What my Uncle who sticks coins to his forehead can tell us about Artificial Intelligence and simulation theory

What my Uncle who sticks coins to his forehead can tell us about artificial intelligence and simulation theory . An exploration of the work of John Scotus Eriugena 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

  Hi, this is Mark Bittman from the podcast Food with Mark Bittman. Cheers to fall savings at Whole Foods Market, home of the 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.

• 0:35Speaker 01

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• 1:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  Guffaw at the Jack Dawes haunted cause, you jaundiced Anyas. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. If you're a brand new listener, and this is your first ever Blind Boy Podcast, maybe consider going back to an earlier episode to familiarize yourself with the lore of this podcast. I've got a fuckload of new listeners now because I did an online interview with Ash Sarkar on her podcast with Novara Media and a couple of clips. There was like three clips and they went very viral. They got, I think, seven million views now over the past month.

• 1:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  And this has brought a huge amount of new listeners, new listeners from all around the world who are like, oh, this prick with a plastic bag on his head. I'm gonna give this podcast a listen. So I have loads of brand new listeners who are mailing me on Instagram wanting to know why I wear a plastic bag on my head, wanting to know which episode of my podcast they should listen to first. Well, if you listen to an episode and you like it, then go back to the very start. Some of the kindest messages I've ever received in my life come from people who went back to the start and started to listen to this podcast as an entire body of work. But also, you don't have to. It's

• 2:37Blindboy Boatclub?

  not strictly linear, not like, fucking hell. I told someone to, I told someone to get into The Sopranos once. I'm like, you need, you really need to watch the fucking Sopranos. You really need to, I mean, look, we've all had The Sopranos suggested to us. It's phenomenal. It was during Covid lockdown. I texted a person and says, you need to watch The Sopranos. And then, like, three years ago, lockdown ended. It was that time when we were all allowed back out onto the streets again. And you, you kind of didn't know how to speak to people when you bumped into them. You didn't know what the rules were. So I bumped into this person and I said, ah, did you watch The Sopranos? And then he goes, yeah, I fucking

• 3:20Blindboy Boatclub?

  love it. I'm watching like three episodes a day. I love it. And then I went, brilliant. Excellent. I know you'd like it. What season are you on? And then he said, ah, no, I just, I just pick episodes at random. I think, I think I just walked away. I don't think I even said, said goodbye. I just, I just left the conversation. I couldn't handle it. I couldn't handle that. I couldn't handle someone. Imagine, imagine watching The Sopranos. Imagine, I better text him actually, because that was about three fucking years ago. I did. I left the conversation. I wasn't being rude. I was just so overwhelmed with the information.

• 4:00Blindboy Boatclub?

  I think I needed to just walk away. Fucking had forgotten about that. Yeah, I should probably give that person a text to explain that. Maybe they listen to the podcast. Kate, Kate O'Halloran, who grew up outside Part 10.

• 4:20Blindboy Boatclub?

  If you're wondering, if you're wondering why I walked away from you mid-conversation three years ago when we met on Upper O'Connell Street in Limerick City, it was because when I said to you, have you been enjoying The Sopranos? You said, yes, I fucking love it. I'm watching three episodes a day. And then I said, what season? And then you said, oh, I just watch random episodes. It's brilliant. And then, instead of responding to that using words, I just turned my back and walked away. I'd like to apologize for the affrontery of my actions. I wasn't being rude. I wasn't being passive aggressive.

• 5:01Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's just that, the information that you've given me, I experienced it as an act of violence against art. You can't just, having never seen The Sopranos, you can't just pick random episodes. What the fuck is wrong with you? What are you doing? What if you said to me, what if I met you and you said, you know what, you should eat cornflakes. Do you ever have cornflakes? They're very common breakfast cereal. Cornflakes are the Sopranos of breakfast recommendations. But what if you recommend, I met you in the street and you said, oh, you should give cornflakes a try. And then I said to you, fuck it, I will.

• 5:41Blindboy Boatclub?

  So the next day, I wake up and I pour myself a bowl of cornflakes, take out some milk, I put the milk on the cornflakes. They're there in the bowl. First thing in the morning, I'm hungry. And then I start to eat the cornflakes with my arse. Because that's what you did. You watched The Sopranos with your arse, you did. You climbed up onto the couch, shoved your head into the cushion and pointed your anus at the television.

• 6:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  So what if I hover my rectum over the bowl and manage to inhale cornflakes up my arse and then try to digest them that way and then report back to you that I enjoyed it? That's the thing. If I tried to shove cornflakes up my fucking arse, it's not gonna go well, it's not gonna be pleasant, it's gonna feel bad, it's an awful way to start the day, I won't be able to digest that food because it's going up my arse. That's not how bodies work. It would be a terrible idea, it'd be a terrible experience. And if I reported back to you, "Oh, I tried cornflakes the other day, but I didn't eat

• 6:55Blindboy Boatclub?

  them with my mouth, I put them up my arse." I'd report back and say, "That was disgusting. Why did you tell me to get into cornflakes?" But that's... You'd have never have had to say to me, "Cornflakes are fantastic, right? But make sure you eat them with your mouth. Don't shove them up your arse." You wouldn't have said that. In the same way that when I said to you, "Fuck it, man, you haven't seen The Sopranos. Jesus, you gotta watch The Sopranos." At no point did I think to myself, "Better tell him to watch it sequentially. Better tell him to go, 'Now make sure that you start on season one and then when you

• 7:37Blindboy Boatclub?

  watch the first episode, make sure that you watch episode two afterwards.'" Why would I possibly have to suggest that to a person? So that's what you did to The Sopranos, Keith. You ate The Sopranos with your arse. And that's why I walked away from you. That's why I walked away from you. It was overwhelming. It was overwhelming information. That was too much. That was... I didn't know what to say to you. I wish I got to...

• 8:08Blindboy Boatclub?

  It was just after the fucking pandemic, alright, and I didn't have a lot of... I'd spent two years stuck inside not talking to people. If it had happened now, I'd have playfully used the cornflakes analogy and found a nice way to tell you that you're watching The Sopranos wrong. But the point I'm making, this podcast isn't necessarily like that. You can begin from the start if you want, but you don't have to. It's not The Sopranos. You can eat this podcast with your arse if you like and you'll be alright, but it's better to eat it with your mouth. But I've been writing this podcast for so long, sometimes I can't remember if I told you a story or not, especially if the story is from my childhood.

• 8:56Blindboy Boatclub?

  I wanna tell you about the first ever five pound note, first ever five pound note that I got. I had an uncle by the name of Noel. He's my mother's brother, a lovely man. And I was, I'd say, four years of age.

• 9:14Blindboy Boatclub?

  And my uncle Noel, he was a money uncle. We all had money uncles. The uncle that, when they fucking visited, they gave you a small bit of money. Alright, everybody had that uncle, magnificent uncles. Money uncles were the best. The next best uncle to a money uncle was a mineral uncle. A mineral uncle was an unclehood... Mineral is, is an archaic Irish term for a soft drink.

• 9:47Blindboy Boatclub?

  And it's interesting because it comes from our tradition of venerating holy wells. This idea that a soft drink with its effervescence and carbonation, the tingle of it on the tongue reminds them of drinking from a sacred well, a natural spring, water from deep under the earth that's pregnant with minerals like zinc and limestone. So that's where you get that Irish phrase, mineral. But you had mineral uncles and that was the uncle that would come up and they wouldn't give you money, but they'd say to you, if you have a little mineral. You have a little tin of mineral. You have a small little tin of mineral. You have a little mineral. That's what made the mineral uncle, the mineral uncle.

• 10:30Blindboy Boatclub?

  They would offer you mineral, but they could never pronounce it like a normal human being. They'd have to get the mineral. You have a little tin of mineral. And then the third type of uncle is the uncle that let you have a sip of their pint. But my uncle Noel was a money uncle. He wasn't wealthy, he just would give you money. He was the uncle that gave you little bits of money. My uncle Noel was, he was a large man. Well, he was probably just because I was tiny. He was a pure country fella from Tipperary. A very kind and friendly man.

• 11:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  But sometimes Tipperary people have a way of communicating kindness, which is violent in a way. Like my dad used to say about my uncle Noel, that when he'd meet my uncle Noel, that Noel had the ability, Noel would give my father this wonderful friendly hello. But he'd do it in such a way that he stepped on my dad's toe, knee'd him into the bollocks and head buttered him all at once. And my dad would be buckled after a hello from my uncle Noel, violently friendly. Lovely man.

• 11:50Blindboy Boatclub?

  And when I was a little kid, whenever uncle Noel would visit, I knew he's gonna give me money. And you're waiting, because the thing is with a money uncle, they'd never give you the money in front of everybody. They'd find their little, the little corner and they'd whisper you away. And they go, here you go, here you go, don't tell your parents. But what my uncle Noel used to do, he had a huge big red forehead. He was a large man, huge big red forehead. And he used to tower above me and he'd take out of his pocket like an old ten p, an old Irish ten p. And the thing is, we're getting money back then.

• 12:29Blindboy Boatclub?

  I was so young that I didn't really appreciate that this is a piece of currency and you can use this to buy things. It's like, no, the money itself is a fucking gift. I'm being handed an adult thing, an object that adults own. This money thing that seems really important and I don't understand what it is, but now I've got a piece of money. So what my uncle Noel used to do. Is he would reach into his pocket and he'd pull out like ten p, ten p coin. And I used to love that, I'd love it when he'd pull out the ten p even more so than twenty p. Cause the old Irish ten pence, it had a fish on it, the salmon on Bradon Fasa.

• 13:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  It was the salmon of knowledge from Irish mythology. Cause you see, if I got that ten p coin, then I knew my dad would see me with it. And he'd tell me the story of the salmon of knowledge from Irish mythology. So anyway, Uncle Noel would reach into his pocket and he'd hide the coin in his hand. And then he'd bring his fist up towards his forehead and I'm looking up at him. He's towering over me and then he'd get the ten p coin and stick it to his forehead. Using the natural adhesion of sweat and pressure. The coin would just stay there on his forehead and I'm looking up going, why is the adult sticking a coin to their forehead?

• 13:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  And then he'd smile and when he'd smile, the muscles of his face would release the coin and it would tumble down. And it'd go into my hands and there I am staring at the ten p, the ten p coin in my fist and the salmon, the salmon on it. And then I'd look back up at Uncle Noel and he'd be left with an indentation on his forehead. A round circle in the middle of his forehead where the skin in the middle is whiter. Because he's just pressed a coin against his forehead. Here's the beautiful thing about the tactile nature of this memory.

• 14:28Blindboy Boatclub?

  I haven't seen an old Irish ten p coin in nearly thirty fucking years, okay?

• 14:37Blindboy Boatclub?

  And when I think of the old Irish ten p coin in my hand, I, I, I see it right now as massive, almost tennis ball sized, but it's not.

• 14:51Blindboy Boatclub?

  Physically remembering the feeling of that ten p coin in my tiny little hand when I was four. I have a muscle memory for this coin, which is probably the size of a bottle cap now as an adult, but my muscle memory has memorized it as being in the context of the size of my hand back then. So back then, it's fucking huge. And I'd stare at this coin and I'd look at the, the image of the salmon on the coin and that was enough. The coin itself was enough. Like, oh my God, look at this thing that I own. And then one of my brothers would have said to me, or my parents would have said, look at that now you've got ten p, what are you gonna get in

• 15:32Blindboy Boatclub?

  the shop? And then I went, oh, okay, this thing is exchanged for, for sweets. And of course with ten p, with ten p, what I'd buy is a Rye of the Rovers bar or a desperate dan bar. We used to eat sweets that were a bit like plastic. A desperate dan bar was orange flavoured with these black rocks in it. And then Rye of the Rovers. If you're an elderly person like me listening to this, you remember a fucking Rye of the Rovers. I would give anything for a Rye of the Rovers. It was a pineapple flavoured bar that would make your tongue bleed. And I'm salivating just thinking about it. And it, this cost ten p and it said ten p on the fucking

• 16:15Blindboy Boatclub?

  bar. And that's what you'd do with the ten p coin. But I was so young, I hated parting with the ten p. I wanted to own the coin. I wanted the thing. And I wanted to own the indentation of the coin on my Uncle Noel's forehead. The ritual of that was part of it. It wasn't just the coin. It was the fact that my, everyone knew that Uncle Noel had given me ten p because he's walking around the place with a fucking, a round mark on his forehead of, of, of whiter skin, whiter than the usual redness of his tipperary skin on his head. It was a ritual.

• 16:54Blindboy Boatclub?

  And then one time Uncle Noel visited. And again, I'm, I'm like four years of age. Def, yeah, four, I'd say I wasn't five, very fucking young. Uncle Noel visited and he got as far as the bit where he's gonna give me money, reaches into his pockets.

• 17:15Blindboy Boatclub?

  And he didn't do the ritual with the coin to his forehead this time. He pulled out a piece of paper and handed it to me. It was a fucking five pound note. I didn't know what it was. I didn't know what a five pound note was. And I was disappointed because he didn't try and stick the five pound note to his head. He just handed me this thing. And then I walked back into the, into the room and all my brothers saw me going, oh my fucking god, he's got a five pound note. This was a big deal. This was a huge deal. Five fucking pounds. This was a big deal. My ma started kicking up a fuss. My ma started going to Noel, Noel, that's too much, that's too much. Take it back now. And then Noel was like, no, no, he can have it. Now, to this day, I don't know.

• 17:57Blindboy Boatclub?

  I reckon what happened is that Noel had a search around his pockets and there was no coins. And the smallest denomination he had was a five pound note. So that's why he gave it to me. And adjusted for inflation, I think a five pound note is probably around 20 euros today. This is the early 1990s, let's, possibly the late 80s. Children weren't given large sums of money. That didn't happen. Celtic Tiger onwards, so we'll say 1996 onwards, then you started to see communions and performatively large amounts of money being given to children. If you made your communion after 1996, chances are an uncle came along and they might have given you 50 pounds or even a hundred pounds.

• 18:42Blindboy Boatclub?

  That became normal before the Celtic Tiger. No fucking way. You gave kids, a pound was a bit mad. A pound was considered a lot. So me receiving a five fucking pound note at four years of age, this was huge. And I was starting to realise it because my brothers were nearly looking at it licking their fucking lips. Like my brothers would have been late teens, but still they were like, this, he's got a fucking fiver. He's got a fiver. And then I'm like, oh my god, I've got a fucking fiver. I don't know what it is, I'm just learning. So I took the fiver. It was a brownie yellow piece of paper with five pounds in it. I, I took it, I ran up, ran upstairs to my room, put it in somewhere safe.

• 19:27Blindboy Boatclub?

  And then I spent ages just looking at the fiver and holding it and. I wasn't thinking about what I can purchase with it, I'm thinking about, I own this. This is an adult thing and I own it and this is mine, this fiver, this object that contains so much power that my ma wanted to give it back and my brothers were jealous of it. This fiver, oh my god. But then,

• 19:56Blindboy Boatclub?

  I was disappointed that when Uncle Noel gave me the fiver, that he, there was no ritual involved, he didn't try and stick it to his head, I missed the indentation of the, the, the coin on his forehead. And then I looked at the five pound note and on the old five pound note, there was a bald man with a large forehead. And I thought to myself, the forehead of the man on this fiver

• 20:29Blindboy Boatclub?

  looked like it could do with a, a coin indentation on it. I wish my Uncle Noel did the coin thing when he gave me this fiver, but he didn't. So then I got a biro and I drew a coin onto the forehead of the man on the five pound note. And then I loved doing that, I'm four. So now I start to draw some dinosaurs on the five pound note.

• 21:01Blindboy Boatclub?

  I did a little attempt at a, a T-Rex, I was fucking obsessed with dinosaurs, obsessed. So I'd have probably done T-Rex, Allosaurus, Brachiosaurus and then Archaeopteryx, which was a bird-like dinosaur. And I probably would have also then drawn a little version of me in, to compare myself to the size of the dinosaurs. The reason I knew I did this is that I still have encyclopedias, world book encyclopedias that I drew in when I was four and these were the drawings I was doing. So I, I vandalized this five pound note. I drew all over it because I wanted the man with the bald head and the old Irish five

• 21:46Blindboy Boatclub?

  pound note to have the indentation of a coin on his forehead like my Uncle Noel.

• 21:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  So the next day, my fiver was the talk of the house. And it was, there was debate and arguments around it. And I remember because

• 22:08Blindboy Boatclub?

  I was at that age where the adults have conversations about you, around you, as if you can't understand what they're saying. Because two years ago, I was a baby. But everyone is talking about me while I'm there and I'm silently listening. And there was a big debate.

• 22:33Blindboy Boatclub?

  Does he, does he deserve that fiver? Was it a bad idea?

• 22:39Blindboy Boatclub?

  Is it too much money for him?

• 22:43Blindboy Boatclub?

  Maybe, like my ma suggested, let's take the fiver off him, right? And maybe my ma would keep the fiver and then give it to me in bits. That she would be a bank essentially. And then some of my brothers were going, no, this should be, this should be distributed. The fiver is actually way too much money for him. It's wasted on him. He doesn't understand this. One of my brothers says, I've, I have to get a geometry set for school. He was in secondary school. I have to get a geometry set, which is one of those, those old tins that had like protractors and triangles in it. He goes, I have to get a fucking geometry set for school. That's like four pounds.

• 23:26Blindboy Boatclub?

  I should have the fiver. I'm the one who should have the fiver. And give him, give him 10p or 20p. He's, he doesn't know the difference. He's, he's four. And then one of my other brothers steps in and says, no, that's not fair. Noel gave him the fiver. That's not fair. Let's, let's explain to him what a fiver is and explain to him. Ask him what he'd like, what does he want with a, with a fiver? And then he goes, why, why doesn't he go and buy a tape? Why doesn't he buy an album for himself? He loves fucking music. Now, I, I did, I adored music. I loved music. I used to rifle through my brother's record collections. And my favorite artist when I was four would have been T Rex. Mark Boland, T Rex.

• 24:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  I was obsessed, fucking obsessed with T Rex. But there was one T Rex album, vinyl. It belonged to my brothers and I had drawn dinosaurs all over it and probably scraped dinosaurs into it. Like my earliest hot take, like my earliest experience of these two things are somehow connected and, and this makes me feel tingly. My earliest one of them was, my favorite artist, T Rex, is also the same name as my favorite dinosaur, T Rex. I would get ferociously excited about the, the interconnectedness of these two things. The happenstance of it.

• 24:54Blindboy Boatclub?

  So my brother suggested, why don't we take him into town? And he, he can buy a tape of T Rex that's his. That costs like five pounds. Why don't we do that? So that's what happened. My brother was gonna take me into the music shop in town. So I could buy my first ever album that I owned. That was mine, my first ever fucking tape. So they said to me, go and get your fiver, go and get your fiver. So I went and got my fiver and brought it back and then showed it to him. And they're like, oh, fuck. He's after drawing all over the fiver. Now I'd really drawn all over the fiver. I, I'd vandalized this fiver. It was still a fiver, but there was biro drawings fucking all over it.

• 25:38Blindboy Boatclub?

  Cause I haven't, I don't know, you're not supposed to do that. I didn't know that. So now there's a new debate.

• 25:46Blindboy Boatclub?

  The brother who wanted the fucking protractor set is very annoyed with me. Going, I told you it's a waste of a fiver. The fiver was wasted on him. And then my ma's, my ma's really pissed off, but my ma says to my dad, "Give him a new fiver. Give him a new fiver. Come on." Because I'm crying at this point now because I'm realising now that I've done something really bad to a fiver. This is getting strong reactions all around. And my dad goes,

• 26:14Blindboy Boatclub?

  "No, I'm not gonna replace the fiver. This is, this is an opportunity for an important lesson for him. I'm not gonna replace the fiver." So my brother says, "I'm gonna bring him into town anyway. I'm gonna bring him into town with the broken fiver." And let's see, because there's no internet. Like, they're all debating, like, if, if you draw on money, does it stop being money? Ah, that was it.

• 26:42Blindboy Boatclub?

  So one of my other brothers brought up that they had a fiver before, and it had split in two, and they'd sellotaped it back together. Because if you remember back then, you don't see it as much anymore, you see, because you're, I'm such a fucking old man. This is the most elderly podcast I've ever recorded. Nowadays, nowadays, euros and shit, they're made out of a kind of a plasticky material, so they don't break in half. But back in the days of paper money, the old Irish pounds, they would rip in half. And sometimes you'd find yourself with a tenner or twenty quid, and it was sellotaped back together, and, and it would work in shops, it would work.

• 27:23Blindboy Boatclub?

  I think if the watermark was intact, that was it. Oh, it's all coming back to me now. My dad and my brothers, they had the fiver up towards the window. And I'd drawn the coin on the forehead of the man on the front of the fiver, and there was dinosaurs, and they were holding it up to the window. And you could still see the watermark, which is the drawing of, of Lady Lavery. And my brother said, "You can still see the watermark. If you can see the watermark, it means that they have to accept this as currency." It, it's... The watermark was the real important thing. You see, the IRA at the time had been flooding the place with counterfeit money, I think.

• 28:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  So the one thing they couldn't get correctly was, was the watermark. So the watermark was important. So my brothers were holding, holding the fucking, the fiver up to the window and the watermark was intact. I hadn't drawn over the watermark. So they decided, let's go into town and see if they'll take this fiver with drawings all over it. That's what we did and went in on the bus with my brother. And the record shop we went to.

• 28:33Blindboy Boatclub?

  Down at what is now Brown Thomas in Limerick City. The menswear department now, downstairs there, used to be a record shop. And I went down those stairs with my brother and we found a tape. And the tape was T Rex's Greatest Hits.

• 28:55Blindboy Boatclub?

  And it had Ride a White Swan, Jeep Star, Get It On. It had, it had songs that I'd never heard because we only had one, one fucking vinyl album of T Rex. So it had songs I'd never heard. So that got me really excited. And we found this tape and it was a fiver. It was perfectly five pounds. And we went up to the counter with the mad fiver with drawings all over it. And I don't remember, I don't remember what happened. Probably my brother. My, my brothers used to get me to wave my eyelashes. They used to get me to wave my eyelashes at adults.

• 29:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  So probably what happened is my brother would have said to the person behind the counter, look, he's after drawn all over his first fiver. And then I would have waved my eyelashes at the person behind the counter. We ended up getting the tape. We ended up getting the tape and that was the first, the first ever album that I owned was the greatest hits of T-Rex on tape that I had purchased with the vandalised fibre that was given to me by my Uncle Noel. Let's have a little Ocarina pause now. I'm in my office, I don't know if you could hear the, the seagulls in the background. I'm in my office. I don't have my Ocarina in this office. Keep losing Ocarinas.

• 30:19Blindboy Boatclub?

  What I do have, I'm gonna hit myself on the head with a book and I enjoy doing this because I get to give you a little book recommendation every time I do it. This is, I suppose you'd call this an academic book. It's called The Origins of Ireland's Holy Wells, written by Celeste Rae. This is a hard one to get your hands on. Celeste Rae is, she's a professor of anthropology in, in Tennessee and she wrote this book, which is a very authoritative book on the, on the study of Ireland's holy and sacred wells. I'm obsessed with fucking sacred wells in Ireland and, and the veneration of them.

• 31:01Blindboy Boatclub?

  Um, it's utterly fascinating from a mythological perspective. So I'm gonna hit myself into the head with this, it looks like it'll be painful, so I'll be gentle, with this book, The Origins of Ireland's Holy Wells, and you'll hear an advert for something. I'm gonna headbutt it rather than hit myself. Yeah, that's not nice. Good sign of a good book though.

• 31:24Speaker 01

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• 31:59Speaker 03

  Get under a blanket and get comfy. This message is sponsored by ADT. It's back to school, back to work, back to cosy nights at home season and ADT is here for every moment of it. They handle your home security so you can focus on spending time with the people who matter. They make it easy with professionally installed systems you can access right from the ADT Plus app. If you need help, their reps are on call 24/7 at the most company-operated monitoring centers in the industry. You deserve some cozy back-to-home time. ADT will keep an eye out. When every second counts, count on ADT. Visit ADT.com today.

• 32:35Speaker 00

  Hi, this is Mark Bittman from the podcast Food with Mark Bittman. Cheers to fall savings at Whole Foods Market, home of the 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.

• 33:15Speaker 04

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• 33:55Speaker 00

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• 34:30Speaker 01

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• 35:08Blindboy Boatclub?

  Oh.

• 35:11Blindboy Boatclub?

  Great fucking book. You don't want to be hitting yourself into the head with this. Just heavy enough to be painful, just floppy enough to have a snap. Yeah. Let's tap it gently.

• 35:31Blindboy Boatclub?

  Gently tapping the book. There you go. There's your fucking ocarina pause.

• 35:37Blindboy Boatclub?

  Hope you enjoyed your adverts.

• 35:40Blindboy Boatclub?

  Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com/theblindbypodcast.

• 35:50Blindboy Boatclub?

  This podcast is my full-time job. This is how I earn a living. I'm funded by my listeners, and that means that I'm driven by failure. I'm driven by the desire to fail, the desire, and what I mean by that is,

• 36:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm not looking for a popular podcast this week. I'm looking for a podcast where I genuinely, impassionately explore whatever the fuck I'm curious about. And what I'm speaking about this week, I'm curious about this stuff. And if I'm curious, then I'm passionate, and if I'm passionate, then I'm authentic. And if I'm authentic, then I have meaning. And this podcast brings me great meaning. And I don't believe, I don't, I'm not in, I don't believe in happiness, like I've said before. I don't chase happiness as a state, because I think that's, I don't think that exists. You can have little moments of joy, but really, what I try to do is I try to live with meaning.

• 36:54Blindboy Boatclub?

  And meaning is, meaning is real. Happiness tends to be retrospective. If you think back to a period in your life where you were like, "Oh, I was so happy back then. I was happy then." Really, a hundred percent of the time, you were happy all the time back then? Or have you just conveniently forgotten the little moments of struggle and pain and frustration? The necessary inevitable suffering of being alive? So often I think, when we think back to parts of our lives, we're like, "I was so happy back then." Really what we were is we were, we were experiencing meaning. We were living life in a way that's meaningful and based in the present moment.

• 37:37Blindboy Boatclub?

  But that's what this podcast does for me. It brings me a great feeling of, of meaning and present moment enjoyment to be able to, to write this type of carry on and for ye to listen to it. So thank you to all my patrons. Thank you to all my patrons for making this possible, for making this my full-time job and for allowing me to have the time to fail and be playful and be curious. So that's patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast. And all I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month. That's it. And if you can't afford it, for whatever reason, don't worry about it. Listen for free. You can listen for free because the person who's paying is paying for you to listen for

• 38:22Blindboy Boatclub?

  free. So everybody gets the exact same podcast and I get to earn a living. Wonderful model based on kindness and soundness. And if you're becoming a new, if you're joining up to my Patreon and you're a new subscriber, don't do it through the iPhone app because Apple will take 30%. Do it instead on, on the browser on your iPhone or on a laptop or whatever. Upcoming gigs, I'm on a bit of a break for the summer. I'm very, very much enjoying my break after intensive touring. But this Sunday, if you're, if you're at the festival all together now, this Sunday, I'm doing a little quiet podcast at. 12pm at noon, nice little Sunday, people with hangovers.

• 39:08Blindboy Boatclub?

  I love that slot at festivals because I'm an elderly man now and I've been doing festivals for nearly 20 years. So a 12pm slot for me is fucking perfect because I can piss off home afterwards. But if you're at All Together Now, come along to my podcast this Sunday at All Together Now, 12pm. I don't know the stage, you'll figure it out. And come along and, and if, if you're a John this tomorrow or a 10 foot Declan and sit up front and let's try and create a bit of a podcast hug because festivals can be a bit of a nightmare for podcasts because you've rubber neckers who come and go. So if you are an enjoyer of this podcast, come along to that. What other gigs?

• 39:51Blindboy Boatclub?

  September, I am in Vicar Street on the 23rd of September. That's almost sold out. That is a lovely Tuesday night gig, Vicar Street in Dublin. Then the 27th on the Saturday, I'm up in Derry in the Millennium Theatre. Um, October, teeny tiny gig up in Sligo in the Hawxwell Theatre, a little intimate, tiny little gig up in Sligo. I love Sligo and I love doing tiny gigs. I love doing big gigs as well, all right? I love doing the, the larger gigs, but you gotta mix it up. It's nice to be in a, in a small room playing to about 300 people. And then on Halloween night, Halloween night in October, I'm at the Poca Festival in Meath,

• 40:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  which is a Halloween festival. So hopefully I'll get a, a cracker of a guest for that one. So again, this week's podcast, you know, I'm talking about an uncle sticking money to his forehead. What I wanna speak about is the nature of reality. I haven't thought about that story in a long time. I haven't thought about old Irish money. I mentioned there that the, the old 10p coin.

• 41:02Blindboy Boatclub?

  That used to have a salmon on it, the salmon of knowledge, which that's a story I've told a lot on this podcast. So if you're a regular listener, you know, the salmon of knowledge story from Irish mythology. I know that story because my dad used to tell it to me and he would use the 10p coin to go, do you know what that salmon is? And then he'd tell me the story of the salmon of knowledge. And that day when my uncle Noel didn't give me the 10p and I was disappointed because I'm like, A, I'm not going to hear the salmon of knowledge story now. B, I don't get to see the magic trick with the coin on the forehead. He just handed me this, this note, this five pound note with, with a bald man, a bald

• 41:46Blindboy Boatclub?

  man on the note. So I've been thinking about that bald man a lot recently.

• 41:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  He was an Irish monk. He was an Irish monk from the eight hundreds, the ninth century. His name was John Scotus Iraduna. Now luckily, loads of his writings still exists.

• 42:11Blindboy Boatclub?

  But finding out about the person himself, it's fucking impossible. I was trying to find out, I wanted to know who made the decision, who made the mad decision to put him on a five, five pound note. It was the series B banknotes and they were issued between 1976 and 1992. So my memory of this, this story as a kid on my first fiver, it definitely happened before 1992. So John Scotus Iraduna with the big bald forehead on the fiver who I wrote on. Now that's not his born name. What John Scotus Iraduna means is John the

• 42:52Blindboy Boatclub?

  Scot or John who was born in Ireland, John of the origin of Ireland and Scot there. Scotia means Irish. Once the Ireland actually colonized part of Scotland.

• 43:08Blindboy Boatclub?

  Ages ago, I think fifteen hundred years ago, and, and the, the west coast of Scotland became the province of Dalryata. So in Scotland back then, the Picts, I believe, used to refer to the Irish invaders as Scotia, meaning foreigner, Scotty. And then over time, in Latin, Scotty started to mean Irish. I've tried to find out his, his real name, his birth name. It's very difficult. You're talking about somewhere from the nine hundreds. But this fella, whose, whose forehead I drew on when I was four, is one of the most

• 43:51Blindboy Boatclub?

  advanced thinkers and philosophers in the world of his time, the ninth fucking century. He, he was a monk in France, so he was Irish. And he went to France to work in monasteries and he, he dedicated his life trying to figure out what is reality and what is God. Like he was an Irish Christian monk, you know, this is the pure land of saints and scholar shit. An Irish Christian monk, but a philosopher who was trying to figure out what is reality. Now, I'm going to adjust this using modern language, but John Scotus's Irina, he basically

• 44:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  came to the conclusion that what you and I call reality is, is a video game. It's a video game that's played by God. Christian philosophy at the time, like the understanding of the world would have been, well, here's the Bible and the Bible says, there's a fella called God, right? And God came along and then in seven days, God made everything. That's what God did. God made everything and what, what we're living in now is, is a concrete reality that God made and, and he physically made it and, and that's what the crack is. John Scotus's Irina was different. He was like, no.

• 45:18Blindboy Boatclub?

  Reality is, is a theophony. And a theophony is like a, a projection made by God. Like, like a, a hologram or a simulation or the ideas or thoughts of God. And if you said to Irina, hold on a minute. I can see things, I can touch things, I can hold things.

• 45:40Blindboy Boatclub?

  Reality is real, I'm living in it right now. He would say, those are just your senses. Everything is within the rules of this theophony, this simulation, this projection from God. And then if you were to ask John Scotus as Irina, well, what the fuck is God? Who is God? Irina would say, well, I quote him directly. Irina said, God is not known because he is beyond everything that can be understood. He is nothing of what we know. He is above being and non-being. And you, you see that, that's a pure early Irish Christianity thing. Like even, there's this 11th century manuscript called the Laugavala Air in the Book of Invasions, which is like a pseudo-history of Ireland, but it also contains elements of the Bible.

• 46:25Blindboy Boatclub?

  And it was written by Irish monks in the 11th century. And the opening words, which I always think are gas, because they're so ridiculously Irish, are, "In the beginning, God made heaven and earth. But he himself had no beginning or ending." Which is awfully silly, but it's a lovely Irish way of saying, whatever the fuck God is, it's unknowable. So that there, that's apophatic theology or negative theology, which was Irina's thing whereby

• 46:59Blindboy Boatclub?

  you, you can only attempt to describe God by what God is not. It's impossible. It, it is not possible to have any words, senses, smells, ideas, visions. It is simply not possible to understand what God is.

• 47:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  Because we're entirely limited by the rules of our simulation. Now, a disclaimer, I'm not, after getting into fucking religion, I'm not, there's no religious, I'm, I don't give a fuck about God or anything like that. I'm a curie, I'm interested in the present moment, that's what I'm interested in. But similarly, I'm not gonna ignore entire bodies of work from brilliant thinkers just because the writing is religious. Like, you know I'm fucking obsessed with Saint Augustine because all his writing is about trying to prove whether there was boners in the Garden of Eden. Like, what the fuck, what am I gonna ignore that? My curiosity won't let me. But anyway, John Scotus is, Regina's big idea. There's no way to understand God

• 48:06Blindboy Boatclub?

  because the only way you could begin to even describe God is by describing God by what it isn't. And the simplest way to understand that is,

• 48:17Blindboy Boatclub?

  I mean, think of a fucking video game. Like, tech- technology now is making this stuff so much easier to understand. Think of a video game like Red Dead Redemption 2. That's the best example. Because Red Dead Redemption 2, it's the closest video game that we have to, to a simulation of reality. There's plants, trees, animals, a weather system, characters, a fairly advanced artificial intelligence. Red Dead Redemption 2 is, is a bit of a reality simulation. But one day in Red Dead Redemption 2

• 48:55Blindboy Boatclub?

  is like 20 minutes in my time. And everything that happens in this video game is, it's on a 2D screen, it's on a screen on my fucking wall. So even though my character in the game experiences a type of 3D reality.

• 49:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  I know in my living room that that video game, it's not actually 3D. That's fake 3D. It's a very clever illusion of a three dimensional space for the benefit of me to enjoy. But to my character in the video game, that's reality. That's their reality. That's their world that they live in, that they die in, that they walk through. Something which I can clearly see is just an illusion. And if you're thinking chill out blind boy, you're projecting a lot of humanity on this character, that character doesn't even know it dies. That's the point, yeah. To that character, that's death. But that character's death to you and me is completely insignificant. There's not even emotions involved.

• 49:55Blindboy Boatclub?

  Emotions don't exist i- i- within the code of the video game. Simulations of, of scripts of emotions exist to please me who's playing the video game. There is no way whatsoever. For the character in my video game in Red Dead Redemption 2, there is no way whatsoever for that character to understand my living room and me. Smell doesn't exist i- in video games. Smell does not exist. The illusion of smell might exist, but fucking smell doesn't exist. It's not coded into it. Like in the video game Red Dead Redemption. And I'm playing it and I'm controlling this, this central character and it's in this beautiful

• 50:40Blindboy Boatclub?

  simulation of the Wild West of America. And that's the thing, I'm controlling the character as far as the poor cunt in the game is concerned. He's experiencing free will. No, I'm controlling you. And I will, well, I'll take my character and sit down at a rock and a magnificent thunderstorm will unfold in front of me and the video game, nature and animals will pop up and it'll feel very, very real. And then I'll sit down with my character and my character will get hungry in the game. In the game, my character will get hungry. A digital simulated hunger that's real to that character in the game, but he could never understand my fucking hunger. There's no way to explain actual real hunger to that character.

• 51:25Blindboy Boatclub?

  But when my character sits down. I can make them a little stew in the video game. And I can see the stew cooking and I can look into it and I can see the character eating the stew. And I can see the video game character being satiated by the stew. And the stew in the video game.

• 51:44Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's a chili con carne. It's a chili con carne, right? And I know it's a chili con carne because not made with minced beef, but made with with chunks of of beef. And one time I was playing Red Dead Redemption 2. Around my own dinnertime. And I'm feeding my character chili con carne in the fucking game. And then I'm sitting in my living room neglecting my own hunger. And now I'm getting hungry for chili con carne because I'm looking at the character in my game eating chili con carne. So then I start.

• 52:18Blindboy Boatclub?

  Imagining all the different smells of cinnamon and cumin. And the bang of chili pepper and all these tastes and senses that I'm bringing to my memory. Which I have no way, I can't explain that to the character in the game. He's eaten a digital chili con carne but has no, there is no way. It's impossible for the character in that video game, no matter how realistic it is with all those parameters.

• 52:47Blindboy Boatclub?

  To explain to them or for them to imagine. What what it's like to taste an actual chili con carne, even though I'm watching him eating it. So then I pause the game, I pause. The reality, I pause reality. For the entire world on this video game. And then I say, fuck that, I'm making a chili con carne. So I go about making my own chili con carne and notice all the flavors and tastes and smells. And then as I'm doing that, it brings back a specific childhood memory for me with chili con carne. So chili con carne.

• 53:25Blindboy Boatclub?

  When I was a kid would have been considered quite exotic.

• 53:30Blindboy Boatclub?

  In the early 90s, chili con carne came in, it was Uncle Ben's chili con carne jar sauce that had a few beans in it and you added it to mince. And when I was a child, it'd be one of these foodstuffs alongside bolognese that we would have to convince our mother to get us as a treat. Because she would have been like, "I don't know what the fuck chili con carne is. This is too strange." But we'd go, "Please, please, the advertisement is on the telly. Please, Uncle Ben's, just get it in Duns the next time." And then she'd get us a jar of chili con carne as a treat and she'd add it to mince meat and probably wouldn't give us rice, she'd have served it with potatoes.

• 54:13Blindboy Boatclub?

  But my ma would make us Uncle Ben's chili con carne, right? And then, whenever she'd make it, my dad wouldn't eat it. My dad would not eat chili con carne because of the teeny tiny bit of spice that was in Uncle Ben's chili con carne, that tiny, teeny tiny little kick of chili. My dad was allergic to it. And then my dad would tell us this mad story. He wasn't allergic to chili con carne, but my dad would only eat profoundly bland foods, the blandest food that you could imagine, and he would militantly reject anything remotely spicy. He'd say, "I can't go near this stuff, that'll cut the belly out of me.

• 54:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  You might as well just stab me, that's like cutting me open with a razor." And then he'd tell us this story about when he was a little child, when my dad was a tiny, teeny little child of about three or four. His appendix burst. My dad's appendix burst. Now, this was in rural West Cork, rural West Cork in the late 1930s, okay? And my dad was a little child of three or four, his appendix burst and he started to get parrenitis, which is lethal blood poisoning. He nearly died as a little child because his appendix burst and started to poison his blood. That's very serious.

• 55:43Blindboy Boatclub?

  And the story he would tell us, like rural West Cork, middle of fucking nowhere, nineteen thirties. And my grandad had to go up on a fucking horse, cause his toddler is dying. And had to ride his horse along the valleys of West Cork, not to find a doctor, but to find the local vet, who was closer than the doctor. And he managed to get the local, the vet, the vet, who operates on animals. And the vet cut my dad's stomach open, when he was a tiny, teeny little toddler, and took out his appendix, and that saved his life.

• 56:27Blindboy Boatclub?

  And then they were able to get him to hospital. And I know that because that's the story that my dad would tell me. When we first started eating chili con carne in my house, my ma would make the Uncle Ben's chili con carne, under pressure from me and my brothers. And then my dad would come out, and he'd lift up his fucking top, and he'd show us, he had scars on his belly, that made him look like he had multiple belly buttons. A vet fucking cut him open when he was a child, and he'd hold up his top, and he'd say, I can't eat that stuff. And he'd get so angry with the chili con carne, that he refused to pronounce it chili con carne. My dad used to call it Trevor Carney.

• 57:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  My dad used to refer to chili con carne as Trevor Carney, as a man. And he'd say, I'm not going near Trevor Carney, he'll stab me, he'll cut me open. And I'd forgotten that. But that memory, and the name Trevor Carney, that came back to me, when I was making chili con carne, because I'd just been playing the video game Red Dead Redemption, where my character is eating chili con carne. And the point I'm trying to make, right? How the fuck do I describe that to my character in Red Dead Redemption, who's sitting down eating their chili con carne? No matter how real this video game looks, no matter how much of a perfect simulation of reality it is, no matter how realistic the weather system looks.

• 57:57Blindboy Boatclub?

  There is no possible way for the character in that game to understand, verbalise, imagine, empathise, visualise in any way that their actions are being controlled by me in a 3D space in a different expression of time.

• 58:22Blindboy Boatclub?

  There is no way that that character can understand, "I'm being controlled by this third dimensional figure called Blind Boy, who has this sense called smell. And this smell triggered a memory of his father calling chili con carne Trevor Carney, because he was operated on by a vet when he was a child." That there is kind of the philosophy of John Scott as Eriguna, who was on the five pound notes, because that's what Eriguna come up with. It's like, whatever the fuck God is, you cannot, there's no possible way to understand

• 59:05Blindboy Boatclub?

  it in any way, because we are bound by the rules of this reality. And this reality is a theophany of God. It's the code in the video game. Everything we experience that we think is concrete and real, it's not. It's all code that's being dreamed about or thought about by God. And what I love about John Scott as Eriguna, about his writings is it's so complex that it's almost atheistic.

• 59:44Blindboy Boatclub?

  The concept of God is so impossible within the constraints of whatever this thing is right now that we're all collectively experiencing called reality. The concept of God within that is so bizarre that it may as well be nothing. How can God exist when even existence itself is within the code of this reality that we're experiencing? I'm eating chili con carne in Red Dead Redemption 2, but I don't know what taste or smell is, and I've no possible way of even verbalising them. Now, I'm not being religious here or anything. I'm interested in this because it's profoundly interesting philosophy from someone who existed more than a thousand years ago.

• 1:00:28Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's so advanced in its thinking. And, and the most important thing that John Scorsese or Juneau did, as far as I'm concerned, is he inadvertently discovered ecosystems. Instead of the old biblical way of going, oh, God created the earth in seven days and he created all these animals and plants and rivers and everything. Irina was like, he, you can't say he created something. Everything that you experience as reality, reality is an ongoing projection of this creation and literally everything is God. And the plants are interconnected with the rivers and the rivers are interconnected with

• 1:01:13Blindboy Boatclub?

  the insects and the weather is interconnected and every single thing that you see around you that you call reality. Because this is all interconnected and there's no such thing as separate parts. It's all one. This is because that this is the theophony, the imagination, the code, the simulation, the video game of God. But you can just replace God there with nature. Biodiversity is a thing. Ecosystems are a thing. From the mighty animal known as the human being. We would crumble tomorrow if the tiniest fungus disappeared on this earth. Everything is interconnected and dependent on each other via nature.

• 1:01:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  But John Scorsese or Juneau, he didn't say nature, he just said God. So he discovered ecology, I suppose you'd say. I'd go one step farther. I think John Scorsese or Juneau is, is the, the originator of, of simulation theory. The idea that we're living in a simulation, that we live in a type of artificial intelligence, a type of video game. We don't know who created it or why, but most likely reality is several layers of, of simulation. I mean, the, the goal of artificial intelligence is to be able to create a reality simulation. That's what's.

• 1:02:40Blindboy Boatclub?

  The people who are making artificial intelligence now and are trying to make it more and more powerful, they want to be able to create a fake type of reality so that we can test things out and better be able to predict things in our own reality. But if that simulation is incredibly accurate and within that simulation you have little artificial intelligences that have consciousness of some description, then as far as they're concerned, the simulated reality that we build, that's their fucking reality. But they will have, and they'll be trying to wonder what the fuck we are, but they can't.

• 1:03:16Blindboy Boatclub?

  I, I know some of this sounds like the type, the type of conversations you have at four in the morning after taking yokes, but like, I'm curious about this shit. I, I think it's deeply, deeply relevant right now because of where we're at with artificial intelligence right now. I'm confused by it. I'm frightened by it and I'm obsessed with very early religious texts, philosophical texts, mythologies that appear to be describing artificial intelligence. I'm fucking obsessed with it. I'm not gonna go into it again. You can listen to my podcast from two years ago. I think it's called Greek mythology and simulation the- uh, theory.

• 1:03:59Blindboy Boatclub?

  But like, I've told you before about the Prometheus, Prometheus in Greek mythology. Prometheus and Zeus created humans. Then the humans got out of hand. They were gonna get more powerful than the people, the, the gods who created them. So Zeus had to create mental health issues within the AI known as humanity in order to limit the capacity and capabilities of humanity. I'm fascinated by how a story that's 2000 years old is so relevant to what's happening right now with artificial intelligence as, as we are definitely on the cusp of possibly creating something that's smarter than us. And the people who

• 1:04:40Blindboy Boatclub?

  are creating the artificial intelligence, they know this shit too. This week, Meta, the parent company of fucking Facebook, announce a new-

• 1:04:51Blindboy Boatclub?

  Superintelligence that they're launching, it's gonna be, it's this massive cluster of computers that's gonna contain a super intelligent AI. And it's the size of Manhattan. And Meta announced that, you know what they're calling it? Prometheus. They are calling their artificial intelligence Prometheus. What is Prometheus by Meta going to be? They're trying to make an artificial intelligence that is more, that is smarter than the humans that created it. The other superintelligence that they're trying to make is called a Hyperion. Hyperion in Greek mythology is, again, he's a titan, which is, Hyperion was like the, the representation of the light of the sun.

• 1:05:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  And, and the clusters of supercomputers that Meta are building, right, are known as Titan superclusters. Both Prometheus and Hyperion within Greek mythology were titans. And again, titans in Greek myth, titans were like the parents of gods. If the gods were a simulation, the titans created the god's simulation, and then the gods created the humanity simulation. The people that are making our AI, the AI that we're all really frightened of, that's in the news right now, and we don't know what it's gonna do, these people, instead of looking at the stories from Greek myth and seeing them as cautionary warnings, are

• 1:06:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  instead going, let's na, let's, let's actually not look at it as a warning at all. Let's name our, our superintelligence after Prometheus. Prometheus and Zeus created artificial hu, human life. Zeus was like, I don't trust the fuckers. We're after creating something powerful here, I don't trust it. Prometheus went, no, I kinda like it, I think I kinda love this artificial intelligence we've made. Prometheus gave the AI, humanity, fire that created superintelligence, as in, uh, something possibly more powerful than the gods that could destroy the gods. It wasn't a good thing.

• 1:07:02Blindboy Boatclub?

  Zeus then freaked out and said, what the fuck have you done, Prometheus? They're gonna kill us. This AI that we've made is gonna kill us. So then Zeus said, we gotta stop him. And then he invented mental health. He invented mental health issues and gave that to the humans via Pandora's box. You're sick of hearing that story from me. I know. Okay, but I had to fucking say it because Meta are after naming their AI Prometheus. Instead of being frightened by the warning, they're going, this sounds like a good idea. So anyway, this week's podcast was about.

• 1:07:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm not too fucking sure what this week's podcast was about. John Scotus as Ariduna. And his placement on the five pound knot. And how a childhood memory of that five pound knot is very relevant to my curiosity right now. About reality. And I think John Scotus as Ariduna's theories on what reality is. They're, they're very relevant right now as humanity embarks upon creating. Artificial intelligence that might be smarter than us and reality simulations. And sometimes in order to have these conversations, you need to, you need to sound like you took a couple of yolks. And you're talking at four in the morning and the sun is coming up. All right.

• 1:08:17Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm aware of that. I know those types of conversations, but it's where we need to go sometimes. I'd also intended, I wanted to speak about the, the entire Old Testament via simulation theory. I wanted to start with the Garden of Eden and end somewhere around Sodom and Gomorrah. No, Abraham and his son. But we're, we're over an hour into this. I'm not gonna have time to do that this week. So I'm gonna revisit the Old Testament. I'm not, not to do with religion, not like this is mythology. I am very interested in fucking mythology.

• 1:09:00Blindboy Boatclub?

  At the end of the day, the Old Testament, you're talking about stories, thousands of years old that are so good. We still have them. So of course I'm gonna be fascinated by this. And I can critically analyze these things and be curious about these things without a religious bone in my body. I'm interested in the present moment. That's my spirituality. The present moment. How can I live meaningfully in the present moment? How can I meaningfully have emotional literacy? So that I can respond to my present moment and not react to my present moment? That's my spirituality. That's my religion. All right, God bless you glorious cunts. I'll catch you next week.

• 1:09:44Blindboy Boatclub?

  In the meantime, wink at a kestrel, blow kisses at a caterpillar, wish good tidings and a dragonfly.

• 1:10:04Speaker 01

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