I've recorded a podcast every week for the past eight years and I'm taking one week off

Eight year anniversary episode 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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• 1:28Blindboy Boatclub?

  Bend heaven in the end of a tenement to your 10-foot decklins. Welcome to the Blind by Podcast. This week is the A-year anniversary of this podcast. This week, in 2017, fucking 20 to before times of 2017, I put out my first ever podcast. Not expecting anyone to be interested or to listen to it. It's just, I'd written a book, I'd written a book of short stories. My first ever book of short stories. And I was like, how am I gonna convince people? Cause I, I adored my first book of short stories. The Gospel According to Blind Bite.

• 2:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  Absolutely loved it. And I'm like, how can I convince people that my book is worth reading? Well, I'm gonna fucking read it to them. I'm gonna read my book to people. I didn't think the podcast would last beyond maybe four episodes. Um, my actual book, The Gospel According to Blind Bite, that came out. I think it was the twenty seventh of October, twenty seventeen. So I'd, I'd initially thought, I'm gonna put out maybe, I'm gonna read four short stories. Four short stories to try and plug and promote this book. Fuck it. Why not? What's the worst that can happen?

• 2:52Blindboy Boatclub?

  What happened was the podcast was the most successful thing to ever happen to me in, in my career up to that point. I'd been a, an unsuccessful comedy musician before this podcast. That book, my first book of short stories and this podcast, completely changed my life, changed my life and changed my career. And that started eight years ago this week. And since then, I've released a podcast every single week, every single week. I have not missed one week in eight years. And I've written three books in that period. And I've made, I don't even know, five or six documentaries and I've been nominated for awards.

• 3:37Blindboy Boatclub?

  And the first ever episode of this podcast, Did You Read About Ars and Fogarty? Was turned into an award-winning short film. So I was thinking this week, how the fuck do I celebrate eight years of this podcast?

• 3:54Blindboy Boatclub?

  And I think, I think I'm gonna take the week off. And I say that because it's what feels right. Every week I follow my passion, every week I follow my passion. This week, the universe is telling me to take a break. It's not just the universe that's telling me. So there's this neuroscientist called Dr. Michael Keane. He was a medical doctor, then he became a neuroscientist. And he's an expert in neurotechnology. He scans people's brain activity. He's done it to thousands of people to map the activity of people's brains.

• 4:38Blindboy Boatclub?

  And so anyway, a couple of months ago, Dr. Michael Keane, he'd read one of my short stories, specifically a short story called Pamela Fags from my last book, Topographia Hibernica. He read Pamela Fags and whatever it was about that particular story, the way that I was able to connect seemingly unconnected ideas and to connect them and to make them make sense. Michael Keane just went, I, I need to scan the brain of the person who wrote this. I'm very fascinated to see what this person's brain activity is like. So he reached out to me, he reached out to me and said, can I scan your fucking brain?

• 5:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  Can I give you an EEG scan? Which is, it's an electroencephalography scan and it measures brain activity. So I went and had the scan and it was wonderfully fascinating. And I wanted to speak about, I wanted to speak about that scan and the findings of it this week and what it showed me about my brain. It was fascinating. It was absolutely fascinating and it painted, it painted a fairly fucking accurate picture of me. But one thing that I did point out is I do have the brain of a person who's under chronic stress, prolonged burnout, a consistently active brain that doesn't seem to, to switch

• 6:06Blindboy Boatclub?

  off. At one point of the scan, he showed me an image of my brain and said, this is something I'd, I'd have to clarify with him. But the gist was.

• 6:16Blindboy Boatclub?

  There's neurons firing in my, in my brain that other people would have to take drugs in order for that to be going on, whereas for me, that's just how it is. But I also said to him, look, every week for the past fucking eight years, I do a deeply intense podcast where sometimes I might work from seven in the morning until six or seven the next day, I'll go like 24 hours straight, working with no sleep. I go into obsessive, deep focus and research and writing that I don't come out of. And I do it because I love doing it. I adore doing it. But I've done this every single week for eight years.

• 7:01Blindboy Boatclub?

  And now I'm looking at a brain scan that's showing that to me. It's, it's showing me that it's a quite a stressed brain, quite a stressed brain, burnt out that doesn't get a chance to, to stop. And that's not, that's not autism, but the autistic part, maybe a neurotypical person would have given up by now. The, the thing would be in, so this scan obviously can't show if somebody's autistic, but it will show results that you would see in other neurodivergent people or other people who are engaged in, in high levels of performance or creativity.

• 7:45Blindboy Boatclub?

  The thing is with, with autistic people, if we're engaged in our passions, like there isn't an off switch. Flow, as I call it, or hyper-focus, as other people would call it. When I'm in flow, I don't know, I don't notice time passing. I don't, I forget how to eat or when to eat. I fucking, I'll walk out into the street with one shoe on. All of this stuff comes at a price. And all I'm saying is this week I saw a scan of my brain and it showed me the fucking price. And the thing is, when, when you're seeing that much stress in your brain, it's, it's a tough one because.

• 8:26Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm not necessarily deeply mentally unhealthy. There's different types of stress. There's positive stress and negative stress. So positive stress, that's energized focus, purpose, excitement, creative flow. I get loads of that. And then you've got your negative stress, which is feeling overwhelmed, fatigued, anxious, depleted, burnout. I don't want to get into it too much because if I get into it too much, now I'm doing a podcast. My biggest fear is having to work a normal job.

• 8:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  What I mean by that is

• 9:01Blindboy Boatclub?

  a job that requires me to perform as a neurotypical person, a job that requires social interaction with people. I don't want to be back in school. I don't want to be back in school. A lot of jobs are like being back in school. Okay, school didn't go very well for me. Quite a lot of neurodivergent people tend to have difficulty with employment. And the neurodivergent people who find employment,

• 9:33Blindboy Boatclub?

  you tend to see a lot of people in the arts, a lot of people in the arts. Whether they know that they're neurodivergent or not, they will end up finding and creating jobs and environments that actually are subtle accommodations for their own neurodivergence. And this can mean working in isolation for long periods of time, making your own schedule with your work, having a job where you don't have to wear a uniform or don't have to wear a suit or whatever clothes that might be uncomfortable, that you can have a job where you can wear your comfy clothes all day or be nude if that's what works for you. Or most importantly, a job.

• 10:16Blindboy Boatclub?

  Whereby you are focusing on the things that you're passionate about. And that is also what pays your bills. So the lucky neurodivergent people.

• 10:27Blindboy Boatclub?

  They tend to find these type of careers for themselves because we live in a capitalist society. Okay. And at the end of the day, it comes down to how are you paying your bills? How are you surviving? I'm one of the lucky neurodivergent people in that I've found a job and a career whereby I can earn a living while accommodating most of my fucking needs. And I try, I try to live on the edge of that. Like you know, I work in a fucking office building. I'm here now, I'm, I'm in a corporate office building surrounded by solicitors, accountants, all of this shit. Like the reason I do that, I'm going to explain this to, to the neuroscientist.

• 11:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  Again, he looked at me like I was fucking mad, but again, this is that, this is why he was scanning my brain. It's, it's the connecting thing that seem seemingly unconnected. The reason I work in an office, I'm actually inspired by Tibetan monks that meditate around rotting corpses. And I've mentioned this many times, but there's Buddhist monks in Tibet. Okay. And in this area of Tibet, in the mountains,

• 11:38Blindboy Boatclub?

  the soil is very rocky. So when someone dies, they don't bury this person in the ground. Instead, what they do is, is a Tibetan sky burial. They leave the body on a mountain and vultures pick at the bones and scatter the dead body around the valleys. So you have these valleys in Tibet, which are full of rotting corpses, skulls, legs, the whole shebang, people that you know. And these monks sit amongst the valley of the rotting corpses and they meditate. And they do that so that they can confront their greatest fear and their greatest fear is death. They sit with and smell with and live in death.

• 12:23Blindboy Boatclub?

  In order to accept it, that's why I work in this fucking office building. Because it's my greatest fear. I work in this office building and I meet all my fucking needs. I'm sitting in here in my office in a ridiculous looking baggy tracksuit. Three XL baggy tracksuit. Giant rubber crocs, a carpet, a carpet that I'm gonna have to. I'm gonna have to replace this carpet when I leave the office because I have worn a pat in the carpet from pacing up and down so much all day, thinking about ideas. I'm here because I want to. I wanna meditate amongst the corpses. I want to meditate beside my greatest fear.

• 13:06Blindboy Boatclub?

  My greatest fear is if I worked in this building, okay? And I was working in here for a company and I would have to wear clothes that don't meet my sensory needs or that I'd have to pretend to be interested in things that I'm not interested in and then suppress whatever fucking mad shit I need to focus on that day. And then the biggest fear of all is that engaging in small talk with colleagues would be a necessary part of of my life. Not that, and you have to remember, I have worked in this environment before. I've worked in a call centre, okay?

• 13:48Blindboy Boatclub?

  So I'm, this is from lived experience and I did sixteen, seventeen years of school. Every neurodivergent person is different. But by far, the most stressful and hardest thing for me is needing to maintain office relationships. What I mean by that is when I worked in a call centre long ago. Now, what I did get fired for, I got fired because first off, I was sitting horizontally in my chair. You're not supposed to do that. I needed to do it because I wanted to get up and walk around. I was sitting horizontally in my chair frequently.

• 14:30Blindboy Boatclub?

  I was, I printed out ninety-three pages about CIA crack cocaine smuggling and was reading them under my desk. But the other thing that got me fired, and this was a big one.

• 14:42Blindboy Boatclub?

  I didn't know that you're expected to go for lunch with your team. So the team of people that you work with in the fucking office, there is an expectation to sit down and have lunch with these people just because. And I used to not do that because when lunchtime happened, I just, I desperately needed to go to the car park by myself and be alone with my thoughts and pace up and down, pace up and down the car park. Like, I don't know if you can hear this, but, but someone next door is, is removing packaging tape, long reams of sellotape.

• 15:26Blindboy Boatclub?

  Um, in, in the room next door, I think it's an accountant. But isn't it great that I don't have to say, hey, what are you doing with that sellotape? And have a sellotape, well, we couldn't have a sellotape conversation because then I would need to start speaking about what, is this still going on? Can you hear that? That person would need to hear about the history of sellotape. No, do you know what I'd do? If I, if I was actually next door, I hope you can't hear me now, if I was, so someone next door is, is aggressively pulling reams of sellotape because they're packaging something together. If they were my coworker and I was stuck in that office and they were doing that, I'd just simply turn around and go on my sellotape monologue. What's the most interesting sellotape fact I can think of?

• 16:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  Like, this is fucking fascinating, right? But there's this phenomenon called tribo-luminescence. And they only discovered this in the fucking late 2000s, right? When you rapidly, like, like what you're hearing there, when you rapidly unpeel sellotape, okay? You use friction to very suddenly break chemical bonds, okay? But when that happens, it actually gives off a fairly significant electrical charge, right? If, if you turned the lights off, now this is what I'd start doing if that was my coworker. First off, we wouldn't be able to turn the lights off. Do you know why we wouldn't be able to turn the lights off? Because his office, his office doesn't have a light switch.

• 16:51Blindboy Boatclub?

  My office has a fucking light switch because I'm autistic. I had to request a light switch. Everyone else's office, they've got these lights that turn on whenever people move. Sometimes other people's lights just turn off because people are able to sit at their desks and not move. But anyway. If this was my office, I'd say to him, let's turn off the lights and open your sellotape really fast so we can see, so we can possibly see the, let's turn, close the curtains as well. Let's close the curtains and turn off the lights now. Roy, I want you to rapidly unpack your sellotape and make that noise you were making. And let's see if we can see a little spark because, and then what happens? Who's this fucking lunatic?

• 17:34Blindboy Boatclub?

  Who's this lunatic? What's he talking about? I'm just trying to pack this, this package here with some sellotape. Why is he speaking about electrical charges? And I'd say, you don't understand. And if you're thinking, come on, blind boy, you wouldn't really ask him to close the curtains and turn off the lights and play with the sellotape, would you, in an office environment? I fucking would. Yes, I would. If I got passionate enough about the sellotape, if the idea of it excited me enough, then I'm gonna forget about propriety, I'm gonna forget about social rules. I will say or do an eccentric thing which invites social rejection. I'll be stared at like a weirdo and I'll be thinking, why is this

• 18:14Blindboy Boatclub?

  not fascinating to you? Let's turn off the lights. Let's, let's turn off the lights and let's put down the curtains, please. And we'll see, your sellotape is gonna glow if you rip it apart rapidly. And then I'd follow that up by saying, and this is a fact, by the way, this is fucking fascinating. So i- if, if the lights were off in the office and you started tearing the sellotape apart rapidly, right, you might see those, a little faint blue glow, you might see it. But, and this is what the scientists discovered in, in 2008. If that was to occur in a vacuum, so if, if you took sellotape apart in a vacuum,

• 18:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  so there's no air, so this effect, trioluminescence, right, so light or radiation gets released when, when chemical bonds are broken suddenly by friction, in a vacuum, right, no air, where you don't have the friction of the air.

• 19:14Blindboy Boatclub?

  If you were to rip the sellotape apart in a vacuum, that the light jumps into the X-ray range and you could see the bones of your fingers. So let's go back to the office now, because your man's next door opening his sellotape. If I was in that office, I'd be talking this shit. I'd be saying, do you know if we had a vacuum right now? We could actually look at the bones of your hands just by opening that sellotape. And that's fact, they found that in, in 2008 at the University of California. Look it up, look up. Sellotape can produce X-rays when it's in, unrolled in, in, in a vacuum. You, you can see the bones of your own fucking hand. Isn't that amazing? Isn't that fascinating?

• 19:57Blindboy Boatclub?

  The point I'm trying to make, that shit doesn't fly in offices. I know, I was fired for it. I was fired for that many fucking years ago. The fuck was I talking about?

• 20:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  That, that's actually not the hardest part. That would not be the hardest part of, of being in, in an office. Because some people like interesting facts like that. That can actually... The hard part about working in a normal job or an office for me was I would desperately need lunchtime breaks, any opportunity to be by myself. Because being around humans was so overwhelming and so stressful that I'd need to be by myself just to meet my needs, the needs of my nervous system, to experience in anything resembling calm.

• 20:49Blindboy Boatclub?

  And if you do that in an office, or in school, or any system which is designed within capitalism to meet the needs of neurotypical people, if you are a loner in these situations, it is interpreted as rejection and you're punished. And people think you don't like them. I've lived it, it's happened to me. I, I think I could tolerate, I could tolerate an uncomfortable uniform. I could probably tolerate.

• 21:20Blindboy Boatclub?

  The small talk in the office, even if it meant bringing up the sellotape fax, people would just have to live with it. The thing that I would not be able to do would be sitting down with people at lunch, just because that's what you're supposed to do, and not having my own time for pacing other banging doors, not having my own time for pacing up and down. Unfortunately, this is turning into a fucking podcast now, and this was not, this was supposed to be five minutes long. Lads, I work in this office building so that I can meditate amongst the rotting corpses. I'm not referring to the accountants and solicitors and people who work in this building as rotting corpses.

• 21:59Blindboy Boatclub?

  What I'm saying is, at all times, I'm surrounded by the thing that I fear the most. I have the grey fire retardant carpets here. People walk around dressed in office clothes. This is the real deal. I'm in the belly of the fucking beast here. This is as uncreative, this is as far from art as you can imagine, and yet, within this space, I've found somewhere where I can be an artist and also meet all my needs as a neurodivergent person. This is my office. The door is closed. I can wear whatever clothes I like. I can do whatever the fuck I want, because I'm my own boss. I say hello to people.

• 22:43Blindboy Boatclub?

  If I, if I wanna say, if I wanna chat to someone down in the canteen, I'll do it, but it's on my own terms. So by meditating with the rotting corpses, you know, the Buddhist monk who was present with death, that's what I do. I am present every single day with the thing that I fear the most. And why do I do that? The Buddhist monk is present around death.

• 23:11Blindboy Boatclub?

  So that that monk can appreciate being alive at the present moment. I work in a corporate office. To help me appreciate how fucking lucky I am that I don't have to work in a corporate office. That even though I'm in the building, even though I can smell the stench of death. Actually, I can spend the entire week reading about sellotape. And my job is to try and connect that fact about sellotape with some other fact and generate it into a hot take that I write to record and put out as a podcast. And that's what my job is. And it's also that gratitude that has me releasing a podcast every single week for eight years and not missing it.

• 23:56Blindboy Boatclub?

  I've managed to find a way to be autistic under capitalism. But that fucking brain scan this week has shown me that maybe I've been a little bit too autistic for too long and I need to chill the fuck out. And if you're thinking, there's other people blind by who have podcasts that they release every single week. Most podcasts.

• 24:18Blindboy Boatclub?

  Most podcasts are interview podcasts. It's people sitting down, talking to each other. The cognitive demands of that are quite different. Like I even saw a report recently that like the reason, like it's something I I struggle to understand. It's like, but why are so many podcasts, people just sitting down chatting to each other? Why, why is that the format for so many podcasts? I mean, a podcast is a space where you can do anything. You can do anything you like. Podcast is just, it's a unit of time that contains audio. You can fill it any way you like. Why are so many people sitting down, talking to other people? Why, why is that what a podcast means? And it's, it's, it's because of capitalism.

• 25:03Blindboy Boatclub?

  If you have a podcast where it's you and another person chatting, that's actually the friendliest model for advertisers. Because it's not written, it's not planned in advance. You can very easily drop an advert into a chat. You can discuss a product. Also, it's just easier. It's easier to make a podcast where two or three people are chatting. You arrange a time, you have some talking points. You all sit down in your chat and then maybe edit a bit of it afterwards. Whereas I do, I do monologue essays that are written, that take days and days to make.

• 25:46Blindboy Boatclub?

  And most weeks require me to, to work for almost 24 hours straight to make sure that something good goes out on time. So that puts me into a, a very small category of podcasters. Even other monologue podcasts that I know of, a lot of it seems to be, they have a few notes and they sit down with the mic and they freestyle. Like this week's podcast is, is, this isn't a fucking podcast. This wasn't supposed to be a podcast. This was supposed to be me showing up for five minutes saying, I'm not doing a podcast. This is what I call a phone call, whereas where I just press record and talk. The vast majority of monologue podcasts out there are phone call podcasts,

• 26:31Blindboy Boatclub?

  usually by a comedian, where they're, they'll just riff on a topic, press record and that's it. I don't, I do very heavy research and I write with my mouth for you to read with your ears. I use audio software to edit with the same precision that a word processor has. So generally, when you listen to one of my, my monologue podcasts, you might be hearing an hour of audio, but it could have taken 18 or 19 or more hours to record that one hour. Because it's a piece of writing. It's, it's a piece of writing that you, you don't hear it as a piece of writing, but it's a piece of writing. That's why I call this podcast a novel.

• 27:15Blindboy Boatclub?

  Long story short, I saw a scan of my fucking brain this week.

• 27:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  That showed very, very significant stress as a result of sustained cognitive load without rest across eight years. And it made me want to take a week off. It was like a little sign from the universe. Take a fucking week off because I know what I need to do. Here's the thing with that scan.

• 27:46Blindboy Boatclub?

  Like it's, it's, it records my, my, my brain activity right now, as it is right now. It showed high beta waves and low frontal midline theta waves. And that paints a picture of consistent alertness and hypervigilance and not a lot of calm at all. But just like, if I was going to the gym every week for eight years and was only working on my legs, then it would show evidence of that. I'd have massive leg muscles. Neuroplasticity comes into this. The neurons that fire together, wire together. I need to take a break.

• 28:33Blindboy Boatclub?

  I need to get, I need to meditate. I need to get back to meditation.

• 28:39Blindboy Boatclub?

  Focusing on, on staying in the here and now. Really working on my breathing and chilling the fuck out so that my brain can get back to experiencing a feeling of safety. That scan showed a brain that doesn't feel safe. The scan showed that.

• 29:01Blindboy Boatclub?

  So I chased the dragon of flow. That's what I do each week. I research and write because I love it. I love it when I get that hot take and get to be absorbed in my interest and reach the wonderful dreamland of flow where writing comes from. But the next day, it feels like an ecstasy come down. Exhaustion and dizziness. My scan showed this high beta activity, right? And that shows that there's a thing called the dopamine and the noradrenaline system,

• 29:38Blindboy Boatclub?

  which is, it rewards anticipation, the feeling of novelty, the feeling that the the chemical rewards from the feeling of achievement. When I research and research until I eventually find a hot take that turns into a good piece of writing, I'm engaging that system in my brain. But I've done that every week for eight years without any rest or recovery afterwards. And I've done that for so long on a loop that my brain also releases cortisol, which is the stress hormone. And now I'm seeing that in a scan of my brain.

• 30:19Blindboy Boatclub?

  And the morning after I record a podcast, even if I loved making that podcast the night before, I sometimes wake up with a jump scare and I don't know why, I never know why. Like if I work on a monologue podcast and maybe I did 17, 18, 19 hours and I get to bed like a zombie and finally sleep, I will wake up the next morning, like suddenly in sweats with my heart thumping and I don't know why. It's almost like that hangover feeling where if you get the fear, I don't know, you were at, you were on a night out and you can't remember who you spoke to or if you said something foolish and then you wake up suddenly the next day with that hangover going, oh my God, did I meet that person? What did I say?

• 31:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'll get that on a Wednesday morning after a podcast goes out. And it's like for no reason, it's like, why the fuck is that happening? And now I know why. It's so intense that a lot of the stress hormones get released too. And then the next day I get like an ecstasy scag, I get an ecstasy scag from putting out podcasts. But here's the thing, I mentioned neuroplasticity. And like I said, if I'd been going to the gym for eight years and just training my legs, you know, you'd see that in my musculature and the brain is quite similar.

• 31:41Blindboy Boatclub?

  And that's the evidence of the, the, the high stress and the hypervigilance in my brainwaves, that is reversible, that's reversible because of neuroplasticity, the neurons that fire together, wire together.

• 31:59Blindboy Boatclub?

  And what I need to work on is, it's calm, to normalise my, my dopamine and cortisol cycles.

• 32:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  Meditation.

• 32:13Blindboy Boatclub?

  Meditation isn't a daily part of my life anymore. Like a playful, enjoyable part of my life, as opposed to like a thing that I must do, or using words like discipline, I'm not disciplined enough with my meditation.

• 32:32Blindboy Boatclub?

  If you're a proper ten foot Declan and you remember the earliest, earliest episode of this podcast, going back eight years, I used to speak a lot about meditation and I used to speak about meditating by a river and an otter called Yurti Ahan would appear. It's eight years ago. Before this podcast started, I was literally meditating every single day, 15 minutes by a river. It was a really important and like I say playful part of my day. And when I say playful there, I wasn't doing it to feel a certain way. I wasn't doing it like I need to do now to become less stressed.

• 33:16Blindboy Boatclub?

  Meditation was a, a deeply enjoyable part of being alive.

• 33:24Blindboy Boatclub?

  If you cook yourself a nice dinner, or even something as simple as a new bag of coffee, like if you make coffee and you enjoy coffee, I'm supposed to reduce my caffeine as well, by the way, I do quite a lot of tea. But anyway, look, when you open a new bag of fucking coffee beans and you, that first sniff, where you're like, oh my God, that's amazing. That little moment where you inhale.

• 33:54Blindboy Boatclub?

  Or simply take time to absorb yourself in the wonder and beauty of something you really enjoy.

• 34:02Blindboy Boatclub?

  Meditation is like that, but for being alive, for your day, for the gratitude of just existing. That's what meditation is like, playful, enjoyable meditation. The stillness of it, the wonderful, beautiful stillness of meditating, sitting so still that you become a little leaf

• 34:25Blindboy Boatclub?

  or a frog or an ant.

• 34:28Blindboy Boatclub?

  And just existing for 15 minutes with this unbelievable slowness and deep diaphragmatic breaths. That's a proven way of changing your fucking brain chemistry. That's a proven way over time to have the type of brain and nervous system that can switch off and be calm and feel safe when it needs to. I don't meditate daily anymore. I meditate occasionally. I don't meditate daily because I'm too busy. I'm too busy or else I can't.

• 35:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  I can't switch off my thoughts if I have a hot take or if I'm deep in my research and writing. I start to feel guilty. I would feel guilty and shameful. I would consider it extravagant to go, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take 15 minutes or a half an hour to sit down beside a river or near a tree. So I re- re-engage him with a mindfulness practice, mindfulness and meditation practice and breathing practice and body scanning. And all of these things that, I used to do these before the podcast started. This here is the vicious loop.

• 35:47Blindboy Boatclub?

  When I began this podcast eight years ago, and when I started to write short stories eight years ago, I was actually in a state of chronic stress before then too, except it was, I was approaching the end of my twenties. I thought my entertainment career was over and I'd more or less just given up and said, "Fuck it, that's not gonna work. Let's start looking for that normal job that you're so scared of." And that's when I started to engage in daily meditation practice. The stress and fear of that was so great that I started to engage in daily meditation

• 36:29Blindboy Boatclub?

  practice. I'm talking maybe 2016, but then after months of daily meditation practice and finding this wonderful, calm feeling of safety within myself, it was out of that that I first started to write short stories. Creativity came from that feeling of safety. And then the short stories became successful. And then this podcast became successful. And then I found myself so busy that I wasn't meditating daily anymore. And that's something I'd like to work on on my week off from this podcast. I want to figure out, how can I get a daily meditation practice

• 37:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  in again? So I know that because of neuroplasticity, with self compassion and being nicer to myself and allowing myself to have that time in my day to meditate and not to self flagellate and tell myself, "You're wasting time. You're supposed to be working. You should be working and thinking about hot takes, not meditating." I want to challenge that internal criticism because I know enough about psychology that that's...

• 37:40Blindboy Boatclub?

  That's a teacher who wasn't very nice to me when I was a kid and their voice is popping back up in my own head. So that's why there's no podcast this week, even though I've just recorded 30 minutes of whatever the fuck that was. Listen, there's nearly 500 podcasts. If you want to listen to a podcast this week, there's nearly 500 episodes that you can go back to. And I know some people have listened to them all. I've seen The Sopranos, the entire, entire seasons of The Sopranos, like 19 times now at this point in my life. And I can still go back to like, season one or season two and watch an episode and it's just gone. It's gone from my brain, as if I'm seeing it anew. So even if you've listened to every podcast this week, go back and listen to an earlier podcast. You can listen to Pamela

• 38:25Blindboy Boatclub?

  Fags, if you like, the story that was so strange, a neuroscientist wanted to scan my brain. So I suppose that's all I've time for this week. It's only 30 minutes because it's not really a podcast this week. I'm taking the week off.

• 38:41Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm gonna have Dr. Michael Keane on as a guest. I really should have recorded the chat that we had when he was scanning my brain. He's really fascinating. He's a very fascinating person. And his area of expertise is actually the neuroscience of Irish trauma. Like, how are the years of our colonial history, the impact that that can actually have on Irish people's brains. So when I was finished chatting with Dr. Michael Keane and said, thank you for scanning my head, I asked him to be my guest at my gig on Halloween night, my last gig of the year, Pocah Festival up in Meath.

• 39:23Blindboy Boatclub?

  My guest is gonna be Dr. Michael Keane and we're gonna, we'll probably speak a little bit about my brain scan and also the neuroscience of Irish trauma. But there's a few tickets left for that. It's in Meath, you see. It's in Trim in Meath, which is a little bit out of the way. But if you fancied going to that on fucking Halloween night, uh, work away, Pocah Festival, Halloween night in Meath, my guest is gonna be Dr. Michael Keane. Look, let's do a fucking Ocarina pause. I don't have an Ocarina either.

• 39:55Blindboy Boatclub?

  We go for the yogurt lid again. Actually, I do have an Ocarina. Hold on.

• 40:03Blindboy Boatclub?

  Oh yeah, someone give me this in Belfast. Very large, Ocarina.

• 40:11Blindboy Boatclub?

  I don't know how to play this one yet. It's got, I'd say about nineteen holes.

• 40:24Speaker 00

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• 40:52Speaker 01

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• 41:36Speaker 01

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• 41:51Speaker 03

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• 42:27Speaker 00

  Cheers to fall savings at Whole Foods Market, home of higher ingredient standards. This Halloween, share chocolates and candies, made without that spooky high fructose corn syrup. Throwing a party? Make it easy with a Berry Chantilly Cake. Ready to cook pizza? No antibiotics ever chicken wings. And sushi made fresh daily. Fall gatherings never tasted better. Save through November 3rd at Whole Foods Market.

• 42:55Speaker 03

  Hey, it's Hannah Berner from Giggly Squad and the holidays are around the corner, which means I'm officially entering my Hostess Hannah era with Arm & Hammer Hardball Cat Litter. You guys know I love cats and fostering, but when I'm hosting, I do not want my house smelling like cats. I want people focusing on my hosting skills. That's why I love Arm & Hammer Hardball Cat Litter. It delivers long-lasting odor control and forms compact clumps that make cleanup easy, so that's one less thing I need to worry about when people come over. Be guest-ready with Arm & Hammer Cat Litter. Find it now at Walmart or Amazon.

• 43:27Speaker 01

  If you've felt stuck trying to lose weight, you're not alone. Enter Weight Loss by Hers. It's designed to support you in reaching your goals. And Hers now offers access to an affordable range of FDA-approved GLP-1 medications, including the Wegovy pill and the Wegovy pen. Even better, with a range of affordable GLP-1 options, Hers makes it simple to find an approach that fits your needs and your budget, if eligible. You'll get a treatment plan personalized to you and unlimited dosage changes as needed. It's weight loss designed to work with your life. Ready to reach your goals? Visit forhers.com/eligible to get personalized, affordable care that gets you. That's F-O-R-H-E-R-S dot com slash eligible. Forhers.com/eligible.

• 44:11Speaker 01

  Weight Loss by Hers is not available in all 50 states. Wegovy is the registered trademark of Novo Nordisk AS. To get started and learn more, including important safety information, Wegovy clinical study information, and restrictions, visit forhers.com.

• 44:31Blindboy Boatclub?

  It sounds like I'm hearting the Ocarina, this one. This was a very, a very whiny Ocarina.

• 44:37Blindboy Boatclub?

  Look, you'd have heard an advert for bullshit there. I'd know what the fuck they're advertising. I'm actually trying to take the day off. I'm trying to take the day off.

• 44:47Blindboy Boatclub?

  You know the crack with Patreon, all right? Patreon.com forward slash the Blind Boy Podcast.

• 44:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  This is how I earn a living. It's how I rent out the office.

• 44:57Blindboy Boatclub?

  If you wanna pay me, you can. If you don't, that's fine. Listen for free. Patreon.com forward slash the Blind Boy Podcast. You know the crack. Just looking for the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month. Look, there's a lot of gigs in early 2026. I list them out for the crack, starting the end of January. Waterford Theatre, Ryle. You into that? February, Vickers Street. We love a bit of Vickers Street, don't we? Belfast, Waterfront Theatre. That's nearly sold out. Is that the Waterfront Theatre? Am I playing the Waterford Theat- Where's the Waterfront? Oh, yeah, that one. Yeah, that's nearly sold out. Galway, Leisure Land. Glamorous shit there.

• 45:42Blindboy Boatclub?

  Um, Killarney in the Eyneck. There was a Cork Opera House gig there in fucking March 26. Limerick, good old Limerick at the University Concert Hall. Then a big massive tour of, of England, Scotland and Wales. I don't wanna be reading out gigs this week. Fan.co.uk forward slash Blind Boy, if you wanna hear of any of the gigs in town land. All right. I will be back next week with a hot take. But this week, there's no podcast. What, you just heard there wasn't a podcast? It was a phone call. It was a voice note. I'm gonna go and work on rebuilding my nervous system and make time for

• 46:25Blindboy Boatclub?

  I don't always have to be meditating amongst a rotting corpses.

• 46:31Blindboy Boatclub?

  I need to make time for, for meditating in beauty.

• 46:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  Instead of meditating around the thing that I'm terrified of, to meditate and be present in the wonderful gorgeous beauty of life and the sound of wind in trees and water tinkling and bubbling and the joy of a fresh breeze up my nose. I mean, that's what it's about, isn't it? I want to regain the skill, the skill to switch off and quiet my mind down to nothing. God bless you glorious cunts.

• 47:24Speaker 04

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• 47:53Speaker 05

  Hi, this is Dr Shoshana from TED Health and today's episode is sponsored by Kashi. Say hi to new Kashi Gut Health Granola. A straightforward, delicious way to fuel your gut. Made with prebiotics, fibre and cultures. My favourite flavour, blueberry almond, has perfectly crispy clusters, delicious almonds and bursts of whole blueberries. It's an easy fit for a daily routine, whether that's for breakfast or a snack. In a world of overwhelm, it's a straightforward delicious choice. Try new Kashi Gut Health Granola.