to feel like I'm in a house share with a loner tick. I want to be accused of stealing a battery out of the smoke alarm. I want the weather to come home from work, announce that they're a born again Christian, and then never, ever mention it again. I want weather that makes up lies for no reason.

• 11:19Blindboy Boatclub?

  I want a gust of wind that tells me that its cousins with the singer Dermot Kennedy. And petracor is the, the reward, the reward for all that chaos. Petracor, it, it forces you into the present moment.

• 11:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  You can't get a bang of that and not stop and notice it. And then connect, connect with the feeling of just being alive, being present. Like, I know there's Irish people listening to this now when they're in Australia or somewhere. Well, not Australia now, because it's winter over in Australia now, so you have a nice little bit of rain. But I don't know, if I have Irish people, you might be listening from Spain, or you're listening from Italy, where you haven't had rain in a long, long time, and you're aching for that. You're aching for the, the freshness of, of Irish fucking petracor. What I adore about petracor is,

• 12:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  it's one of those smells that makes me ponder the very nature of, of reality itself, and how we perceive reality.

• 12:32Blindboy Boatclub?

  There's an idea in philosophy called omwelt.

• 12:39Blindboy Boatclub?

  And it was coined by this German biologist, fucking Jacob van Eiksckul was his name, right? And he came up with this idea of umwelt. I could be pronouncing that incorrectly because I've only ever seen it written down. I've never heard it. It might not be pronounced umwelt at all, but that in itself is, is like an example of umwelt. So umwelt is the idea that that there is a, a physical reality. There is one physical reality, but different creatures experience reality differently

• 13:22Blindboy Boatclub?

  because of their u- unique sensory experiences of reality. What I mean by that is dogs, dogs experience reality very differently to how you and I experience reality. A dog's experience of reality i- is determined very much by their sense of smell, which is so profoundly different to how you and I experience fucking smell. There's no real way for us to empathize and understand what, what it's like to be a dog, to experience life as a fucking dog. Dogs are trained to, to sniff out cancer, diabetes, epilepsy. What, what is, what is it like to live in reality when you can smell disease?

• 14:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  Dogs, dogs utilize a thing called stereo sniffing. Now, we have that a little bit too. It's the use of the left and right nostril to determine the location of a smell. But dogs' ability to do this is unlike anything we could even imagine. And dogs can smell time. We use dogs to... To track people who are missing, to follow sense, to do things that that we can't do. A dog can reconstruct a person's journey based on different intensities of smells. They can, they can read smells through time.

• 14:51Blindboy Boatclub?

  Dogs use an incredibly complex form of storytelling with their fucking noses. And, and my language, my, my, I can't even communicate this to you with the limitations of speech. But a dog can't read a book, cause I've got language, I'm a human. I live in a sea of fucking language, very different, and, and you, I doubt you could explain to a dog. You can't even fucking talk to the guns. How, how am I going to let a dog know what it's like to read, understand or write a book? There's no way in, you just can't, you can't.

• 15:33Blindboy Boatclub?

  Would I get fully nude in front of the fireplace and start licking my testicles? Or screaming at the postman, saying to the dog, now screaming at the postman, that's a bit like writing, but licking your testicles, that's like editing. No, cause dogs don't understand metaphor, just forget about it. There's no way, but similarly, I'm very limited in understanding the complex stereo sniffing that a dog is able to get up to, the canine practice of arse sniffing. Or dogs insert their noses in another dog's arse. That must be profoundly important.

• 16:14Blindboy Boatclub?

  If their sense of smell is so good and they have to go right in there, that must be very, very important stuff. I've no way of understanding that. Now, dogs do have. They have a unique olfactory system. And they have a thing called a vomeronasal organ, which is specifically, it's for smelling arses and detecting information in pheromones. When a dog sniffs another dog's arse, they're getting the full biography of that dog, where the dog has been, the dog's relationships. It's a biometric scan, it's a biography, it's a lore.

• 16:56Blindboy Boatclub?

  If I was nude and screaming at my postman like a dog, and then I decided to run up to the postman and place my nose in his anus, that would be like me spending eight hours on his Facebook page, going through all his posts, clicking on all his friends and relatives, and forming a vast biography of this postman, which might be a good way to explain Facebook to a dog. What is reality like when smelling someone's arse is like spending eight hours on their Facebook profile? Language and empathy fails me. This is unwelt. This is unwelt.

• 17:41Blindboy Boatclub?

  There's a shared reality, a concrete reality, but different creatures experience it very differently, depending on their senses. The rain is back, the rain is back, let's open the window.

• 18:01Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm waiting for it.

• 18:08Blindboy Boatclub?

  No, not this time, not this time. I only got the petrol car, the first bit of weight.

• 18:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  Not really. I have only the freshness of rain, which is beautiful, but not petrocarr. Not this time. We got that fifteen, twenty minutes ago with the first deluge, but not this one. Not this new bout of rain. I'm just getting freshness of rain. Bees can see in ultraviolet. Bees have UV vision, right? Ultraviolet light. They can use it to detect nectar. See what flowers are fucking, the best ones to go into. A bee experiences reality very, very different to me and you. They see in ultraviolet light. I've no way to, to understand this, to empathise it.

• 19:03Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm, I'm using the, I'm doing the best that I can using language. But again, I can't explain language to a fucking bee. This is unwelt. Um. Snakes, snakes see in infrared. A completely different experience and perception of reality to me and you. Salmon, salmon can use smell.

• 19:28Blindboy Boatclub?

  To sniff out the river that they were born in. Fucking miles away, a salmon can sniff out its birth river. I can't stick my nose into the air.

• 19:39Blindboy Boatclub?

  And, and smell where, where the maternity hospital was that I was born in. I can't sniff out my maternity hospital. But I can use language to tell you that I was born in the Limerick maternity hospital. And I can use those words and you can listen to it. And you and I can have a shared idea of what the Limerick maternity hospital is. It's designed in a, a modernist style. Aphix Twin was born there too. You see, the salmon, the salmon is using its nose to sniff out its birth river. Which is phenomenal, like holy fucking god. You mean, there's a salmon on the other side of the world and it can smell the river it was born in because it needs to return there to spawn. But I've just used words and language to tell you where I was born.

• 20:23Blindboy Boatclub?

  And I can use words and language to get back there if I want to. That's unwelt. All these different creatures existing within an ecosystem. But having completely different sensory experiences, depending on what benefits our survival within that ecosystem. Bees need ultraviolet. They need ultraviolet to identify flowers. We need language and words and systems of communication for things like culture. A really famous example is sharks can sniff out a drop of blood from several miles away.

• 21:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  So if you just put a drop of blood into the sea, a fucking shark will smell it miles away and will come and get you. And that was, that was popularized, I think, because of Jaws. I can't even imagine that. I can't, I don't, I can't imagine what it's like to smell under the sea and to be able to smell blood from that far away. That is mad. What must that be like? But here's the thing, that smell, petricar, the oily wonder, the, the, the, the line of nature that I sniffed when I opened the window, that smell that we all know after it rains.

• 21:44Blindboy Boatclub?

  A human being's sensitivity, an ability to smell that is 10,000 times more powerful than a shark's ability to smell blood in the fucking water. And I'm not putting that out of my hope, that's research that was published in the Journal of Nature Microbiology in 2020. We human beings were, I won't say tormented by that smell, but that's the little spectrum of reality that we exist in, that's the unwelt. We are freakishly extraordinarily sensitive to that smell, the smell of petricar. What's that about?

• 22:24Blindboy Boatclub?

  Something about that smell is essential to, to our survival, the, the human animal. Something about that smell is essential to our survival. Now, petricar.

• 22:39Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's not, it's not just one compound. Petra car is like the name that describes the experience. So when it rained outside there and I opened the window and ye got it live of me sniffing that and going holy fuck and being really present with it. That experience that that was, that was the petra car. It's a beautiful word because the word wasn't, it wasn't actually kind until the 1960s. A chemist, a chemist called Isabel Joy Bear. She was Australian. She was the first scientist to go, the fuck is that smell? What the fuck is that smell?

• 23:23Blindboy Boatclub?

  That occurs after it rains and can we find out what it is? So she did a lot of experiments with soil and with rocks and managed to replicate the smell in a laboratory and then she named that smell petra car. And for me, the, the, the name she chose is just as brilliant as the research she did. Because, so Petra means stone, but icar, icar is from Greek mythology and icar is the, the blood of the gods.

• 24:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's this incredibly precious fluid that, that's in the veins of, of gods in Greek myth. And it's why humans can never defeat the gods. And icar is, is toxic to humans too. So, so if, even if a human was to fight a god in Greek myth and cut them, if the icar got on the human, it would kill the human. But also icar.

• 24:34Blindboy Boatclub?

  Was used in Greek myth to to give life to inanimate objects. And one of my favorite stories around this ichor substance is

• 24:46Blindboy Boatclub?

  the story of Thalas. So this story was written down nearly two and a half thousand years ago in a book called Argonautica, right? And

• 25:02Blindboy Boatclub?

  that book is, it's an epic, it's an epic story about Jason and the Argonauts, right? Who are just these, they're heroes and they sail all around Greece in in search of fucking the golden fleece, okay? But one little episode within this book is the story of Thalas. And what I adore about the story of Thalas is

• 25:29Blindboy Boatclub?

  you could nearly argue that it's it's the first ever science fiction story. It's, the story of Thalas is, it's very similar to Blade Runner.

• 25:42Blindboy Boatclub?

  So Thalas is

• 25:45Blindboy Boatclub?

  a fucking robot, effectively, he's a giant

• 25:51Blindboy Boatclub?

  bronze guardian of the island of Crete. So Jason and the Argonauts are in their ship called the Argo and they're after getting the golden fleece. I'll deal with that in a different episode. It's near the end of their epic journey. And you think everything's over and the lads are after getting the fleece. And then they decide, fuck it, we'll go to, we go to to Crete to chill out. Cause this this ship is in shit. So as Jason and the Argonauts, sorry lads, they're seagulls going fucking ape shit in the background. I don't know if you can hear them. They're really bastards. So Jason and the Argonauts are in their ship and they're about to approach the shore of of Crete. This island Crete, okay?

• 26:37Blindboy Boatclub?

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

• 26:45Blindboy Boatclub?

  Thalas isn't human. Thalas is, I suppose, what you'd call an android.

• 26:55Blindboy Boatclub?

  Thalass is a robot made out of pure bronze, designed to look like a human being, massive now, like a huge bronze statue, massive, designed to look like a human being. And he was forged by the god of craftsmanship, right? But the thing is, he's this big bronze robot that looks like a human. But the gods put a single vein containing Icar, the blood of the gods, into Thalass's ankle. And this made Thalass move around as this bronze statue, this robot, this android. Icar, the blood of the gods, is deadly to humans,

• 27:40Blindboy Boatclub?

  but it can be used to make inanimate objects come to life. So that's the deal with Thalass. And Thalass is programmed to do one thing and one thing only, and that's defend the island of Crete. Because Thalass isn't a human, Thalass is an android, an automaton. And as Jason and the Argonauts' ship starts to approach Crete, and the ship is in shit as well, so they really have to get to Crete because the ship's gonna sink, so they must get to the island of Crete. But they can't because the bronze android Thalass is throwing rocks at them.

• 28:20Blindboy Boatclub?

  So Jason and the Argonauts are like, we're gonna have to defeat this giant bronze android. So they throw spears at him, they do everything, nothing is working. How are we gonna defeat this, this robot?

• 28:37Blindboy Boatclub?

  But then, on the ship with the Argonauts, right, is a woman called Medea. And Medea was like, like a poet, a poet or a sorceress. And Medea looks at this giant robot defending the island, and she starts to think, I know that that robot is not a living creature. I can see that it's made out of bronze, but it's defending the island, it's moving. And she thinks, I wonder, does that robot know that it's alive?

• 29:17Blindboy Boatclub?

  I wonder, does that robot think that it's human? She goes to Jason and she says, listen, stop throwing spears at the big robot. I've got an idea. And Jason goes, alright, work away. So Medea starts to, to try and talk to the robot. As he's defending Crete to try and talk to Thalas. And she gets inside his head. And starts asking all these questions about his fears and, you know, what's it like being there on the island? Do you not get lonely? Why are you defending the island? Why? And Thalas is like, well, it's my job. This is my job to defend the island.

• 30:03Blindboy Boatclub?

  And then she says, well, what, what, like, what would happen if you were to stop? And then he goes, I can't do that. I could die. And then she goes, oh.

• 30:15Blindboy Boatclub?

  You're afraid of dying. You're afraid of your own mortality, like a human. You're afraid of dying. Thalas, the android is like, yeah, I'm afraid of dying. This bronze robot thinks that it's human. And then Medea looks at Thalas's ankle.

• 30:37Blindboy Boatclub?

  This big, huge android fucking bronze statue. She looks at his ankle and she says to Thalas. You see that there on your ankle, that vein? That vein of icar, the blood of the gods. Now, Medea, she's smart. She's really fucking smart. So she can see, she knows by looking at his ankle, that there's a vein of icar, the blood of the gods. So she's going, alright, I see what's after happening here. The gods are after getting a bunch of bronze, which is rocks effectively, it's just metal. And they've put their blood into it, icar, in this vein. And that made this robot come to life. That's what's happening here. Okay.

• 31:20Blindboy Boatclub?

  So if I can get rid of that icar, then the robot's gonna die. So she says to Thalas, the big android robot, she says to him. If you take that vein off your ankle, you'll have immortality. That's what's holding you back. The gods are lying to you. They're lying to you. Take that out and you will live forever. And Thalas goes, really? Yeah, I promise. So Thalas goes and he does it. He takes the vein out of his ankle and the ichor, the blood of the gods drains from his body and goes into the soil. And then suddenly Thalas is just a bronze statue. The life is gone.

• 32:06Blindboy Boatclub?

  And I adore that story. I love that story. That's, that's written down 2,500 years ago. And that there is, that's science fiction. It's, it's not magical. It's not fantasy. It's whoever wrote that. It's probably an oral story from Crete that got absorbed into Greek mythology when it was written down. But whoever wrote that, they're thinking about the possibilities of technology. They're looking around them and they're, they're seeing statues, statues made out of bronze. And they're going, this statue looks like a human. What, what next steps are needed to make that statue a living thing? What is it?

• 32:52Blindboy Boatclub?

  I've seen dead bodies. What is it that makes a corpse alive? What is that thing? What is that thing that makes life happen? What is that spark? And then they've gone one further and they're thinking of the ethical implications of making artificial life. If I could get a statue, give it ichor, right? The blood of the gods. And now I have a, a robot, an android, a, a, a human figure that I've made that appears to be alive, an artificial intelligence. What if that artificial intelligence begins to develop emotions? And knows that it's alive and is afraid of dying and has desires and needs and becomes human effectively?

• 33:37Blindboy Boatclub?

  Ethically, what does that mean? So that story there is, it's fucking science fiction. And the reason I said it's so similar to Blade Runner is Thalas, the android.

• 33:52Blindboy Boatclub?

  Thinks that he's human, thinks that he's human and his humanity i- in, in the story is defined by the fact that he's afraid of dying, he's terrified of dying a- and that's the plot of Blade Runner, the plot of Blade Runner which is set in the past now of 2019. But Blade Runner is about androids trying to find immortality because they're afraid of dying, that they're programmed to die. But anyway, that's what makes the name petracar so beautiful and why I, I, why I think that the sel- that the choice of that word, kindling that word is, is just as important as the discovery of what it is because petracar

• 34:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  means the blood of the gods gives life to rocks. When it rains on the earth and we get that smell and we, we as humans respond to that fucking smell, y- you don't know what the fuck it is, but you know it's something good. It's something good when you smell that, it, it is the smell of life, it's, it's, you're doing a line of nature and that's petracar, the blood of the gods, the rain hits the ground and wakes up the stones, it imbues the stones with life. A, a, a murmuration of starlings darkened my window with a shadow

• 35:15Blindboy Boatclub?

  there as I said that. It's evening time now. The sun is, is, is coming down and the, the fucking, the starlings are out for their evening murmuration, flying around the place. Talk about fucking umvelt and starlings, those starlings that I'm looking at now outside my window, flying above in the air. First off, starlings seeing ultraviolet light. Secondly, like those starlings, right now, what those starlings are doing, they are doing their murmuration.

• 35:50Blindboy Boatclub?

  They are synchronizing their movements to create the shape of a giant bird of prey. Fuck it, they're talus. The starlings are talus. So, when you see the starlings in the air, like a shoal of fish, I've spoken about this before, but they are literally trying to make themselves look like one giant bird. A big giant bird. Why? So they can scare off their predators. Now, the sad thing here in Limerick is that their predators don't exist anymore. The hawks and the ospreys that prey upon those starlings are extinct, but they do their murmuration anyway. It's almost like a religious ritual at this point.

• 36:32Blindboy Boatclub?

  So the starlings can all synchronize together to form a giant bird. They're not using language, they're not talking, so I don't know what that mechanism is that allows them to synchronize like that. And then the other thing with starlings is they're migratory birds. Seagulls are going ape shit on the roof now that I'm bigging up the starlings. Literally banging rocks on the fucking roof, whatever they're doing. But the starlings, right? Because they're migratory, because they...

• 37:03Blindboy Boatclub?

  The seagulls aren't enjoying this. Did you hear them?

• 37:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  Starlings, because they migrate halfway across the fucking world. They have magneto-reception, right? So starlings can... I don't know whether they see it, whether they hear it. The earth's magnetic field. Starlings are sensitive to the earth's magnetic field, and that's how they navigate. And even more complex than that, and this is evidence-based. In a starling's eye, there's these things called cryptochrome proteins, okay, in their retinas. And when that's hit by blue light, it splits the light into two unpaired electrons, right? That are quantum entangled.

• 37:51Blindboy Boatclub?

  Starlings have like a quantum computer in their fucking eye. And this allows them to read the earth's magnetic field. And we don't even have technology that can do that yet. What is it like? What's it like to be a starling? What is the experience of reality like to be a starling? When your fucking eye has a quantum computer that's sensitive to the earth's magnetic field? The magnetic field is out there now. I can't fucking see it. Like, what is the earth's magnetic field? It's, so inside the middle of the earth, there's all this liquid iron, the core of the earth,

• 38:33Blindboy Boatclub?

  and this slushing around creates this magnetic field, completely invisible to me and you, because humans, we don't have eyes that can see the magnetic field, but it's there and it's very important. And what the magnetic field does, it protects the earth from solar radiation. Like, do you ever look at the moon or Mars and wonder, why is there fuck all there? Why is there nothing? Why is there nothing on these planets? Because they're sterilised. Solar radiation, the radiation from the sun, kills everything. It bleaches the surface and nothing can exist.

• 39:16Blindboy Boatclub?

  So the magnetic field that the starlings can, I can only assume, see using quantum physics in their eyes, that's, that magnetic field protects life on earth. And without that magnetic field, soil would be sterile. There'd be no life at all in the soil. But that brings us back to the petracar. Where does the smell actually come from? Well, like I said, petracar is the name, it's the name for the experience of that smell. But what you're really smelling is, it's a compound called geosmin. It's the earthy smell.

• 39:59Blindboy Boatclub?

  Geosmin is, it's what makes beetroot taste that way. Do you ever eat a beetroot and it's a bit sily? That's geosmin. It's present in, certain vegetables have it. And geosmin, again, it comes from Greek, it means earth smell. And the aroma of geosmin, it's a huge component of petracar. But geosmin specifically?

• 40:26Blindboy Boatclub?

  That's the thing that we're really sensitive to, that humans are very sensitive to. Like, in the way they're that, as I said, starlings have a way of seeing the earth's magnetic sphere. We can't fucking see it, it's there, we can't see it, but starlings live in a, in a, in a reality where this is very present and part of their existence. You and me, we, we can smell this geosmin. We can really fucking smell this geosmin. It's produced by streptomycetes, which are...

• 41:00Blindboy Boatclub?

  They're bacteria in soil, which behave a bit like fungi. Do you remember the podcast I did a couple of weeks back, where I spoke about the priest's grave? Up in Fermanagh in Ireland, there's a little churchyard in a place called Boho. And in this churchyard is the grave of a priest. And in the 1800s, this priest, the fuck was his name? Can't think of his name. This priest was a healer, and then local folklore emerged that the soil on his grave is a type of folk medicine. That if you can take some of the soil from this fellow's grave, put it under your pillow, say a few prayers,

• 41:44Blindboy Boatclub?

  it can heal illnesses. And that's just a folk tale. But then microbiologists actually investigated and tested the, the soil on this priest's grave. And it contains these streptomycetes, which are

• 42:03Blindboy Boatclub?

  numerous bacteria in the soil, and it's where we get a lot of antibiotics from. And this, this priest's grave up in the north, that has very rare type of streptomycetes that might help us in the future when it comes to antibiotic resistant bacteria. But anyway, there's hundreds of species of streptomycetes. They are bacteria that exist in soil. They help with decomposition.

• 42:34Blindboy Boatclub?

  Like, i-if, if a plant decomposes and goes back into the soil, we know that that plant contains nitrogen, phosphorus, all of these beneficial chemicals. Well, the streptomycis, these bacteria, that's what helps to break the plant material down so that these nutrients return to the soil and fertilize, make that soil fertile so that new things can grow. That's what streptomycis do. A lot of them, when they come in contact with fresh water, with rain, they release these aromas, these compounds. They release the geosmin,

• 43:15Blindboy Boatclub?

  the thing that me and you can fucking smell, the petricar, the petricar. The thing that I smelled at the start of this podcast when I opened my fucking window, the smell that you know when I describe it to you when the rain happens, after it's been dry for a while. It's these tiny bacteria in the soil, releasing this compound when they come into contact with fresh water. But why? If, if a shark can smell fucking a drop of blood over a few miles in water, why are human beings 10,000 times more sensitive to the smell of geosmin?

• 43:56Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's, it's what helps the human animal to find sources of fresh water. You know, who else is very sensitive to the smell of geosmin? Camels. Camels in the desert can use their noses to find an oasis of water from 50 miles away. We, we come from Africa, the plains, the grasslands. You've got dry seasons that last for fucking weeks, hundreds of miles away. There's a rainstorm and the ground soaks up that rain and now it releases into the fucking air, the petricar, and that travels on the wind again, hundreds of fucking miles.

• 44:37Blindboy Boatclub?

  And humans smell it and when they smell it, they get that feeling of vitality. Oh, my fucking God, what is that? And we seek it out. And what you find when you follow the smell of the petrocorn across hundreds of thousands of miles is you get everything necessary for human survival. You have a fresh water source. You have a fertile soil full of these streptomycis, these bacteria that give soil fertility. You have food growing out of the earth. You have animals that are eating that food. You're doing a line in nature. That's what that smell is. It's, that smell is, from an evolutionary perspective,

• 45:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  it's everything that reinforces the survival of a human being and a human, a group of humans. Fresh water, fertility, that's what it is. And it's especially strong after a period of drought. Like I said, I'm here in Limerick. It's been roasting for the past three or four days, really, really hot. Everything is very dry. And then that fart rain hits and I'm overwhelmed by that, that oily, earthy smell, fucking floored by it. You can't ignore it. I promise you, you have never once in your life,

• 46:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  never once in your life have you ignored that smell. The, the oily smell after the rain. You always take a moment to clock it. And there's your reason why. And I'm not a scientist, but I do know how to research. So nothing I've said here today isn't backed by, we'll say rigorous sources. Okay, let's have an Ocarina pause. I know it's 45 minutes in. It's good to have an Ocarina pause a bit earlier. I just didn't feel like interrupting myself there. I enjoyed those tangents that that little hot take took. And didn't want to interrupt it. So let's have an Ocarina pause now. I don't have an Ocarina. I'm in my office, as you can tell by the fucking seagulls.

• 46:49Blindboy Boatclub?

  I have a little packet of chewing gums that I'm gonna shake. And then you're gonna hear an advert for some bullshit, alright?

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• 49:32Speaker 01

  Hi, I'm Laura Adams, host of Money Girl, where I help my listeners make empowered choices. Women are increasingly driving household financial decisions, yet many say they don't feel fully prepared for the choices ahead. When you're making choices for a future decades away, confidence matters. And confidence comes from knowing a promise will be kept. For nearly 160 years, Pacific Life has helped generations protect what matters today and prepare for tomorrow with life insurance and lifetime income solutions. Pacific Life keeps its promises, so you can keep yours. Ask a financial professional about how Pacific Life

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• 51:01Blindboy Boatclub?

  Port for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com/theblindbypodcast. If you enjoy listening to this podcast, if it brings you distraction, mirth, merriment, entertainment, whatever the fuck has you listening to this podcast, please consider supporting it directly via the Patreon page. This is my full-time job. This is how I earn a living. This is how I rent out my office. It's how I pay for everything. This is, this is, the Patreon is the reason that I have the, the time to do the amount of research I did for this week's episode, to make sure that if I'm going to speak about

• 51:43Blindboy Boatclub?

  quantum entanglement in the, in the eye of a starling, that I can spend a bit of time researching and making sure, is this legit? Is this solid? Similarly, I can't just pull Greek myth out of my haul. I need to go and look at as many different translations that I can get my hands on so I can tell the story to you properly. I write this podcast and writing takes time and that's all possible because of listener funding. So all I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month. That's it. And if you can't afford that, don't worry about it. You can listen for free. You listen for free because the person who is paying is paying for you to listen for free.

• 52:27Blindboy Boatclub?

  Everybody gets a podcast. I get to earn a living. It's a wonderful model based on kindness and soundness. Patreon.com/theblindbypodcast. Please become a paid subscriber and also if you are becoming a new Patreon subscriber, do it in your browser or the browser on your phone. Don't do it via the iPhone app because Apple will take 30%. I forgot to plug my gigs last week, completely forgot to plug my gigs. I had some very pissed off promoters reminding me that I forgot about this. I don't have many gigs coming up. I do have, am I at a fucking festival? Very shortly, I'm at the Altogether Now Festival. Okay.

• 53:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  If you're coming along to that in Waterford, the Altogether Now, I don't even know what I'm going to be doing at it. It'll be good crack, whatever's happening. But if you see me on the bill at Altogether Now, come along, come along to the gig. All right. My gig gigs.

• 53:29Blindboy Boatclub?

  September, on the 19th of September, I am up in Derry in the Millennium, right? The Millennium Theatre, can't wait to gig in Derry, have a wonderful guest for Derry, by the way.

• 53:44Blindboy Boatclub?

  Vicker Street on the 23rd of September, that's a beautiful Tuesday night Vicker Street gig, wonderful relaxing Tuesday evening. If you're thinking, fuck it, I'm not going to a gig on a Tuesday, it's a live podcast. It's like going to the theatre, it's like going to the cinema. You could have work on a Wednesday morning, it's grand. Come along to a lovely relaxing Tuesday evening, fucking live podcast, you don't even have to drink. And then, oh, Sligo, throw this one in at the very last minute, very last minute in Sligo.

• 54:20Blindboy Boatclub?

  This is a tiny gig, I haven't been to Sligo in a couple of years. Small gig, very few tickets at this, the Hawkswell Theatre in Sligo. I haven't even announced it and somehow it's almost sold out already, okay? But if you're in Sligo and you want to come along to a live podcast, that is, what day is that? I think it's the 8th of October up in Sligo, alright, God bless. I really enjoyed this week's podcast because I didn't intend this week's podcast to be about the smell of rain, about petrocar. But when I opened that window, this is the beauty of creative flow, this is the beauty

• 55:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  of creative flow, you gotta be playful. To write, you have to be playful, you have to leave yourself open to anything. And when that rain started, I just said, fuck it, press record, press record. Try, you know that that petrocar is gonna happen because it's been dry, press record and try and record the experience of smelling it, which is a silly thing to do. It's silly and playful, but by doing that, I enter flow and now the podcast just, it reveals itself to me, that's creative flow. And also with flow you get wonderful synchronicities. I wasn't aware.

• 55:49Blindboy Boatclub?

  That yesterday, for instance, was Saint Swithen's Day. And today in Ireland is Saint MacDara's Day. These are both hugely important days when it comes to rain. Now, don't be put off with the sainty part. Don't be put off with the fact that this is tied in with the feast days of saint, that Catholicism is involved. Fuck that. We know the crack. Often, when you have a feast day that's associated with Christianity, it meant that there was a pagan tradition beforehand that people celebrated for a long time.

• 56:28Blindboy Boatclub?

  And anything to do with folk beliefs, mythology, quote unquote pagan beliefs, and the weather, there's usually a legitimacy to it. Otherwise, the stories wouldn't survive for as long as they survive. Like I mentioned before, the Ocarina Pause, that priest's grave up in Fermanagh, where people were, you know, for hundreds of years, taking the soil from his grave for its healing properties. And then scientists test the soil and it turns out that it has bacteria that could save us from the next fucking pandemic. Yesterday was Saint Swithen's Day, fifteenth of July.

• 57:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  Saint Swithen's Day, if thou dost rain for forty days, it will remain. Saint Swithen's Day, if thou be fair for forty days, twill rain ne mare. If it rains on the fifteenth of July on Saint Swithen's Day, then the legend holds that it's gonna rain for the next forty days. Saint Swithen, he was a ninth century monk, Anglo-Saxon over in, uh, he was the bishop of Winchester, that was it. He was the bishop of Winchester in Wessex in the ninth century. When Saint Swithen died, he made a very strange request. And the strange request was, I don't wanna be buried inside the cathedral. Don't bury me in a building, please.

• 57:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  Which was the, this is what you do with a fucking bishop. You put him in a tomb inside a church. Saint Swithen was like, fuck that. Put my grave outside where the sweet rain of heaven may fall upon my grave. So Saint, which...

• 58:11Blindboy Boatclub?

  He's beautifully pagan, I like that, I like that. So Saint Swithen was like, bury me outside, I want it to rain on my grave. But after he died and his funeral was coming up, the new bishop, Ethelwold, right? Was like, fuck that. I know it's his dying wish, but he's a bishop. You bury bishops in cathedrals. You don't bury bishops outside. Like you have to real it, like Christianity was all about consecration. And physical spaces like churches were consecrated. There was no demons in here. And to be buried outside in nature, it's a little bit pagany, little bit too pagan.

• 58:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  No, bishops get buried inside in churches. So the new bishop, Ethelwold, was like, fuck that. I'm not respecting your dying wishes, Saint Swithen. I'm gonna, I'm actually just gonna throw you into the church. We're gonna bury you in the church, even though you want the rains of heaven to hit your grave. So on the 15th of July, in 970 something, right? So over a thousand years ago, 15th of July. The funeral happens. They're bringing Saint Swithen's coffin into the church against his dying wishes.

• 59:28Blindboy Boatclub?

  And the funeral, it pours down from the heavens. There's a 15th of July rain. Just like the one that I saw today. Massive fat fucking country drops of rain. One of them happens. Like I would not, at the start of this podcast, when I played that rainfall for ye, I would not want to be outside in that. Ye heard it. I told you, if you look up into the sky, you could damage your eye. It was one of them. You don't see a lot of them. Well, on Saint Swithen's funeral, they got one of them. And the funeral had to be abandoned. It's like the rain came down from heaven and said, "This fellow wanted to be buried outside, you prick. What are you putting him in the church for?" Well, God's rain said, "No fucking way."

• 1:00:13Blindboy Boatclub?

  And it kept raining for forty days afterwards. So that's where Saint, that, that's what started Saint Swither's Day. If it rains on the fifteenth of fucking July, it's gonna rain for forty days afterwards. Today, on the sixteenth of July in Ireland, we've got Saint MacDara's Day. Saint MacDara was a sixth century saint from Connemara, I believe. I think there's a little island off Connemara called Saint MacDara's Island. He was a sixth century Irish hermit, right, who lived on, on this island off Connemara. And in Ireland, he, he's the protector of, of fishermen.

• 1:00:52Blindboy Boatclub?

  But in Ireland, if today is the sixteenth of July, if it rains on the feast day of Saint MacDara in Ireland, it's gonna rain for the next forty days. So in England, you've got Saint fucking Swither, or whatever his name is, that's yesterday, the fifteenth. In Ireland, on the sixteenth, we've got Saint MacDara. Two Christian saints, both of them with near identical legends of if it rains on this day, it is gonna rain for the next forty days. Most likely, these are pre-Christian tales. This is myth, this is folklore, these are stories that the people of England and the people of Ireland had. We don't know, before these saints, but these stories became Christianized to make them acceptable.

• 1:01:37Blindboy Boatclub?

  Often feast days are old pagan festivals that just get turned into some Christian shit. I can't say that with certainty about these two specific feast days. Because I don't, I, I've looked hard for the evidence. I've looked hard, like, okay, well, Britain, Saint Swither is Anglo-Saxon, so you're talking, um, ninth century. Britain was, was Roman at one point, and in Greek and Roman culture, you had a thing called augury, which was.

• 1:02:11Blindboy Boatclub?

  Like a seasonal practice of predicting the weather by looking at birds. It was like a magical sorcery thing. I'll do a podcast on it at some point. But with Ireland, I don't know. I can't find any pre-Christian myth around July 16th, Saint MacDara's Day. But the stories are telling us, the stories are telling us. The 15th and 16th, if it rains heavily on these days, it predicts more rain in the coming month. So, so what does science tell us? What actually happens around mid-July, 15th and 16th? Well, there's this thing called the Atlantic Jet Stream. Now, it's not to be confused with the Gulf Stream. The Gulf Stream is warm, a band of warm water.

• 1:02:56Blindboy Boatclub?

  The Atlantic Jet Stream is, it's like a river of air in the atmosphere. But this jet stream tends to settle in the middle of July. And this impacts week to week weather, whether it's going to be sunny, whether it's going to be rainy. What's really determining this is the Atlantic Jet Stream. And when it tends to settle around the 15th and 16th of July. Science tells us this, but before science, what have you got? You've got Saint Swithin's Day and you've got Saint MacDara's Day. The feast days, the 15th and 16th of July. Really interesting stories that can tell us something quite important that benefits our survival. And that's the beautiful synchronicity of this week's episode.

• 1:03:40Blindboy Boatclub?

  I didn't know, I didn't know that yesterday was fucking Swithin's Day and that today is Saint MacDara's Day. I hadn't a fucking clue. I hadn't a clue.

• 1:03:52Blindboy Boatclub?

  Nature told this week's story. Nature wrote this week's podcast. I didn't know about these rain-specific feast days.

• 1:04:03Blindboy Boatclub?

  And, and this is what, when I'm always talking about, and what I do, I love about folklore and mythology, and I'm always saying it, what I adore about it is, before writing, people held the stories in the landscape. When you couldn't write your stories down, your mythology, the land would tell you the fucking stories. And that's what happened this week. The rain told me the story. I know that sounds mad, but the rain told us the story this week. Like, what did I want to do this week's podcast then? The guitar player from Limp Bizkit followed me on Instagram and I started listening to Limp Bizkit when I was 16 because I fancied a girl who worked in a, in a vacuum repair shop.

• 1:04:46Blindboy Boatclub?

  And I started listening to Limp Bizkit to try and impress her because she was a Limp Bizkit fan. And Wes Barland followed me on, on Instagram this week. I was gonna talk about that. Um, I mean, I have to assume that Wes Barland is, is currently listening. He just spent the last hour listening to a podcast about rain. I have to now assume that. Why else is he following me on Instagram? That's all we've got time for this week. All right.

• 1:05:17Blindboy Boatclub?

  Smell the petracar.

• 1:05:20Blindboy Boatclub?

  Rub a dog. Genuflect to a swan. I'll catch you next week. Dog bless.

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