Butter Melting Down The Neck Of A Warm Horse

An episode about Autistic Masking 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

  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.

• 0:27Speaker 01

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• 1:12Speaker 01

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• 1:29Blindboy Boatclub?

  God bless you hesitant Kevins. Welcome to the Blind Eye Podcast. If this is your first episode, consider going back to an earlier episode to familiarize yourself with the lore of this podcast. But if you're a regular listener, you know the crack. We're in the gosses, the gossip of February.

• 1:50Blindboy Boatclub?

  Things are getting nice and sweaty out there. I experienced my first, my first blast of decent sunshine the other day. The type of sunshine that's... Hits your back and lets you know that you have to start changing the clothes that you're wearing, that you have to adjust your attire because you're moving into a new season. And the bards have started chirping. There's no more silence in the trees. Now, February, it's a greasy month. It's dirty, it's mucky. It's very teenage. It's a very teenage month. Remember when you were like 12 or 13 and you get subtle hormonal changes in your body? You come home from school and your school jumper is sticky and

• 2:34Blindboy Boatclub?

  so is your shirt. And you're suddenly thrust into this new routine of personal hygiene. It's like, oh, you gotta shower every fucking day now. You have to wear deodorant and you get spots on your face. And the change comes so quick that it takes a while to, to figure it out and to get comfortable with the new things that are happening to your body. February as a month is a bit like that. Visually, it still looks like winter. The trees are bare, but the ground is warming up, so everything's all muddy when you walk in it. And you're just waiting for things to settle so you can finally call it spring. And I'm not gonna say February's my favourite month, it's not. But the name, the name February, by far,

• 3:16Blindboy Boatclub?

  it's my favourite month. Because the origin story of where the word February came from.

• 3:23Blindboy Boatclub?

  Now, I've always had a problem with the word February because of that fucking R that's in the middle. I used to always say to myself, why can't it just be like January? Like January is a wonderful month to pronounce, January. Where's this R coming from? Why can't it just be February? But the story of that R is fantastic. I'm nearly sure I did a podcast on this, an entire podcast on the history of February. Now, see, that's it. I say it enough times and I can't fucking pronounce it every year. Back in 2023, I think I did a full podcast on the month of February. February comes from a device that was called a februus. How do I explain what a februus is? So the ancient Romans had a thing about

• 4:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  wolves. The Romans celebrated a pagan festival on the 15th of January. It was a fertility festival called Lupercalia. And lupus in Latin means wolf. There's a cave. There was a cave in ancient Rome. Well, it's still there. Called the Lupercal, at the foot of the hill of Palatine. And this cave was important because the Romans believed that that's where Rome was founded by Romulus and Ramus. They were two brothers and as babies, they were raised by a wolf. They were raised on the milk of a wolf.

• 4:48Blindboy Boatclub?

  But Romulus killed his brother Ramus and then Romulus founded Rome. I suppose I can't mention that without talking about a fellow called Virgil. Virgil was a poet. He would have existed. He was born about seventy B.C., so seventy years before the Barthocrist. And Rome, when he was born, a bit like America now. So what we're seeing with America at the moment, the United States, is the mask is slipping. America is no longer pretending to be the land of the free, where democracy and equality.

• 5:28Blindboy Boatclub?

  Now, under Trump and the narrative of MAGA, America is becoming a nationalistic dictatorship. And now US foreign policy, it's now overtly and explicitly entitled. You saw that with what happened with kidnapping of the president of Venezuela, trying to conquer Greenland. Now, America was always interfering with other countries, but they'd do it in a sneaky covert way. This time, the mask is slipping and they're going, no, fuck that, we do what we want. We're America and we're on the path of making it great again. So our destiny is to do what we want.

• 6:11Blindboy Boatclub?

  And the poet Virgil, back in Rome, he was born into the Roman Republic. And then he watched it go from the Republic into the Roman Empire. And the Roman Empire, the mask slipped. The Roman Empire became expansionist, colonial, entitled, and had a narrative of greatness and destiny. And the person who canonized and wrote that myth was Virgil. Virgil wrote a book called The Enid. He took stories from oral mythology.

• 6:46Blindboy Boatclub?

  And canonized it into a book and said, this is the story of Rome. And the aim it was embraced by this new Roman empire as here it is. Here is the story of greatness. This is why Rome is great and we're destined to greatness. And when we're special and when we can do whatever the fuck we want and take over whatever we want. Here it is. Here's the story of Rome. Make Rome great again. Rome now had its central texts that made it appear to be as great as the ancient Greeks. It was MAGA. And just like now, you've got your billionaires who are funding the MAGA ideology. You've got Elon Musk, who's not funding any individual writers, but he's funding.

• 7:30Blindboy Boatclub?

  He bought Twitter and turned it into X and X is just a propaganda machine for MAGA. And you've got organizations like Turning Point, Charlie Kirk's organization, now Erica Kirk. You saw them there at the weekend. They had their alternative MAGA Super Bowl. That's propaganda. It's propaganda. It's theater. It's theater and entertainment, which borrows from professional wrestling theatrics. It's the aestheticization of MAGA ideology, right? So it creates spectacle, performance and entertainment, not just Turning Point. Fox News does it as well.

• 8:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  We all saw clips of Charlie Kirk's remembrance service with his wife Erica, clearly with fake tears and fireworks. And it felt like watching WWE felt like professional wrestling. That's deliberate, completely deliberate. It's theater. It's MAGA ideology, but aestheticized and funded by billionaires, funded by billionaires to advance policies and to manufacture consent for.

• 8:43Blindboy Boatclub?

  Things that benefit billionaires. MAGA is, it's a national restoration myth, right? So it's this claim of a lost greatness that you gotta bring back. You make America great again. It's a loyalty centered around one leader, Donald Trump. It's not democratic. It's around one fucking leader. Politics become spectacle and entertainment. And people are mobilized, not through critical thinking or debate, but through emotional mobilization, through theater. The transition from the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire was quite similar. They now had their myth, the foundational myth in the Aenid in Virgil's writing.

• 9:24Blindboy Boatclub?

  Rome that now had this wonderful story about how great it was, was now destined to rule. This was destiny. It was like religion. And spectacle started to replace politics. You had triumph, games, ritualized performance. And this replaced fucking civic deliberation, did it call it? This replaced debating, publicly arguing, democracy. And Virgil was at the center of all of that because he wrote this Aenid, this huge foundational myth. He canonized it. And he was funded by billionaires too. He was funded by, he was patronized by a fella called Mycenus.

• 10:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  And Mycenus was Elon Musk, I suppose. He was a political advisor in the way that Elon Musk was, before he fell out with Trump. But it's like, what the fuck are you doing, Musk? You're not a politician. What are you? You're just hanging around Trump. He was a political advisor and a funder and a billionaire. And this Mycenus fella, he was the same. He was the patron of Virgil. He funded Virgil while Virgil wrote the Aenid. Mycenus, he owned the world's first heated swimming pool. So that'll tell you about his wealth. I mean, now Elon Musk is so wealthy that he can fly to the moon on his own rocket ship if he wants.

• 10:48Blindboy Boatclub?

  Thirty years before the birth of Christ, the equivalent of that was, I have the world's first heated swimming pool. That's how wealthy I am. And that's who funded Virgil, who canonized and gave a linear narrative and a definitive mythology of the greatness of Rome. Make Rome great again. That's what Virgil did. And right there at the beginning of the Aenid is the story of Romulus and Ramus. You can go to that cave, the Lupercal cave, and this is where it all started. These two babies, I think one of their dads was the god Mars, and these two babies were suckled on a wolf, and Romulus founded Rome.

• 11:33Blindboy Boatclub?

  So there was a festival that was widely celebrated on the 15th of February called Lupercalia. It was a wolf festival, but it was a fertility festival. It was a sex festival. Now, it's important to note, Virgil didn't invent Lupercalia. This pagan festival that celebrated the wolf, that was there fucking years before Virgil. See, the pagan festival of Lupercalia, the wolf festival, it becomes absorbed into the great myth of Rome, symbolically absorbed, because this wolf festival then legitimizes the mythical geography of Rome. It's like,

• 12:14Blindboy Boatclub?

  there's the cave over there where Romulus and Ramus were born, and now you celebrate this festival. So now this pagan thing gets folded into a nationalism. And the MAGA equivalent is, like, the Super Bowl there was at the weekend. And the Puerto Rican performer Bad Bunny was the main event during the fucking Super Bowl. I don't fully understand the Super Bowl, right? But it was all Spanish language. Now, first off, the Super Bowl was also propaganda. No disrespect to Bad Bunny, no disrespect to people in America who speak Spanish. It was controlled theatre, it was the appearance of being subversive.

• 12:57Blindboy Boatclub?

  The NFL, the National Football League in America is not fucking subversive. It's billionaire dominated, it's a cartel of franchises, it's the machine of American capitalism. And it's broadcast on the networks, which are also funded by billionaires. So I would, I would call the Super Bowl halftime show that everyone saw clips of on the internet, that's controlled opposition. The halftime show at the Super Bowl is one of the biggest events in America. The advertisement slots that are purchased are the most expensive advertisement slots. This is big money. This year, the main performance, the main musical and dance performance was by the Puerto Rican singer, Bad Bunny. It was all in Spanish.

• 13:42Blindboy Boatclub?

  Why do I consider that to be propaganda? I think it was deliberately so that white American people would feel overwhelmed. And it justifies the actions of ICE. ICE are operating as a Gestapo. They're illegally detaining people, people who speak Spanish, people from Central and South America. They're doing this, they're killing people. They're imprisoning, detaining people without due process. You're seeing the collapse of civil rights, of law and order. If you're a white person, sitting at home trying to enjoy the Super Bowl

• 14:22Blindboy Boatclub?

  in your small little white American town, and if for one second, you're starting to think, Jesus, maybe this ICE thing is a bit heavy-handed, maybe I don't like this. Two people were murdered in Minnesota, and you're seeing people who voted MAGA now going, I didn't vote for this, I didn't want this. Podcasters like Joe Rogan, who encourage people to vote for Trump, they're now saying that, I didn't want this, I didn't know this was gonna happen. Now, all of a sudden, you're trying to, you're trying to watch the Super Bowl, and the halftime show is in Spanish language. It's to make those people feel overwhelmed. It's to make those people feel, oh my god, the country is actually being taken over

• 15:05Blindboy Boatclub?

  by people who are not quote unquote, "American", people who speak Spanish. And maybe I'm being cynical, I just, I refuse to believe that the NFL and the TV networks in America are gonna do something subversive on behalf of the Spanish-speaking community in America. I think it was theatre, controlled opposition theatre, to make a white American audience feel as if they're being replaced, they're being overwhelmed. And then Fox News theatrically were saying, "This is wrong, this is wrong, we need something American." So they did the alternative, the Turning Point USA had an alternative Super Bowl show with Kid Rock, white people's stuff, all white people's stuff, on the Turning Point USA

• 15:49Blindboy Boatclub?

  alternative Super Bowl show, right? But I saw footage of the Fox, the right-wing Fox News presenter, Megyn Kelly, and she was screaming and roaring, saying, "This is disgraceful. We can't have the Super Bowl show and they're speaking Spanish. We need something American. We need apple pie." And she started screaming, "We want apple pie." So then you get this vision of apple pies in small rural American towns full of white people. MAGA and Trump didn't invent that. It's a folk memory of how things used to be. But now, small towns and apple pie becomes folded into the MAGA myth. And that's what happened with Lupercalia in Rome. It existed before the Roman Empire.

• 16:30Blindboy Boatclub?

  It existed for hundreds of years, but it becomes, because it legitimizes the foundational myth, it becomes make Rome great again. So what did people do on Lupercalia on February 15th in Rome? Well, it was, it was about fertility, so...

• 16:48Blindboy Boatclub?

  They couldn't sacrifice a wolf because wolves were hard to catch.

• 16:54Blindboy Boatclub?

  So they'd sacrifice a goat or often a dog. They'd sacrifice a dog because dogs were easy to come by. But then they'd make whips from the skin of the dead dogs, of the sacrificed dogs. They'd make whips from, from this skin.

• 17:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  And men would whip women's arses with the dog skin. And this dog skin was called a februs, a februs. And the reason the whipping would occur is it was a fertility festival. So it was believed that the whipping of the arse with the dead dog skin would promote fertility, easy childbirth, mensual regulation. It was a fertility festival and that's what a februs is. It was the skin of a dead dog that was used to slap arses. And that's why February is called February, the februs. That's what that, that is, that's what they are, is they're the februs, the skin of the dead

• 17:56Blindboy Boatclub?

  dog for whipping arses. And because it's February 15th and it was a fertility festival, a sex festival, and it was the 15th of February.

• 18:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's likely that that slowly evolved into, into Valentine's Day, into why Valentine's Day is associated with romance and love and courtship. So learning all that gave me great respect for the month of February. So I'm currently mid-Irish podcast tour. Had a wonderful gig a couple of days ago in Vicar Street up in Dublin and getting ready for Belfast now on Thursday. I've got an amazing guest. She's a professor, a professor of psychobiology called Daisy Fancourt. She did major research into the, the psychological impact of the COVID pandemic,

• 18:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  the impact of the COVID pandemic on, on people's mental health. And she also does incredibly unique research into the impact that art has on our emotional wellbeing and our mental health. And that's something I can't wait to speak about because. I mean, that's my practice. I've known that through lived experience for years. Art, creativity, not just making it, but enjoying it, has been huge for my mental health, for my sense of meaning. I don't exaggerate when I say that music saved my life when I was a teenager.

• 19:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  Really dark times, experiencing anxiety and depression and not having a language to understand my emotions or any tools. Listening to music gave me joy and a feeling of meaning and an escape from pain. And any of you who enjoy art or enjoy music, we know in our bones that whether you're creating art or enjoying art, that this is hugely beneficial to our moods and our wellbeing. We know this shit. But to have a professor who's studying this, who's researching this, it's very exciting because art and creativity, they're not taken seriously in society.

• 20:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  When I was in school, these art or music weren't taken seriously as subjects.

• 20:28Blindboy Boatclub?

  It can't just have been my school, but if we had double art, double art on a Wednesday when I was back in school, and that meant two classes in a row, which was like 90 minutes. If other teachers, if your fucking economics teacher or business teacher heard that you were going to double art, they'd joke about it. You're off Dawson up an art class instead of valuing it. Double art class and being allowed to put my headphones on while I drew for 90 minutes. It's one of the few things that not only made school tolerable for me, but as an undiagnosed autistic kid.

• 21:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  That's when I wasn't in trouble. That's when I was happy. That's when I was engaging with school and being happy to be there. So I can't wait to speak to a scientist who's studying this and can show data around it. And then I'm getting ready after that. I'm going up to Galway on Sunday in leisure land. I'm going to have Tommy Tierney as my guest. I forgot that Tommy lived in Galway and I asked him at the last minute. Tommy is a comedian and a storyteller, but he has a philosopher's head on him. And Galway this Sunday, this will be the fifth time that me and Tommy Tierney sit down and record a chat. And the other four times have never been broadcast.

• 21:49Blindboy Boatclub?

  He's been on the podcast, live podcast, three times. And the reason I've never put the episodes out is we just rile each other up too much. We have too much crack and we start roaring and screaming. And anytime we've done live podcasts, you had to have been there in the room. If I don't put a live podcast out, it's usually because that one was for the audience that were there on the night. There's different energies that you can bring. Most of the time you want to do a live podcast for the people that are sitting there. Those are the best live podcasts when the energy is there in the room.

• 22:31Blindboy Boatclub?

  And when you try and then play that on the podcast, it doesn't work as well because you had to have been there. The energy is off. And sometimes you do a live podcast and it's a bit quieter. And then that's, that's usually more suited to putting it out here for everybody. And then the fourth time I chatted with Tommy Tierney, we had a, he was doing a documentary about four years ago, about the west of Ireland. It was for television and me and Tommy sat in a boat in the middle of Loch Darg with three cameras around us. And we had a wonderful chat for about 90 minutes. About the history of the area, about philosophy, about religion, about everything.

• 23:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  But because of the nature of broadcast television, I'd say only about two minutes of that ended up on actual television and then the rest of it just ends up on the cotton room floor. And there's nothing you can do with it. You can't, because RTE owned the footage. So you can't say, can you put out that entire 90 minute conversation with me and Tommy? They won't do it because television as a format, it's kind of stuck in the past. It's stuck in the past. And I remember saying it to him, put that out, put, put out 90 minutes unedited of me and Tommy having a chat on a fucking gorgeous boat in the middle of Loch Darg. Do that, I promise you, people will watch it. But you couldn't, it's not, that's not broadcast language.

• 23:56Blindboy Boatclub?

  That's podcast language, that's internet language. That, that lack of flexibility is what's killing television. And I'm not singling out RTE there, that's every single broadcaster. Television is a format and if you make something for television, you've got to stick within the format of TV. And the TV format is ruled by predictability, ratings and ad breaks. And TV used to not be like that. In the olden days, in the golden age of live television, I'm talking 60s and 70s. That was kind of closer to podcasting and YouTube now. I give an example, look up fucking Firing Line with William F Buckley.

• 24:41Blindboy Boatclub?

  I think all the episodes are on YouTube. Now, William, he was a right wing yank bollocks, but his TV show, it was just one long unedited debate. You'd have him sitting down arguing with people like Huey P Newton from the Black Panthers. Or James Baldwin, this one from 1972 with Bernadette Devlin, Bernadette Devlin McAlister, who I've had on this podcast a couple of years ago, one of my proudest guests on this podcast. But there's herself and William F Buckley just having an argument unedited for an hour. Amazing stuff and the business model and format of television today because it's refusing to do things like that.

• 25:26Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's being replaced by podcasts. But look, this Sunday in Galway at Leisure Land, myself and Tommy Tierney, and hopefully we record something that I can actually put out on this podcast. But I won't let that get in the way. If we end up playing to the crowd on the night, then that's what needs to happen. Now, there's only a handful of tickets left for that. There are tickets available, but they're going to go quickly because I know people have been, people have been waiting for me and Tommy to do a podcast for years now. 2019, I'd say was the last time I had him on. So I'm a busy goal this week. And again, I'm recording this podcast quite late. Let's have a little Ocarina pause. I actually do have an Ocarina.

• 26:06Blindboy Boatclub?

  I found this gorgeous little dainty, I think it's a 3D printed Ocarina that someone made for me. It's a lovely little Piccolo Ocarina and I'm going to play this and you're going to hear some adverts for bullshit.

• 26:22Blindboy Boatclub?

  Oh, dog warning.

• 26:26Blindboy Boatclub?

  Warning for any dogs, anyone who has a dog. This is a high pitched Ocarina. I'm going to step back a bit.

• 26:39Speaker 03

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• 27:20Speaker 03

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• 27:27Speaker 03

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• 27:37Speaker 04

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• 28:05Speaker 05

  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.

• 28:53Speaker 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.

• 29:21Speaker 06

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• 30:27Speaker 04

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• 31:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's a long time since I've played an ocarina during the ocarina pause.

• 31:15Blindboy Boatclub?

  Several months, I'd say. There was an ocarina famine, an ocarina shortage. I had too many ocarinas. And I started to become overwhelmed with ocarinas to the point that I'd needed to put them away because I'd become...

• 31:32Blindboy Boatclub?

  In a state of shock and awe. We have multiple Ocarinas, that's what fucking happened, too many Ocarinas. I had to get them away. They were crowding my studio space. I was fucking stepping on Ocarinas. I had about forty-three of them, all different shapes and sizes, Aztec death whistles. People were giving me Ocarinas at gigs. And I'd acquired such a volume of Ocarinas that it started to entrench upon my ability to organise myself, as mad as that sounds, alright? It was triggering executive dysfunction, put it that way. But I put all the Ocarinas into a box and I said, "Fuck it, I'll take one."

• 32:14Blindboy Boatclub?

  So I picked this lovely 3D-printed Piccolo Ocarina, alright? And that's what you just heard. Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com/theblindbypodcast. If you enjoy this podcast, if it brings you mirth, merriment, entertainment, distraction, whatever the fuck has you listening to this podcast, please consider paying me for the work that I put in, because this is my full-time job, it's how I earn a living, it's how I rent out all my office, my studio, it's how I pay for all my equipment, it's how I pay my bills. This is how I earn a living. And this podcast is only possible because it's directly funded by the listeners, by

• 32:59Blindboy Boatclub?

  the patrons. This is a fully independent 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, don't worry about it. Listen for free, listen to the podcast for free, because the person who's paying is paying for you to listen for free. Everybody gets a podcast, I get to earn a living. It's a wonderful model based on soundness and kindness. Patreon.com/theblindbypodcast. So the upcoming gigs, as I mentioned this week, Thursday I'm in Belfast at the Waterfront, Sunday, the fifteenth, I'm in Galway, Leisure Land. Oh, that'll be Lu Perkelia. Fuck it, I'm gigging Galway and Letherton on Lupercalia.

• 33:43Blindboy Boatclub?

  Please, nobody bring the skin of a dead dog. But I tell you what, I can't wait to tell Tommy Tierney about Lupercalia because he's gonna fucking enjoy that. Fuck all tickets left for those two gigs, obviously, because they're so close. And end of the month down in Killarney in the Ainech. My beloved broom closet, I'm gonna change inside in that tiny cupboard and have a think about my life. If there's any...

• 34:08Blindboy Boatclub?

  You're welcome to give me a DM on Instagram if you wanna suggest guests for any of my podcasts, but I...

• 34:16Blindboy Boatclub?

  Fucking hell, I've started posting reels on Instagram now. And that's after putting me all over everybody's algorithm, which is a good thing. But it means that I guess 20 to 30 messages a minute when I open my fucking DMs on Instagram.

• 34:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  My reach this month was eight million, so that means eight million accounts on Instagram. Got me in their feed, which is great because it means more 10-foot Declans listening to the podcast. But it just means consistent fucking DMs and not all of them are nice. A good 20% are very angry dads called Declan who want to get a few things off their chest. Because I still get DMs, very, very angry DMs from people like who are absorbed completely into conspiracy beliefs, especially around the pandemic.

• 35:17Blindboy Boatclub?

  I still get mails from people going, "You traitor, you traitor, you told people to wear masks during the pandemic." But still, if you see a gig coming up like that one in Kerry there and you can think of interesting people that are local to Kerry, that you'd like me to chat to, fire me a DM. But if I don't respond, it's because 15 dads have called me a cuck beforehand. So in March, I'm in Carlo on the 14th, uh, the, yeah, the 14th. The 26th, I'm down in Cork at the Cork Podcast Festival that's almost sold out. Then I'm in Castle Blaney, wonderful Castle Blaney there in April.

• 35:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  And finally, Limerick, Limerick City in April 9th. Oh, and the other Vicker Street, other Vicker Street gig on the 20th of April. Then my big tour of England, Scotland and Wales in October 26th, which I know is a long way away, but these gigs are setting out quick. And someone, someone said to me today that they couldn't get tickets for London because it was sold out. And I don't know if that's the case, but that's very possible. I don't have confirmation on that, but London is almost sold out. But someone today said they couldn't get tickets for London. So I have a crack. But anyway, those gigs are Brighton, Cardiff, Coventry, Bristol, Guildford, London,

• 36:44Blindboy Boatclub?

  Glasgow, Gateshead, Nottingham, down to the last tickets on a lot of them. Oh, fuck, in July as well, I'm in Sheffield, I nearly forgot about that. Sheffield Crosswires Festival in July at Sheffield City Hall. Cause I had to come back to Sheffield. Something about Sheffield is calling me in the nicest way possible. I'm, I am marveling at the, the slow collapse of England. I don't mean that in a bad way. It's just, when I went to, lads, the last time I was, I love Sheffield, right? But the last time that I was there, I was walking around and I'm like, what's this feeling? What's the feeling I'm getting here in Sheffield?

• 37:28Blindboy Boatclub?

  And I'm like, what, this feels familiar? I'm like, fuck, this is recession. Now, Limerick feels like that too, with all due respect. My last tour, every, every UK city I went to, the first place I'd visit would be the abandoned Debenhams.

• 37:46Blindboy Boatclub?

  Just so it would feel like home.

• 37:49Blindboy Boatclub?

  Because Debenhams just shut down during the pandemic. So every fucking city's got an abandoned Debenhams and I can't stand outside it. We're witnessing this, this collapse of retail everywhere. Retail isn't coming back. Huge companies are going into receivership. And what I think it is, it's obviously online, it's people buying things online. But the major one was. Before the pandemic, only some people would buy things online. Back in 2019, buying things, clothes, online was like a tech savvy young person thing to do.

• 38:30Blindboy Boatclub?

  And then what the pandemic did is it meant that people's maz and people's das, all of a sudden now were purchasing things online. It made online purchasing and deliveries completely mainstream. And a lot of people didn't go back. So city centres are becoming quite empty. Limerick is fucking empty, completely empty. It's another example of how, I did a podcast a few weeks back about how I've been using the internet for 30 years. And the internet is, it's making our lives a bit more miserable.

• 39:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  And something I, I definitely didn't cover was how many people are just not leaving their houses now because of the internet. When people used to be bored, you'd just leave the house. When people were, like even in their neighbourhoods, do you remember you go down a neighbourhood and there's just people hanging around the walls of their house, talking to other neighbours? That's because they were bored. They'd just go outside and talk to their neighbour and hang around or go for a walk to be somewhere where other people are. People aren't doing that now because a good half hour on TikTok, just scrolling alleviates that boredom that would have gotten them out of the house.

• 39:52Blindboy Boatclub?

  And no one's going into town now to purchase anything because they're just buying them online. So our phones aren't just, it's not just the doom scroll that's making us more unhappy. We're physically not moving around as much anymore or going to places with other people. And the other thing too, if you think of the average argument that you see on Instagram or Facebook, two strangers arguing about politics, roaring abuse at each other, the aggressive death threat DMs that I get, that wouldn't happen in a pub. That wouldn't happen in a pub or a shop. In real life, these type of disagreements get diffused by banter. So it doesn't spiral into complete aggression.

• 40:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  Because it's all online now, you get that disinhibiting effect. And now people are at each other's throats and experiencing anger and rage and becoming entrenched in toxic beliefs instead of engaging in healthy conflict. Healthy conflict where a bit of banter is brought in. People disagree and take the piss out of each other because that's what humans do. But with England in particular, something different is going on and I think it's Brexit. Now, there's no think, it simply is, all right? We're 10 years on now from Brexit and the reports are out, they're getting like, GDP is down 8% than if the UK had stayed in the EU.

• 41:20Blindboy Boatclub?

  And investment in the UK is down 18%. Like, that's a lot. And because my job is going back and forth for the past 20 years, I suppose, I'm able to see these things in real time and something that has really disappeared. 10 years ago, 15 years ago, when I'd go to England or Manchester, you're going there and it's like, oh, they have shit here that we're not gonna see in Ireland until about five years. So like brands, clothing brands, or even food trends.

• 42:01Blindboy Boatclub?

  Like 2012, when I was in London, I used to love Vietnamese noodles, pho. I'm pronouncing that incorrectly. And I knew when I was eating them, I'm like, oh, this is gonna be in Limerick now in about 10 years' time. And yeah, there's two or three pho restaurants now in Limerick, but that's not happening anymore now. So now as an Irish person, when I go to England, it's no longer a few years in the future. And going to Sheffield was the first time I was walking around. Like, I noticed these things. Put it this way, in 2011, fucking height of the recession, height of the recession in Ireland. And I went to gig in Australia in 2011 and I went to Melbourne. And I was in this giant shopping centre in Melbourne.

• 42:48Blindboy Boatclub?

  And I just noticed, I'm like, something's different. What's going on here? What, why does, what, what feels so different about this place?

• 42:56Blindboy Boatclub?

  And I paused and it was the experience of people purchasing. See, back in Limerick, we still had shopping centres, but things were shuttered. And even though certain shops were open,

• 43:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  people were walking around and they were browsing, but no one was buying anything. But then when I was in Melbourne, it's like, what is this feeling? What is this sound? And it was the, the cheerful enthusiasm of several hundred people who'd just made a purchase. They walked a little quicker, the sound of bags rustling. It was a phenomenal thing to just experience viscerally. And when I went to Sheffield this summer, I got the reverse.

• 43:38Blindboy Boatclub?

  I walked around Sheffield and something in, in the ether felt different. And I'm like, what is this feeling? What is this? Oh, it's recession. This feels like 2014. This feels like Limerick in 2014. I'm feeling recession. And the big indicator, of course, was being in a hotel. And there's just one person working there. There's just one person at the desk. And they're also manning the bar and they're cleaning up. That's big recession shit that is. And I felt my heart broke for Sheffield.

• 44:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  And the other thing then that I noticed, and this isn't just Sheffield, this is up and down the UK. I'll never begrudge the Brits a good fucking breakfast. The best hotel breakfasts come from the Brits. The Scottish are the best, actually. The, the English, English is very good. Scottish is the best. Wales is, is on par with English breakfasts, but hotels in England now. When you go for coffee in the morning at the coffee machine at the breakfast fucking buffet, you press the button, you think you're getting coffee that came out of a bean, it's instant coffee.

• 44:46Blindboy Boatclub?

  They're rolling out the sneaky instant coffee in England. Now, instant coffee is fine, but you have to warn a person. You can't place it in the machine that looks like you're getting bean coffee. So then if you want a bean coffee for breakfast, you have to pay for it separately. So anyway, I'm back in fucking Sheffield in July. So one last thing I want to speak about is there's a TV series in Ireland called The Assembly. It's franchised all around the world, as I understand it. But what it is, is it's a format where they get a celebrity in a room with like 15 autistic people. And then these autistic people ask the celebrity questions.

• 45:28Blindboy Boatclub?

  There's an Australian version, a UK version, and now there's an Irish version too on Virgin Media. The purpose of the show is to, to challenge stereotypes about autism, for people to, to, to centre autistic voices, to give a platform to autistic people, to, to model inclusiveness of autism in workplaces and stuff. But anyway, the Irish version is, it's broadcasting on Virgin Media. And I saw a promo clip that they were using on TikTok and Instagram the other night. And I ended up catching a few strays in it. And it was, it didn't feel nice, didn't feel very nice.

• 46:11Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm going to play a clip from the show where I mentioned, and so the person being interviewed is Ryan Tuberty, who's an Irish broadcaster, and he's been interviewed by a fella called Phil, who is an autistic poet, as I understand it. Now, they're just having crack and banter, but the crack and banter insinuates that my name is brought up and it insinuates that I'm not really autistic. This is the clip.

• 46:39Speaker 07

  Something, and I go, we're all the same. We're all neurodiverse, why not? Some people have different levels, so I just wonder about that. And that's your call, when you see someone going, yes, I'm so neurodiverse. You're going, are you? You know, do you get bothered?

• 46:53Speaker 08

  Everyone's got their idea of it.

• 46:54Speaker 07

  Right, and I wonder, do you get bothered when certain people say they've got certain things going on? Or do you say, no, that's your thing?

• 47:00Speaker 08

  Well, like recently, when Blind Boy, the podcaster, he came out as neurodiverse. And when I said that to my mom, he says he's autistic now, and she's like, don't let them take that away from you.

• 47:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  They're all saying it, they're all saying it. So that's the audio, right? Now, first I want to say, both Phil and Ryan Tubberty, they're just having crack. What they're saying there is pretty harmless. If I heard it in a pub, I wouldn't blink an eyelid. Neither of them are being nasty, mean, anything like that. And I really don't want anyone to be pissed off with either of them. Ryan Tubberty starts off with, because he's speaking to an autistic person, saying... I think what he's speaking about is when some people say, like, oh, I'm very ADHD. Or if someone just loves facts, you know, they'll go, oh, I'm so autistic.

• 47:57Blindboy Boatclub?

  And sometimes people flippantly use labels, like, I'm so ADHD, or I'm so autistic. And that's annoying for neurodiverse people because it minimizes the bits that you don't see. Burnout, executive dysfunction, difficulty with emotional regulation, the difficulties that come with actually being neurodiverse. So I think that's what Ryan Tubberty was asking this autistic person, Phil. And then Phil said, oh yeah, when Blind Boy came out as autistic, his mother said, oh, they're all claiming it now, don't take that away from you. And then Ryan Tubberty laughed. That's harmless.

• 48:38Blindboy Boatclub?

  So Ryan Tubberty's laughing at the Irish Mammy reaction, because it's funny. And Phil there is talking about his ma's reaction. First off... Like, I've spoken to Ryan Tuberty loads of times. I've been on his TV shows. I've chatted to him outside of the TV shows. He's always been incredibly kind to me. He listens to this podcast. He's a fan of my work. He's not gonna be saying anything mean or nasty about me. I've also chatted to him enough times to know that he's not that type of person who says mean and nasty things about people. I also don't think Phil meant any harm whatsoever with his anecdote about his ma's reaction. Some people gatekeep autism.

• 49:20Blindboy Boatclub?

  When I got a diagnosis, I did get a tiny bit of pushback from some autistic people. Like, there was one fella on Twitter, now this fella was also a long-term begrudger of me, like, very, very jealous, a Twitter user, always being my mentions with jealousy. But, but he was autistic. And when I got diagnosed, he goes, unlike you, I got diagnosed in childhood. Ridiculous, but when you live under fucking capitalism, people will try and hoard anything and, and maintain scare, the scarcity of that thing to increase its value. So for some people, a minority, if they're ADHD, if they're autistic, and this

• 50:05Blindboy Boatclub?

  becomes their identity, in a bit of a fucked up way, it can feel like a threat to their identity when autism becomes mainstream. The hipsterification of autism, people can hoard and defend autism like it's a cool band that they don't want the normies to find out about. That exists. I've encountered it. It's rare, but it exists. So the actual comments that were made there, if I heard it in a different context, wouldn't give a fuck. And I'm saying it because if any of ye listening were pissed off by that clip, I'm asking ye to please not take it out on either of those two people. I'm pissed off with virgin media.

• 50:49Blindboy Boatclub?

  They should not have broadcast that. That flies in the fucking face. Like, this is a TV show, The Assembly, where they're trying to centre autistic voices, raise awareness about autism, what autism can be, the entirety of the autistic spectrum. Not editing that bit out flies in the fucking face of that mission statement. Here's the facts. The facts are, I'm a diagnosed autistic person. And Virgin Media aired a clip where the legitimacy of my autism diagnosis is called into question. It's in the form of a harmless anecdotal joke. So that bit's grand, like I said.

• 51:34Blindboy Boatclub?

  But the context, the editorial context now is very different. You fucking can't do that. I came across that clip also. They were using that clip on TikTok and Instagram. Virgin Media were using that clip on TikTok and Instagram to advertise the fucking show, to advertise. Someone thought it was a good idea, that a good advertisement for a show that raises awareness around autism is to broadcast a clip. And the entire context of that clip is two people calling into question whether or not a public figure is actually autistic or not. I complained about it on Instagram in my stories.

• 52:17Blindboy Boatclub?

  And loads of people were pissed off, so they went to the comments underneath Virgin Media's video on both TikTok and Instagram. And people were very pissed off, just going, what the fuck? What are you bringing Blind Boy into this for? Are you saying he's not autistic? What are you doing? There was hundreds of comments. I commented as well, just basically asking them, like, why are you doing this? And they deleted the videos, which means they know they're wrong. And then when they deleted the videos, I thought, right, okay, the episode hasn't actually gone out. It's due to go out on Monday night. Maybe because they deleted these clips from Instagram and TikTok. They know that they fucked up and they're gonna edit that out from the final episode. And they didn't do that either.

• 53:01Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's really irresponsible. I like, I'm saying this not just as an autistic person, but I'm saying it as, I make television. I have a TV production company. I understand editorial rules. What are you doing? And the damage that air in that clip does, especially on a programme where you're trying to educate people about what autism is. That stigmatizes autism. When people say to me, you're not really autistic, you don't come across as autistic. I don't take that as a compliment. The autistic spectrum is very different and no two autistic people are gonna be alike.

• 53:44Blindboy Boatclub?

  And I'm somebody who, I can be pretty convincing at autistic masking. I can be very convincing at deploying the performance of being neurotypical. Cause I've fucking learned to do that my entire life, forcing. I went and studied to be a psychotherapist, lads, in my early twenties. I studied to be a psychotherapist. And when I was receiving my autism diagnosis, it was explained to me, and this is quite common. One of the things that would have drawn me towards training to be a psychotherapist is because when you train to become a psychotherapist,

• 54:24Blindboy Boatclub?

  you train in how to read people's body language, how to mirror people's body language. You train in what's called active listening. You train in skills of empathy. You learn about psychotherapeutic theory, which is almost the manual of what it is to be a human being. And when I learned all of these skills, even before I knew I was autistic, when I learned these skills, I was like, fuck it, I'm after finding it. I'm after finding the manual to not be a weird bastard. I'm after finding the manual to not. Meet a stranger and come away with them thinking that I'm eccentric or mad, or all of these words that you get called when you're autistic.

• 55:06Blindboy Boatclub?

  I can do a very good, normal, neurotypical performance. It's what's so draining about being on tour and doing gigs. I've mentioned this before, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna do two gigs this week, lads. And at each of these gigs, I'm gonna meet multiple people at the venue. I'm gonna have to speak to lighting engineers, sound engineers, security staff. I'm gonna have lots and lots of small talk with loads of strangers. And I'm gonna do a brilliant job at it. I'm gonna ground myself beforehand. I'm gonna meditate. I'm gonna be watching my breathing at all times. I'm gonna be thinking about what I'm saying, how I'm speaking.

• 55:49Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm gonna be looking at that person's body language. I'm gonna suppress the urge to start talking about why there's an R in February and refocus my conversation to small talk and to speaking about what needs to get spoken about. And I'm gonna fucking do that. And I'm gonna nail it because I've been nailing that all my fucking life. And then when this tour is over, I'm gonna start to feel confused and dizzy. And I'm gonna struggle with responding to texts, answering emails. I'm gonna have difficulty reading the clock.

• 56:28Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm gonna have extreme difficulty planning my day, tidying up my studio, my space. And I'm gonna do some dumb shit. I'm gonna do some fucking dumb shit. I'm gonna leave the house with two different shoes on. I'm gonna bump into a person I know and I'll start stammering and stuttering or flicking my fingers and I'll have to run away from that person and feel like a fucking cunt. What I'm describing there is executive dysfunction. The effort that it takes me to- Be normal, to be a normal person, to do small talk, to speak with strangers, to do my job, that fucking effort, the cognitive load of that on me drains my social battery.

• 57:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's half four in the morning now, it is 4:30 AM in the morning and I'm delivering a podcast at 4:30 AM because a podcast goes out on a Wednesday, that's just fucking how it is, no exceptions, I put a podcast out on a Wednesday. But why am I doing it at 4:30 AM? Because I'm already experiencing burnout from the few gigs I've done this month already. I'm already experiencing that burnout. So for a lotta today, I couldn't work. I needed to wear incredibly comfy clothes and I needed to pace up and down and flick my fingers and speak to absolutely nobody so that I could bring myself to sit down

• 57:55Blindboy Boatclub?

  and work because there was no way that was happening earlier. Planning, scheduling, initiating tasks, these things are difficult for me at the moment, more than fucking difficult, impossible. And, and that's, I'm saying that because that's what it is to be an autistic person. And I'm very good at hiding all of that shit. A great way that I hide it is I wear a plastic bag on my head so I can go for walks on my own and nobody even looks at me, no one knows who I am, no one gives a shit, I'm nobody. No one's gonna recognise me, no one's gonna wanna have a conversation with me and that is essential to my mental health. Before I knew that I was autistic, I used to speak about mental health all the time.

• 58:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  I used to speak about all these different tools that I have to avoid anxiety, to, to avoid depression. Now I realise I was speaking about autistic burnout when a neurodivergent person experiences burnout and...

• 58:54Blindboy Boatclub?

  I experience burnout when I engage in behaviours that over stimulate me specifically. Someone else might get over stimulated by bright lights, loud noises, not me, I'm cool with that stuff. I get over stimulated by human interaction and small talk. Okay, it's that simple. Doesn't come to me as instinct, it's effort based, it takes a lot of my, my social batteries taken up. And then the consequence of that is burnout and then followed by what's called executive dysfunction, lots of executive functioning skills. Executive functioning

• 59:31Blindboy Boatclub?

  skills, I don't like the word, it makes it sound like robots. It's difficulty with inhibitions. So inhibitions there for me can be if I experience an anxious thought or depressed thought, my capacity to regulate my emotions are reduced. So the anxious thought can then spiral into the experience of anxiety. See, when I'm not burnt out and I'm looking after myself, an anxious thought comes in, then I can analyse it critically and go, no reason to get anxious about that. Let's look at it differently. When I get burnout, that becomes difficult. So then I'm dealing with anxiety. Then another thing that happens when you lose executive

• 1:00:16Blindboy Boatclub?

  functioning, my working memory, my memory becomes fucking terrible. I don't respond to people's texts. I forget very, very important things. This only happened once and I never let it happen again, but I once forgot a sold out gig, lads. It was about 2018. I had a sold out gig up in fucking Dublin and I, I forgot to show up and there was people sitting in the fucking audience and I'm back in Limerick because I forgot about a gig because I was in severe burnout. I forget to pay an important bill. I will open emails that are mad important. I won't answer them. And then when you don't answer emails, it just spirals and spirals. And then I self flagellate and I experience deep shame.

• 1:01:01Blindboy Boatclub?

  And angry voices come in and I start regressing to being a child and calling myself stupid and useless and I can't clean my fucking space and the ocarinas, I was tripping over ocarinas as I know that sounds eccentric and mental and it's funny, I get it, but it's my life. I was tripping over ocarinas and I had to put them away. I hide my autistic behaviour because the price is social shame. That's the fucking price of being autistic. It's no crack. A lot of autistic people are complete loners and don't have friends groups or a lot of friends. We do that by choice. It's not worth the hassle a lot of the time. We're better off by ourselves. I've got family.

• 1:01:44Blindboy Boatclub?

  I've got family who I can be around and who I can, I can unmask around these people. Very close family where I don't have to feel judgement and I can walk around them with a fucking 3XL giant fucking cotton tracksuit. I can talk without making eye contact. I can gleefully rant about whatever subject I'm researching that day and I can stim. I can, I have calluses on my hands from rubbing them together so vigorously. I rub my hands together all the time. I pace back and forth constantly. I need to do that stuff because that's how my nervous system, which is the, the relationship between my

• 1:02:26Blindboy Boatclub?

  brain and my body, that's how my nervous system regulates as an autistic person. I only do that around very close family and one or two very, very close friends. Everyone else have to hide that shit and throw on my neurotypical performance where I don't do that stuff and I suppress it. And it's not pleasant. It's like holding in a giant fart. That's what it's like. Holding in a massive fart. The reason that's an apt metaphor is...

• 1:02:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  Have you ever had to hold in a giant fart, like a fucking huge one, right? And someone walks into the room and asks you a question? And you having a clue what they just said or what they just asked you because all of your effort is about holding in this fart? And now they've left the room, you do your fucking fart, you feel okay. And it's like, I don't know what the fuck they just said to me. I didn't listen to anything they were saying. That's, being autistic is a bit like that. Having to mask, thinking about body language, thinking about eye contact, tone of voice, all of that effort and cognitive load is like holding in a massive fart and then you're not paying attention. That comes with consequences. Consequen- I don't have a leave in cert, lads.

• 1:03:42Blindboy Boatclub?

  That was the consequence for me because that's what school was. Broadcasting a clip on television, not editing it out, broadcasting that clip for two people having a discussion about the validity of my actual diagnosis, like I'm an autistic person. That just creates stigma. It frames autism as this bandwagon that could be jumped on and claimed. That, it sends the message out to autistic people like me who are watching. It reinforces our shame and it pressures autistic people to conceal being autistic rather than to disclose it safely to people.

• 1:04:20Blindboy Boatclub?

  The goal of autism awareness is to get to a point in society where if an autistic person doesn't want to make fucking eye contact in a conversation, that that's actually okay. Or if they're twiddling their fingers or pacing in the middle of a conversation, that this becomes so understood that it's just, it's normal. It wasn't normal when I was in school. I had to sit down all day, tapping my fucking feet. I used to, the shit I used to do in school that I'd framed as misbehaving and now I realised that it was autistic behaviour. I used to, so I'm a sensory seeking person, so.

• 1:05:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  If I'm in a stimulating environment, if I can listen to music, if I can have headphones on with music, then I can feel okay in that environment. I'm emotionally regulated. I feel safe and calm. The same way that, you know, the neurotypical people around me just feel safe and calm as a base level, but for me, I'm overstimulated when I'm around loads of people. So when I was in school, I used to always just have a walkman hidden underneath my desk and I would hide the wire up my fucking sleeve and I had a way of leaning on my hand on the desk so that at all times, one little earbud was

• 1:05:49Blindboy Boatclub?

  sticking into my ear and I was hearing music. And that was the only way that I could put up with being in class and most importantly, fucking pay attention to my schoolwork, to pay attention to what the teacher is fucking talking about. But then of course, the teacher would catch me and take the fucking, the walkman off me because they interpreted that as I'm distracted. How can you be listening to this geography lesson if you're also listening to music with one ear? And it's like, no, you don't get it. I can actually concentrate because I'm listening to this music. They didn't fucking hear that. Get

• 1:06:29Blindboy Boatclub?

  the fuck out of the class. I got suspended more than once for refusing to wear my uniform.

• 1:06:38Blindboy Boatclub?

  Now, I'd framed that as I was just a bold little cunt and I didn't want to be the same as everyone else and I didn't wanna, didn't wanna wear this. No, it wasn't. I was experiencing the fabric of the uniform as painful. Autistic brain sense. The processing of sensory things is different. So for me, now I'm not crazy, overstimulated by fabrics, but it was obviously enough that I couldn't wear my school uniform. I wouldn't just not wear the jumper, forget about it. I would feel as if...

• 1:07:15Blindboy Boatclub?

  When I used to have to wear that fucking jumper, you might as well have poured a lot of ants down my back. That's what it was like, and I wasn't learning shit. I just wanted to, I'd grip my teeth, I'd wanna leave. So I used to wear my hoodie over my shirt, cause that was acceptable to me. But I, I got suspended more than once, cause it was just no amount of giving out to me, no amount of telling me not to do it. I just kept doing it, I kept doing it, cause I had to. Cause I was going nuts if I wasn't, I couldn't wear that fucking jumper. Now, as an adult, the clothes that I wear privately, the clothes that I'm wearing right now, I just would not step outside the house in them. I have to wear 4XL cotton tracksuit pants, 4XL hoodie,

• 1:08:00Blindboy Boatclub?

  and these ridiculous orthopedic crocs. And I wear these things because when I'm wearing them, I just, I feel normal. I feel like me. That's why I wear these things, I feel like me. But I'm not taking that outside. When I'm in my office in work, I wear these clothes in the office, but when I go down to the canteen to get my lunch, I put on my outdoor clothes, I put on my neurotypical clothes that are uncomfortable, just so I can be around people, cause I'm not gonna be around people in a 4XL cotton tracksuit pants with ridiculous fucking crocs. Because it's not worth the stares and the rejection that go along with that. It's just not worth it. There's nothing worse than a stranger looking at you that way.

• 1:08:44Blindboy Boatclub?

  I still experience social rejection and it's not nice. And if an autistic person wants to live completely within their needs, so for me, if it was like, big giant baggy tracksuit and crocs, and that's just, and huge headphones, listening to music all the time, not looking anyone into the fucking eyes, twiddling my fingers, pacing up and down. Who's that fucking lunatic? Let's have a laugh at him, let's have a giggle. He's not welcome here, we'll communicate that with our disgusting body language. So I do none of that shit, I fucking mask, I mask. I play by the rules. I play by the fucking rules. Force eye contact, force small talk, wear the uncomfortable clothes, do all of this.

• 1:09:26Blindboy Boatclub?

  Try and keep it to a manageable amount of time and then I just can't wait to go and be myself, where I'm not judged either by myself or around some trusted close people who don't give a fuck. So because I'm diagnosed, legally I'd be recognised as having a disability. I don't experience it as a disability. The way that my personal understanding of autism as it relates to my individual experience.

• 1:09:55Blindboy Boatclub?

  I don't experience it as a disability. It's much, it's much more closer to how gay people talk about being gay. What I mean by that is, I've spoken to loads of gay people. Ask them about being gay, it's like, I'm just a person. I'm just, I'm just a person. I'm, I'm a lad, right? And everything about me is like, I'm just a fucking person. I just happen to be attracted to other lads. That's it. But I like snooker and video games and all that stuff. It's pretty boring, really. But then when the gay person speaks about their experiences growing up, they're like, well, I had to hide being gay. I was afraid of being bullied. I had to change the way I spoke, the way I walked.

• 1:10:38Blindboy Boatclub?

  I had to suppress certain mannerisms. And then when I hear that, I go, oh, that has nothing to do with being gay. That's homophobia. Alright, okay, so the problems that you face are absolutely nothing to do with being gay at all. It's, all of this is homophobia. It's other people and society deciding that what you're doing is wrong. And that is what's created your problems. So that for me is what autism is like. If I wanna be myself, it comes with a massive, massive price. And that price is social rejection, labelling, being called eccentric, mad, and upsetting strangers just by being me. And as a child, I've screamed at enough times for fucking flicky fingers are...

• 1:11:24Blindboy Boatclub?

  Monologuing on facts, whatever the fuck. You learn this shit at a very, very young age, like a puppy who's been slapped on the nose. And the shitty thing, but by airing that clip, my autism is called into question because I've been, I've been too good. I'm too well-trained. I've, I've learned to, to, to hide it so much that it's okay to call into question my diagnosis. On fucking, on TV with money, money that comes from the taxpayer on a show that's supposed to normalize autism and to make autism acceptable. And they've done the exact opposite.

• 1:12:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  And the other thing too, the Virgin Media, and this is why it's so, it's baffling to me because I make television. It's, I can't understand how this has happened. Like where's the oversight? It, this isn't just about increasing stigma for autistic people. I think that they've actually violated the, the broadcasting. So there's a thing called Commission the Man. It used to be the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland. And this TV show, The Assembly, a lot, a lot of the, the funding for that TV show, I think, comes from Commission the Man. So that's TV licence money. And there's really strict broadcasting and editorial guidelines.

• 1:12:52Blindboy Boatclub?

  So like principle five, you don't, you have to, you don't prejudice respect for human dignity. So i- if you, if you broadcast a clip about me, a public figure, and you're calling into question my diagnosis, that's not providing me with dignity there. You're taking my dignity away. Another clause is around incitement and harm. So you, you can't broadcast abusive or likely to stir up hatred, including around disabilities. It certainly starts up erasure. It starts up the idea that even if a person is, is diagnosed as an autistic person,

• 1:13:37Blindboy Boatclub?

  that it's okay to call that into question. If that person isn't behaving in a way that's, that a neurotypical person considers to be autistic enough. The clauses around disability are.

• 1:13:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  That you can only emphasise disability when the references are justified, right? So I don't know what the editorial justification is.

• 1:14:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  To question the diagnosis of a fucking, a public figure who's autistic, I don't know what that editorial ju- I don't see the ed- the only justification I can see is that it ma- made really good clickbait to share as a clip to advertise the programme, which was then deleted from social media when loads of people complained in the comments. But they left it into the final show, so there mu- there must have been, I'd love to know what the editorial justification was for that. So those are very basic, it's written there, it's in the commission, the man, code of programme standards, right? And I know this stuff because I have a production company, I make television.

• 1:14:47Blindboy Boatclub?

  Th- these are the guidelines that, that make it difficult to make TV, because you have to follow these guidelines if you want to broadcast something on Irish TV. And I'm pissed off at the fact that Virgin Media just put me in a position there where I basically have to justify why I'm autistic, where I have to go, despite what I saw on TV, no, no, actually I am, which I shouldn't have to do because tha- that there removes my dignity, that's the bit around dignity, that's not fair. I'd enough fucking dignity, dignity taken off me by the school system. And ever since I got out of school and was able to become self-employed and to find

• 1:15:29Blindboy Boatclub?

  ways of earning a living that work for me, that was regaining my dignity, that's what tha- th- this podcast gives me fucking dignity. Being able to ha- have a job where I can explore my curiosity and passions and, and write books and lean towards the joy, artistic fucking joy. Listening to music, creating things, researching, experiencing long states of flow and concentration, connecting things that don't seem Connected and finding hidden meanings. That's all joy. That's, that's, that gives me deep meaning. It makes me thrilled to be alive.

• 1:16:13Blindboy Boatclub?

  It gives me dignity. Being able to, to succeed at it and then get rewarded for being good at it. That's all the exact opposite of being back in school. Being told that I'm disruptive and useless and, and worst of all, believing that and not really understanding what was going on. It was in my mid thirties before I reappraised. All those times you were suspended for not wearing a school jumper and then going, fuck, that's what that was. I just thought I was a little cunt and I wa- I wasn't even gonna bother mentioning this shit. It's just that when I saw some of the complaints, there was people, people saying that they

• 1:16:56Blindboy Boatclub?

  had gotten a diagnosis because of listening to my podcast and then other autistic people and parents of autistic kids saying that listening to my podcast and me being public about my autism has helped their children feel okay to be who they are. And that struck me because it reminded me of my dad. My dad was very good with me when I was a little child and we knew that I was different, but my dad always framed it as good things, that I was really smart. He used to call me a genius. I'd be coming home from school, getting called stupid and then I'd be sitting by myself,

• 1:17:39Blindboy Boatclub?

  reading my books, reading encyclopedias and he'd come to me and he'd say, you could do anything you want with that brain that you have. And then when I got older, when I, you know, like I'd be a 12 or 13, I'm in secondary school, he'd say to me, you know, you remind, you remind me a bit of your great grandfather. You know, your great grandfather was like you. Now, I don't think my dad knew my great grandfather very well. He was an older man. My great grandfather would have been born, Jesus fucking 1880. Like I come from a long line of men who had children very old. My dad was 50 when he had me. My dad would say, yeah, your great grandfather. He used to say my great grandfather.

• 1:18:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  He had a small little farm and he used to let the farm go to shit. Nothing would get done because he'd spend all his time sitting under a tree writing poems. And he'd say that my great grandad, this isn't the fellow who was in the IRA now, this is the fellow who would have been, he was, he was a poet, lunatic. And then all his sons were like proper fucking IRA, get shit done, fight the Brits. But my great grandad was a dreamer, a weirdo. And my dad said he'd sit under trees and write poetry, but what he also used to say was, your grandad was like an encyclopedia, your great grandad was like an encyclopedia.

• 1:19:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  People used to call to him to want to find out facts because he would read all the time and he'd know everything about the world. And he'd tell me, he told me one particular story and it was the most beautiful visual image. And this is the bit that's pure fucking artistic. So my great grandad's farm was on a road and this road was on the way, on the way to a creamery. Now, this could have been like 1910. So the road was on the way to the creamery and everyone would bring their charns of milk on horseback down to the creamery because you bring the milk to the creamery and then they turn that into butter for you.

• 1:19:44Blindboy Boatclub?

  And my great grandad would stop everybody on the road and he'd either read his poetry or he used to get a stick and he'd draw the countries on the ground in the dirt and tell people the history of the world by drawing out these countries with a stick. Doing a podcast really, just doing a podcast, but in 1910 on the side of the road to all these people on the way to the creamery. But the image my dad gave me was that the people on the way back from the creamery used to take their horses and go over ditches to avoid him because they'd be coming back from the creamery. And they'd have all the butter, the butter that would just been made in the creamery, they used to pack that

• 1:20:25Blindboy Boatclub?

  in the horse's shoulders, in, in, in, in around the leather, the bridle, whatever the fuck you call it. They'd put the butter in there. And if they came back and my great grandad went on one of his rants, talking about the history of the world or reading his poetry, if they stayed there too long. The butter would start to melt down the horse's chest. Cause my great granddad would be on some big, long monologue about the history of the world. With all this curiosity and knowledge that he wants to give people, but they were avoiding him. And now I look at that, that's pretty autistic. Cause it's like, he doesn't care, he's going on this monologue anyway, cause he needs to get it out of his system.

• 1:21:06Blindboy Boatclub?

  But my dad would say that to me, he'd go, you know, I think you're a bit like that great grandfather, you're a bit like him. He was well known down in West Cork for his stories and for his general knowledge. And he was the man you'd go to if you needed the answer to a question. But when my dad would say that to me, I'd feel proud and I'd feel normal. And I'd feel happy to be me, even though I didn't, I didn't have a diagnosis or anything. I just knew that my, my curiosity and my way of being was a liability, it was creating fucking problems for me. But I thought of that when I heard, when I seen comments from parents saying that their kids feel normal because of me. And that made me very annoyed, obviously then, with that editorial decision.

• 1:21:50Blindboy Boatclub?

  I don't even think it was a decision, I think it was carelessness. And the big reason I was hesitant about fucking mentioning this is if, if a complaint was brought to the commission, the man, right, or if it got into the newspaper.

• 1:22:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  The newspaper's gonna report on it and use my real name. Because that's what they fucking do, no matter how many times I ask them to not do it, they do it just for fucking clicks. And, and it pisses me off, cause I, I say, number one, I say, please don't use my real name. Because privacy is actually an autistic accommodation for me. I'm not just a private person. Privacy and being able to live a normal life is very important to me as an autistic person. So that's why I've got the bag on my head and that's why I use the pen name Blind Boy. That's why I'm fucking Blind Boy Boat Club. That's a pen name and I say to them, why the fuck does Bono get to be Bono? When have you ever seen Bono?

• 1:22:50Blindboy Boatclub?

  Bono is just Bono, doesn't matter what the fuck he's doing. When have you ever seen his real name printed? Never. Fucking Bruno Mars, I'm not comparing myself to Bruno Mars and Bono, but I'm just saying. Bruno Mars's name is Peter. Do you ever see him called Peter? Sting is called Garden. And like, everyone who's an entertainer and uses a pen name, their real name is a matter of public record. But just, the media don't respect mine for some fucking reason. Even though I say to them, can you just be sound? Because it's an autism thing. Can you just let me be blind by please, for fuck's sake? Because I live in Limerick and having just a quiet fucking life, where I can go to Aldi and just not have someone try and talk to me. That's all I want. That's all I fucking want. To pick

• 1:23:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  and choose those moments, to pick and choose when I want to behave neurotically, and for me to have some control over when that happens. And the other thing as well about broadcasting that, it's not just, when you broadcast something, when you make a piece of television and you have editorial control, you have a due diligence, not to just me who's sitting at home, looking at telly, and I'm being mentioned. It's a due diligence to the guests. You've made your guests look like a pair of pricks too now. That's why I'm stressing to ye who are listening, the two people speaking, Phil and Ryan Toberry, they did nothing wrong.

• 1:24:19Blindboy Boatclub?

  I wouldn't give a shit if I heard that in a pub. They made an Irish Mammy joke, which was really funny, and it was anecdotal. And it's grand. All right, I'll be back next week. I have a very, very fantastic and interesting guest next week on the podcast. I can't wait to show you that. In the meantime, rub a dog, genuflect to a swan, wink at a snail. Dog bless.

• 1:25:26Speaker 09

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