What Bebo chain letters can tell us about Anglo Saxon Pagan tree worship and the role of snakes in the evolution of human anxiety

This is a monologue which explores germanic mythology, Irish storytelling, artificial intelligence, Basilisks, snakes and fear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:31Speaker 01

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• 1:16Speaker 01

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• 2:46Speaker 01

  Mod.com is changing the way people battle excessive fatigue. Ever hit a wall in the middle of the day and a third coffee just doesn't do it anymore? Here's what's actually happening. Coffee only briefly blocks adenosine, the chemical that tires you out. When it stops working, your system is flooded and you crash. Medafinil is a prescription treatment that works in a completely different way. Medafinil works by stimulating multiple receptors in the brain associated with wakefulness, including dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, histamine, glutamate, and orexin. It's a more complete solution that gives you 10 to 12 hours of steady focus and energy.

• 3:29Speaker 01

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• 3:48Blindboy Boatclub?

  Grace the wheezing priest, you weeping Amors, welcome to the Blind By Podcast. If this is your first ever episode, please consider going back to an earlier episode to familiarize yourself with the lore of this podcast. And if you're a regular listener, a 10-foot deckling, a steaming quiver, you know the crack. I'm recording this in Limerick on Friday the 16th of October, but you're listening to this on Wednesday the 21st of October. So I'm talking to you from the past. Now, as you listen to this, I'm on tour, right? So we've got Coventry, Bristol, Guildford, London, Glasgow, Gateshead, Nottingham.

• 4:31Blindboy Boatclub?

  Very few tickets left, but if you want tickets, fan.co.uk forward slash Blind By. But as you're listening to this on the morning of Wednesday, the 21st of October, where am I gonna be? I'm gonna be in a hotel room in Coventry because I'll be on tour. Then you might be thinking, well, then Blind By, why don't you just pretend? Why don't you just pretend that it's Wednesday? Just pretend it's Wednesday. And then say, what's the crack? It's Wednesday morning and I'm in a hotel in Coventry. Why must you elaborately explain that you're speaking to us from the past? Why can't you just pretend it's the present? No one cares. They do it on the radio all the time.

• 5:16Blindboy Boatclub?

  Just say you're in Coventry. Just bullshit. Nobody's gonna know the difference and it's less complicated. And that's the conversation I had with myself before pressing record. Pretend you're in Coventry. Just pretend. Hello, everybody. It's Wednesday. I'm in Coventry. I had a great gig last night in Cardiff. I can't do it. I can't bring myself to do that. It's not a dishonesty thing. I'm going on tour. I'm booked into a hotel in Coventry on the 20th of October. Now, yes, it would be a lie. I'd be lying if I said, hello, everybody. I'm speaking to you now from Coventry.

• 5:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  But like, that's a lie, but it's, it's not a harmful lie. It doesn't even matter. And it'd most likely be a more comfortable listening experience for you if I didn't have to do this intro and just said, greetings from Coventry. So why can't I do it then? I'm frightened of jinxing myself. And that was an uncomfortable thing to realize, because that's a bit ridiculous. That's irrational. That's magical thinking. But then I went, no, there is a little bit of a practicality to it. So first off, yes, I'm recording this in Limerick last Friday, but then when I upload

• 6:41Blindboy Boatclub?

  it, this will be a scheduled upload. I'm gonna tell a computer to release this episode on Wednesday, the 21st of October. So there's actually a small chance that shit could go wrong between now and Wednesday. I have to get a taxi, then I have to get a plane, then I have to go to Brighton, then I have to get to Coventry. Now, I have a professional tour manager, one of the best in the business, whose job is to make sure that things do not go wrong. But things go wrong. For instance, I did a gig in Berlin over the summer. I missed my flight to Berlin and I missed my flight back from Berlin. Going to Berlin, the flight was delayed, nothing I can do. I got a different flight and I got to Berlin by the skin of my teeth and the gig went

• 7:26Blindboy Boatclub?

  ahead. How did I miss my flight back from Berlin? Because the thing is, if you miss one fucking flight, you will not miss a second flight. So when it came to flying back, I got to the airport way ahead of time. Everything was perfect. There's no way I'm missing this fucking flight. How did I miss my flight? Actually, listen to this because this is gonna be relevant to everybody. When I got into Berlin, I was so panicked and frantic and rushing to get to my gig that I almost missed because of a late flight. I threw my passport onto the desk in my hotel room, then knocked a bottle of water on it. My passport got wet and I left it on the windowsill to dry because it was sunny and I thought, so what? A wet passport, who cares? That'll be dry.

• 8:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  Passports are electronic now. Don't get your passport wet. When I got to Berlin Airport, well ahead of time, and went to queue to scan my fucking passport, I was in the EU Citizen Q, which means very rapid, very simple passage between borders. But in Berlin Airport, it was all electronic kiosks. There were no humans. There were no humans to check your fucking passport. So I queued up, nice, quick queue, and when I get to the passport machine, it won't read my fucking passport. It won't let me through and there's no human there checking passports. So I have to leave the queue and then find a security guard and go, I can't get through.

• 8:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  I have a passport, look, but the electronic bit is broken. So I went up to the security guard. He looked like, he looked like Graham Norton if you forced him to smell sour milk. So I said to the security guard, can you just let me through? There's my passport, you can see it. Can you just let me through? Just lift up the rope. I can see my gate, it's over there. Just let me through, please. And the German security guard looked at me like I was insane and said, no, I can't lift up the rope. You're gonna have to join that queue over there because that queue over there has got people manually checking passports. It's what I would call the let's punish the Brits queue. I'm touring a long time.

• 9:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  It is very blatantly obvious that since Britain left the EU, Europe has made it very difficult for British people who don't have EU passports to queue up. And this is a, a warning, a message for all other EU members. So if you're from Ireland, you're from Italy, and you go to the airport, you have an EU passport, ride on through electronic machine, boom, two seconds. And then you have to stare at the poor old Brits in that big, long queue. And the message is, look at them, they left the EU. Now it's really difficult for them in airports. So I got thrown into that queue and I pleaded with sour milk Graham Norton. I said, look, this is an EU passport.

• 10:20Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm supposed to be in this queue here. It's just the electronic bit doesn't work, but I'm supposed to be in this queue. I'm supposed to go through really quickly. Come on, just lift up the rope. Just lift it up. Would not do it. This was unconscionable. This doesn't happen. Now, in Ireland, the security guard is just gonna go, okay, fuck it, work away. I'll pull up the rope there, go on. Not in Germany because they have rules and procedures and you don't break them. In Ireland, they break the rules and say, go on. Because in Ireland, we resisted 800 years of colonization, so we're not very fond of rules. Rules by the king? Fuck that. Go on through, hop through the gate, young fella. But in Germany...

• 11:02Blindboy Boatclub?

  They loved the rules so much that a lot of people just went along with the Holocaust because those were the rules, weren't they? But in Ireland, we come from a culture where, where our history is defined by rules, hoisted upon us by a foreign colonial power. It is within our culture to look at rules and ask, I know it's a rule, but is it fair? Is it moral? Is it ethical? Should I follow it, even though not following it is breaking the rules? In 1921, in West Cork, my grandad lived under a rule where any man who put his hands into his pockets was to be shot dead by the police.

• 11:42Blindboy Boatclub?

  So we have a, a post-colonial distrust of following rules just because they're rules. This is why we make good writers. We won't follow the rules of the English language. We won't write in the Queen's English. Fluidity, improvisation, multiple meanings, these are all totally okay within Irish writing, within Hiberno English. But our suspicion around rules can also create chaos. On our roads, a single yellow line means don't park and a double yellow line means definitely don't park, which then means that a single yellow line means, ah, go on, you can kind of park. So our cities are full of people kind of parking or our pedestrianized streets where the rule is, this is for pedestrians.

• 12:27Blindboy Boatclub?

  There's no cars allowed on this street. It's a pedestrian street. So what people do, this is the, this is the craziest shit that Irish people do. This is nuts. When a person in Ireland wants to park somewhere where they're not supposed to park, like a pedestrianized street, they'll park the car diagonally, hazard lights on and a door left open. And you see this every day. And what it's doing, it's communicating to everybody. What I've just done with my car is so fucking insane that it cannot be categorized as parking. Look, it's diagonal. One wheel is on the curb. The fucking door is open. Someone could steal something from the car. You call that parking? That's not parking. This is clearly an emergency.

• 13:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  And the emergency is a man in his late 60s with no teeth going into Sentra to buy a lottery ticket. And it works. It works. People take photographs of the cars and there's dedicated Facebook groups of people half parking. And a traffic warden will come up and not give a ticket to the car. Why aren't you giving a ticket? This person is parking in a pedestrianized zone. And then the, the fucking traffic warden will go, well, I wouldn't call it parking. Have you ever seen a person park diagonally with the door open and the hazard lights on? That's not parking. In order for me to give this person a ticket, this person would need to park the car neatly with the doors locked. Then they're letting me know that they're actually parking, but not this. This isn't parking.

• 13:55Blindboy Boatclub?

  And then 10 minutes later, the, the elderly man comes out of the shop with his lottery ticket and says, sorry about that. I was only sitting down and then drives off. This is one of the reasons why we hate clampers, some clamping company that's owned by an investment fund that makes money off of every clamp. We hate them because they don't acknowledge our post-colonial rule fluidity. So that's one of the negative, that, that wouldn't happen in Germany. You'd go to jail in Germany. So that's one of the negative things about our distrust of rules. So if I'm in an airport in, in Ireland and the machine doesn't read my passport and the security guard can see my passport and go, yeah, this is the same guy. Fuck it. I'm going to lift up the rope. Go on, it'll be grand.

• 14:38Blindboy Boatclub?

  So I learned very quickly, this is not how it works in the airport in Germany. So I walk up to Sour Milk Graham Norton. Here's my passport. You can see it's me. Here's my ticket. I can see my gate. It's just there. Just lift up the rope. Lift up the rope. And he wouldn't do it. And if you're thinking there, you can't just call him Sour Milk Graham Norton now. He was a security guard at the start and now he's Sour Milk Graham Norton because you said he looks like Graham Norton if you forced him to smell sour milk. You can't just change a character's name halfway through a story. Yes, I can. Who made that rule? And also Blind Boy. We're 11 minutes into the podcast. You've taken us down multiple different rabbit holes to the point that I've forgotten

• 15:23Blindboy Boatclub?

  what your original point was. And you don't appear to be adhering to any type of conventional storytelling structure. I know this is an Irish story. I'm not going to follow the rules and tell you a linear story like I'm a fucking Norman chronicler listing out possessions and ownership. I'm telling you an Irish story which is rooted in an unbroken oral tradition, which circles back and wanders and follows the landscape into memory. This is a story from the past about why I won't lie to you about being in the present. This is fairy milk leaking from the tit of a sour cow and rising up into the nostrils of Graham Norton who won't let me onto my flight. It'll all make sense in the end.

• 16:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  So Graham Norton in Berlin Airport wouldn't lift up the rope and let me through the gate. And he goes, no, you have to get into that queue over there. So I had to get into a queue that was about five or 600 people deep of every single nationality in the world that wasn't the EU. And then I missed my flight, missed my flight home. In my 16 years of touring, that's the only time that that's happened. So that's a practical, that's a practical reason why I won't say to you, greetings from my hotel room in Coventry. Because what if something did go wrong and something had to be rescheduled? That'd be very confusing on the morning of the gig.

• 16:45Blindboy Boatclub?

  In the extremely unlikely event of Coventry having to be rescheduled, it'd be deeply unhelpful to have a podcast automatically go out on Wednesday morning, which says, greetings from my hotel in Coventry, just getting ready for my gig in a few hours. So from that perspective, there is a bit of a sensible and practical reason as why I should tell you, I'm recording this five days ago in Limerick, but if I'm being really honest, it's not the reason. I'm scared of jinxing. A very irrational, fear-based part of myself feels that if I was to lie, if I was to lie

• 17:26Blindboy Boatclub?

  and tempt fate by pretending that I am in Coventry now, that I'd, I'd actually be putting a future version of myself in harm, which has no basis in rationality whatsoever. Well, so last week I did tell you that the phrase to be sent to Coventry or to be in Coventry means to be shunned, to be outcast. And I wonder if, if I was to lie and to say, hello, I'm in Coventry, that I'd be tempting fate by shunning myself out of existence. I have to recognize that wordplay, but sure that's mental and it's very challenging to me. It's challenging to my identity because I'd like to think that I'm smarter than that.

• 18:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'd like to think that I am a rational person, a rational person who looks at facts and looks at how the world operates and understands completely that pretending that I'm in Coventry right now is not actually going to prevent me from getting to Coventry or bringing about some terrible disaster upon myself. I have to touch wood. You touch wood. And I'm doing it now, doing it now just because I've said it, even though that's not wood, it's MDF. My desk is MDF. The practice of touching wood is fascinating in this respect to protect ourselves from superstition, from tempting fate.

• 18:54Blindboy Boatclub?

  Like that's when we touch wood. We touch wood when we feel as if we are tempting fate. It's one of those examples of magical thinking, which is, it's socially acceptable. I have a healthy amount of anxiety about going on tour. Huge amounts of planning and preparation and hiring a professional tour manager who does this for a living to make sure nothing goes wrong. But things can go wrong and things do go wrong. So that's why I'd never say, good morning from Coventry. Here I am. It's Wednesday, the 21st of October. Now let's move on to the podcast. That feels like tempting fate. So we touch wood. There's something very interesting about the phrase touch wood and the practice to

• 19:39Blindboy Boatclub?

  touch wood or knock on wood to protect ourselves. A lot of people think it's a Christian thing. You touch wood like the wood of Christ's cross. It's not. You know the way I keep saying, I want to learn more about early English paganism, Anglo-Saxon beliefs, pre-Christian? This is why I'm going to be speaking to Professor Ronald Hutton in Bristol. It would appear that the practice of knocking on wood to protect yourself can be traced back to pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon tree worship. And you can go further there into Germanic paganism.

• 20:19Blindboy Boatclub?

  So pre-Christian Germanic beliefs like the Angles and the Saxons, the Vikings and later the Anglo-Saxons, who were the people who drifted into England around between the fourth and fifth century, when the Roman Empire was collapsing. They all had a, a common mythology and cosmological belief, which is quite beautiful. Their understanding of the universe, of reality, is that it was this gigantic tree called Yggdrasil. Basically, when the Germanic pagans or the Vikings or the Anglo-Saxons looked up into

• 21:00Blindboy Boatclub?

  the, into the stars, they felt as if us, our world on earth, that we were like squirrels, that we were living in the trunk of this gigantic tree.

• 21:14Blindboy Boatclub?

  And when you look up into the sky and see the stars, that's the branches of this mighty Yggdrasil. The trunk is our world, but the big branches stretch into the heavens. And that's where the gods live, up there at the top in the stars amongst the leaves of the trees. And a big eagle lives up there. And then down below are the massive gigantic roots of the tree. And that's the land of the dead, the underworld. And the whole time, there's this god, which is a squirrel called Rataskar. And the squirrel continually runs from the bottom of the universe's tree to the top of the universe's tree. And sometimes stops in the middle.

• 21:55Blindboy Boatclub?

  And this squirrel that goes up and down is like the messenger that communicates between us, the dead and the gods. A bit like Jesus Christ, but you know, before they knew about Jesus Christ, this is pre-Christian. But at the very bottom of this tree, circling the roots that reach into the underworld is a serpent, a snake. The snake's name was Nehtagar. And Nehtagar gnawed at the roots, ate into the roots and destroyed them. The great snake that circled the roots of the universe tree represented death, destruction,

• 22:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  pain, decay, evil sadness, badness, misery. It was the destructive force that damaged the structure that connected the universe. This circling snake around the base of the trunk of the universe. You could call the snake the devil, but it wasn't a baddie. It was a very necessary force. Decay exists, death exists, pain exists, but these things bring about life too. So the serpent is part of the natural order and it circles the tree. It's not up or down or left and right. It's not linear. It's cyclical, like the seasons.

• 23:18Blindboy Boatclub?

  I mean, it's autumn now, leaves are falling from trees, things are about to get bleak. But you know, everything will be born again in the spring and not only born again, the death and decay of winter is essential to nourish the vitality of spring and summer. Absolutely gorgeous. And this is Yggdrasil, the gigantic tree of reality. And then there was these supernatural beings called the Narns. And they brought water from sacred wells and nourished and watered the roots of this Yggdrasil, this gigantic tree, which is all of the known universe. But those Narns represented fate, destiny.

• 24:02Blindboy Boatclub?

  They decided what happened because they water the roots. So the people who had this system of belief that the universe is a gigantic tree and we sit in the middle of, in a trunk, the Germanic tribes, the Angles, the Saxons, the Jutes, they became the Anglo Saxons and then you have sacred groves, the veneration, fear and respect of trees, a belief system where trees are very, very important. And one theory about knock on wood or knock on MDF is that it's, it's leftover from that. The little thing we still kept after thousands of years in English speaking cultures, and

• 24:44Blindboy Boatclub?

  we still do it to protect ourselves from fate, to not tempt fate. We knock on wood almost to cancel it out because the fate thing I'm describing there. I refuse to say that I'm in a hotel in Coventry because just by making that statement, the uncertainty of that makes me afraid that I'm going to change my destiny. So I have to knock on wood to stop it. That's what's called a basilisk, staring at a basilisk. A basilisk is a name for any creature in mythology that once you stare at it, once

• 25:25Blindboy Boatclub?

  you see it, you die, often represented by a snake or a serpent. The obvious one is Medusa from Greek mythology. Medusa was a, a monster, a woman with snakes for hair. And looking directly at Medusa would immediately turn you to stone. She was defeated by the hero Parsus, who held up a mirror. So she had to stare at herself and then she turned to stone. The Anglo Saxons had a creature called a Fafnir, which was half serpent, half rooster. And if you stared at it, you died. But a basilisk doesn't have to be a creature. A basilisk is also an idea.

• 26:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  Humans love certainty. We don't like uncertainty. The basilisk is like the fruiting body of our uncertainty. Me refusing to lie about being in Coventry, that's a basilisk. It's irrational, but it's a basilisk. If I tempt fate by saying that I'm in Coventry, then I'm afraid that I'm going to alter the future. A very common basilisk. And see this, especially people in their twenties who are going in and out of short term relationships. The basilisk is a, a piece of information that once you learn this piece of information, you're doomed. So somebody has a boyfriend or girlfriend and something in their gut, or it might be

• 26:51Blindboy Boatclub?

  their paranoia, their insecurity, but something is saying to them, what if my partner is cheating on me? What if, when my partner goes to the toilet and they take their phone, they're texting someone else and they're cheating on me? Or maybe it's not paranoia and they, they just know, they know. I know by the way, that when we go for coffee, my boyfriend always puts his phone facing down. He never has his phone facing up. What's he afraid of? What does he not want me to see? And then the girl becomes obsessed. She's watching his fingers to guess the passcode of his phone.

• 27:33Blindboy Boatclub?

  Or she's thinking about, he's going to fall asleep on the couch. And when he does, I can put his phone up to his face and that will read his face and then open his phone. And then I can look into his phone and see, is he texting somebody else? But then she figures out his code. She knows if I can just get his phone, I can type in that code and I can find out. I can go in there and I can see if he is messaging someone else. The curiosity is killing her, but also she loves him and she knows that if she does go into that phone and she does see that he's texting someone else, then that information will kill the relationship. It will kill how she feels about him.

• 28:18Blindboy Boatclub?

  She will have to break up with him, but her heart doesn't want to do that because she's in love. So now his phone becomes a basilisk. It's Medusa. Just staring at it will kill her. So she becomes tormented, tormented by looking away. That's a basilisk. I included that example now for the younger listeners because that's, that's a scenario. You just, you'd see that a lot on your TikTok feed, that exact scenario. Sometimes it's lads, but usually it's girls in their twenties going, I don't know whether to look at his phone. And then you read the comments and everyone else is speaking about, I guessed his password. I held it up to his face, but I couldn't look into it because if I did, it would end

• 29:03Blindboy Boatclub?

  the relationship. So that's the basilisk. Another basilisk is, do you remember chain letters? Now this is for the, this is for people my age. This is for the elder millennials. And this is the bit that's bringing up for me. When I say I'm, I'm my identity, my sense of identity is really confronted by the basilisk of, I will not tempt fate by pretending that I'm in a hotel in Coventry because the act of doing so might influence future events, my fate and things beyond my control, superstitious shit. The reason that that's challenging for me and makes me cringe is because I grew up with fucking chain letters.

• 29:46Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm from the first generation of teenagers who had mobile phones and text messages. 1999 was the year, Nokia 3210. 99 was the year when having a mobile phone went from being a thing that only the rich kids had to something that like literally everybody got at Christmas. And then in 1999, everybody had a mobile phone and that's just how it was. Everyone. And you bought credit and sending a text message was fucking expensive. It was like 16p and phone calls were so expensive, you didn't even do it. Phone calls were, if it's a fucking emergency and you have to ring your ma, no one was

• 30:30Blindboy Boatclub?

  ringing each other on the fucking phone. You texted each other and it would cost 16p. And if your friend texted you in 1999, you would respond the next day. And the amount of words that you could type cost money. So that's where you got texts speak. C, the letter C, U, the letter U, later, L, the number eight, R. And then every so often you got a chain text from somebody, you got a fucking chain text. And the chain text would come from a friend and it would say, read this carefully. A girl got this message and deleted it. Three days later, her mother died in a car crash. Send this to five people.

• 31:15Blindboy Boatclub?

  Do not break this chain or somebody in your family will die tonight. This is not a joke. Don't break the chain. And when you got that as a teenager, you were like, fuck.

• 31:27Blindboy Boatclub?

  Fuck.

• 31:29Blindboy Boatclub?

  I only have three Euros credit. If I send five text messages like the chain is asking me to do, if, if I send five text messages, I won't have any credit left. And I won't be able to buy it until next week. But I don't want my mother to die either. What if I break the chain? And this is real? And my mother's gonna die? And you hated the person who sent down that chain text? Because they've just brought a basilisk into your life? You hate the person who has shown you Medusa and turned you to stone? So sometimes when a chain text would come in, and that little message would pop up on your tiny little green Nokia screen, you'd only see the top of it.

• 32:13Blindboy Boatclub?

  You wouldn't open it, you'd only see the top of it. And then it didn't count. Only when you went in and clicked on it and read the full message, were you messing with dark powers? So it stayed in your messages unopened. And you hated the fucker who sent it. And if I got these messages when I was a teenager, I wouldn't send them on. I'm not gonna become the chain text fucking sender on her. But my young teenage brain would be fucking terrified. And I'd be saying to my ma, no, don't drive to the shop. No, just don't. Can you do it tomorrow? Can you go to the shop tomorrow? Why? Why can't I go to the shop? I can't tell you, just don't do it, please. Cause you're not explaining to your fucking parents what a chain message is. Ouija boards were a basilisk.

• 32:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  No one plays with Ouija boards anymore now. But when you were a kid and there was no fucking internet, and you're having a sleepover or hanging out with your fucking friends, someone says, will we do a Ouija board? And then there's a big debate. Someone says, I knew these lads who did a Ouija board, and they spoke to the ghost of a dead child. And then later on that day, his father died. So you would choose to not do the Ouija board, because the act of doing it would contain information. Something would be revealed to you. That as soon as you've seen it, your life would change. So you would have to choose to look away. Do not look. And that's a basilisk. Then you get older and it moved on to social media. It moved on to Bebo.

• 33:42Blindboy Boatclub?

  People would post chain letters to your wall, to your Bebo. How the fuck do I explain a Bebo wall to a 20 year old? Who's listening to this? The comments section underneath your Instagram photo, is the closest thing I can compare this to. Chain letters lost their power as soon as they made it to Bebo. When the chain letters were being sent in 1999, to your Nokia 3210, and it's like, forward this to five people or 10 people or your mother's gonna die? Because it put you in a genuine conundrum. If I send this to fucking 10 people, I've got no credit. Why are you doing this to me? I have something to lose now. Now I, because now I have something to lose. Phone credit. This becomes way more important.

• 34:27Blindboy Boatclub?

  And my choice. I'm choo, this is it.

• 34:32Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm choosing to put a fiver over my mother's life. That's what it was. That's what it was. I'm choosing five Euros credit over my ma dying in a car crash tonight. You greedy fuck. Something within your soul felt like you were doing a deal with the devil. Five Euros credit or my ma dying in a car crash? Sorry ma, I'm gonna have to go with five Euros credit, okay? And then guilt would eat at you. But when it made its way on to Bebo, there was no credit. There was nothing to lose. Pass this on to 10 people? Yeah, I could do that if I wanted to, it cost me nothing. All it's gonna waste is a bit of my time. But by then, the chain letter stopped being something that was a very frightening basilisk.

• 35:16Blindboy Boatclub?

  And instead became an indicator of a person who was a fucking idiot. There was no quicker way to lose coal pints than to post a chain text on to someone's Bebo wall. I remember it, I remember it being about 19, 19. There was a friend of mine in my PLC course. And she fancied this lad. She fancied a lad in another PLC course. Mad about him, head over heels, fucking obsessed. And he had added her on Bebo. They'd become friends on Bebo. So she was like, fuck it, he added me on Bebo. We don't even know each other that well, we just spoke like once or twice, but he added me on Bebo. So like, he probably fancies me.

• 36:00Blindboy Boatclub?

  And then one day, in the computer room in college, cause that's what you had to do to say, check your fucking social media back then, which you only checked maybe once or twice a day. In the computer room in college, she opens up her Bebo page. And your man has posted on her wall, pass this on to six people or your mother's gonna die. And she was heartbroken. She got what the 20 year olds would call the ick. I'm not interested in this fella anymore, for fuck's sake, he's a ride. I fancy the whole of him. He's sending chain letters on Bebo. What a fucking dark. Cause what it meant was, really, really? You'd think a, a body of text, you'd think your ma's gonna die

• 36:46Blindboy Boatclub?

  if you don't paste this text on to five people's Bebo walls. You really, and you're infecting other people with it. You, that's what you believe, sir, is it? That's the reality that you swim in. It was an indicator of someone being a, a very, very unreliable, no crack, bit of an idiot. Stay away from that person. And that's why for me, when I'm like, I can't lie about being in Coventry, in case something terrible happens to me. That's why I'm mortified. What's the difference between that? What's the difference between that? And posting your ma's gonna die on to someone's Bebo wall? It's the same fucking thing. Just, just lie to the podcast listeners. Just tell them, how are you getting on lads? I'm in Coventry right now. And it's Wednesday the 20th of October.

• 37:30Blindboy Boatclub?

  No, I can't, I have to tell you that it's five days ago. All right, I'm sorry, I read something terrible is gonna happen on the way to Coventry. Touch wood. And my grand theory, and there's no way to test this. There's no fucking way to test this, right? And this is a real, this is an elder millennial thing. So if you had Nokia 3210s and you had fucking Bebo, there's a good chance you're a middle aged person now. There's a good old chance you're at least 30. But there's a good old chance you're over 35 and you're into your 40s. All right? The dads on Facebook now, the people on Facebook who are now full grown, middle aged adults, who might have families and responsibilities,

• 38:14Blindboy Boatclub?

  full grown adults who've been caught hook, line and sinker with absolutely bizarre conspiracy theories. People who think that IPASS centres, which are full of refugees, people escaping places like Yemen or Eritrea. There's people who think that IPASS centres are actually full of military aged men who are getting ready to launch war on Ireland. Are the people who you went to school with? And they, they thought that the Covid vaccine was secret microchips that were gonna get unlocked by 5G towers? Or people who think the, the earth is flat? Are the people during the pandemic who would send fucking chain letters

• 38:57Blindboy Boatclub?

  about, my brother works in the army and tomorrow morning the army are gonna be on the streets? And they'd forward these things on WhatsApp? All of those middle aged people, right? My age. How many of them were posting chain letters to people's Bebo walls 20 years ago? I think it's the same people.

• 39:16Blindboy Boatclub?

  I think it's the same fucking people. There's no way to study it, Bebo is gone. It's the same paranoia and lack of critical thinking. But there's one basilisk

• 39:29Blindboy Boatclub?

  that does give me the willies.

• 39:32Blindboy Boatclub?

  That, I won't say it keeps me up at night, but I don't like thinking about it. So the basilisk in mythology, it's a creature that pops up in the mythologies and folklores of multiple different cultures. It's often snake like. And its danger is, it's not that it attacks you. It's not that it chases you. It's that you must never look at it. It's there in the Old Testament. There's these cities called Sodom and Gomara. And these were cities of depravity. Gambling, vice, greed, everything you can imagine. It's where we get the term Sodommy. And Sodom and Gomara are so depraved that God decides, I'm gonna destroy this place with a rain of fire.

• 40:16Blindboy Boatclub?

  But he goes to one fella called Lot. And he says to Lot, it's a little bit like Noah's ark. He says to Lot, this city of depravity, Sodom and Gomara, I'm gonna destroy it next week with meteors. But you Lot, I'm gonna let you know when this is happening, so you and your family can escape. But when the fire rains down from heaven upon the city and you're escaping, you must not look back. Do not look back at Sodom and Gomara as it burns. You can't do it. Just escape, but do not look back. So Lot says, all right, God, no problem. We'll get the fuck out and we won't look back. So as Lot is leaving with his family,

• 41:00Blindboy Boatclub?

  he says to his family, don't look back. Even though you can hear the bombs behind you, you can hear the fire, don't look back. And then his wife looks back and she turns to a pillar of salt. That is the basilisk. It gets at our human curiosity. You can't tell us not to look. You can't tell us not to look, we're gonna fucking look. It's the red button. In Greek mythology, there's the story of Orpheus. Orpheus is in love with Eurydice. And they get married. And he's head over heels and he loves this woman. But on their wedding night, Eurydice, she gets bitten by a poisonous snake and she dies. And Orpheus is heartbroken.

• 41:44Blindboy Boatclub?

  How can you take my wife away? The love of my life on our fucking wedding night? And Orpheus is a musician. And he plays a song that's so sad that it reaches the gods. And the song is, I'm heartbroken. My wife got bitten by a snake and now she's dead. And I can't get her back. How could this happen? And the song is so sad and so beautiful and so convincing that even the gods go. Do you know what? I've got some empathy for this human.

• 42:14Blindboy Boatclub?

  Let's let him down into Hades. Let's let him, you can't let a human into Hades. Let him down. Let him down into Hades and he can rescue his wife. He can go and get her spirit and bring her back to the mortal realm. So the gods go to Orpheus and say, there you go. Go down into Hades, into hell and find your wife. And you can bring, you've safe passage. You can bring her back to life through Hades and into the mortal realm. But here's the thing, once you find her, you have to trust that she's following you. Because she won't be able to speak. You won't be able to hear her footsteps. You will just have to trust that she is behind you at all times. I know this is important.

• 42:59Blindboy Boatclub?

  I know you love her and I know you wanna get out, but you have to trust she's behind you. Do not look back to check. You cannot check that she's following you. You have to trust. Don't look back. So Orpheus goes down to Hades. He finds his wife. He gives her a hug. My God, I can't believe I'm seeing you again. Let's go. I've been given permission. Let's go. Now we gotta leave, okay? But I can't look at you. So he begins the long journey out of the depths of Hades. And he can't hear his wife behind him. He has to trust she's definitely following me. She's definitely there. But it eats at him and eats at him.

• 43:38Blindboy Boatclub?

  And just as he gets to the exit and ready to bring her soul back, just as he gets to the exit, his curiosity gets the better of him and he turns around to check and she disappears. That's a basilisk. And again, the snake is present in that story. It's the snake that bit his wife. And that's the basilisk in mythology. And there's stories like that all over mythology around the world. One basilisk that eats at me is Rocco's basilisk. And this isn't from mythology. This is from 2010. There was an internet forum in 2010 called Less Wrong. And it was a forum, there would have been a lot of experts on it. A lot of artificial intelligence experts there in, like this is 2010.

• 44:22Blindboy Boatclub?

  So that's 16 years ago. We weren't really speaking about AI back then. Experts were, but not me and you. And a user by the name of Rocco posted a thought experiment about AI. And the thought experiment became known as Rocco's Basilisk. And he posted in 2010, imagine an incredibly powerful, super intelligent AI is created hundreds of years into the future. A super godlike intelligence that we can't even fathom. The AI starts to become annoyed and wishes that somebody had invented it sooner.

• 45:02Blindboy Boatclub?

  And it starts to get pissed off with humans because it thinks the humans should have created me earlier, shouldn't they? So it starts to, it starts to scrape all the known data of everyone who has existed, all the humans, me and you, who have existed before in the past and creates digital sentient simulations of our consciousness. So you're dead, right? You're gone. But 200 years in the future, a super intelligent AI brings back your consciousness, your sentience, your feeling, your sense of being alive.

• 45:42Blindboy Boatclub?

  So then the AI in the future begins to torture the consciousness of every human who didn't help to create it. So therefore, anyone who thinks about the possibility of this AI now is obligated to create it to prevent a future version of themselves from being tortured. Now that's mad. That's nuts. That is a brilliant piece of science fiction. The person who posted that on the forum should be writing science. They should be writing short stories because that is just brilliant. But the thing that's chilling about it is Rocco's Basilisk got banned from the forum.

• 46:24Blindboy Boatclub?

  The moderators, who were like artificial intelligence experts, treated it as an information hazard. They took it seriously. They treated it like a Bebo chain letter. They took it fucking seriously. Pass this on to 10 people. In the future, there will be a super intelligent AI who will punish a digital copy of the consciousness of anyone who did not help to create it in the past. Once they became aware of its possible existence, pass this on to 10 people. And it got banned from the forum as an information hazard. But we only know about it because it got banned. That's the, that's what drew attention to it was the fact that a moderator went, no, fuck this, ban it. No, just in case.

• 47:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  No, it's gone. And now, of course, it's very famous. And you know, am I freaked out by it? No, no, I'm not fucking freaked out by it because that's what Christians do that all the time. I can hear that right now. I can walk around Limerick city centre and there's Christian preachers on the streets. This new breed of, of strange Christian preacher. A lot of them are, some of them are ex-drug addicts and they speak about, I was once addicted to drugs and then I found Christ and now I'm free. And they're evangelical, they're evangelical preachers. And they shout and scream in the streets all day. And what they shout and scream, like you know what I'm talking about. Like it's actually, it's inappropriate.

• 47:52Blindboy Boatclub?

  If this is happening in Limerick, it's happening in every city. It's actually, it's inappropriate, antisocial, rude. And they will, if you're walking with kids, they'll do it if you're walking with tiny kids. Non-consensual fear and terror on a, on a street with families. Like it's, it's really fucking inappropriate. But these preachers, basically, they will go, I am born again. I'm, I was a sinner. I'm not a sinner anymore. I'm born again. I have accepted Jesus Christ into my life. All of you, all of you here are sinners. Now Jesus Christ loves you, but if you haven't accepted him into your life, then I'm sorry.

• 48:37Blindboy Boatclub?

  Even if you think you're leading a good life, you're not harming anyone. You're all sinners, lads. You're all sinners, okay? And accepting Jesus Christ into your life, it means becoming born again, like me. You have to go and get baptized as a man in your 30s. That's what born again is. But all ye, because you're not, you're all sinners. Okay? Now Christ loves ye, don't get me wrong. However, you're gonna die and when you die, you're gonna go to hell because you're a sinner. And what hell means is like, like eternal torture. So a version of you, your soul, like a digital copy of you, in the future is gonna get tortured in hell forever, right? Unless you become born again, like me.

• 49:19Blindboy Boatclub?

  If you become born again and you accept Jesus Christ into your life, then you don't have to worry about being tortured forever or a copy of yourself being tortured forever in eternity. But you, you over there, you over there who's just walking down the road there, trying to bring your children for ice cream, you over there with the toddlers, bringing your kids for ice cream, you sir, did you know that? Did you know that even though you're like a, a good person and you're out here with your kids and you're enjoying the vitality of life and loving their smiles and cuddling them and hugging and being a good parent? Did you know that you're actually a fucking sinner who's going to hell? Just because you're not born again, were you aware of that? And that the good deeds that you think you're doing don't matter a fuck because you're not born again? Did you know that?

• 50:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  No, I didn't know that. I'm only hearing that now, non-consensually from you while I'm trying to buy ice cream with my kids. I'm only hearing that now. Ah, well, you've heard it now and now that you know it, now that you've been told this, if you don't become born again, you're choosing to ignore what I've just told you. I've just given you a basilisk. I've brought a piece of information into your life without your consent. And now that you know this piece of information, if you choose to ignore that and turn away from Jesus Christ and not bring him into your life, you're gonna burn in hell forever. A digital copy of you will be tortured forever and your kids, you get them baptized. And just as a wonderful irony.

• 50:49Blindboy Boatclub?

  Do you know who I saw doing this in Limerick as one of these preachers? Do you remember earlier I told you about the girl in college and she fancied a fella? And then she stopped fancying him because he posted a chain letter on her Bebo wall? Him, I remember him, he's there now, he's about thirty-nine, still good looking. Has that indentation above his eyebrow where the eyebrow ring once was. He used to cruise around in a Honda Civic. All the girls were mad about him and he's still posting chain letters via evangelical Christianity to families who were just trying to walk around with their children. That's why I'm not that freaked out by the Rocos basilisk and the AI thing. It's just Christianity, that's all the fuck that is.

• 51:34Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's, it's the incredibly manipulative strain of evangelical Christianity where preachers get to be antisocial in public places. But like those lads, those preachers on Irish streets, they're just chain lettering in public. Now that you've received this text, pass it on to five people because the person who didn't do it, their mother died in a car crash. That's all that fucking is, it's the same, it's the same cunts. Did we have basilisks in Irish mythology? We did indeed. It wasn't associated with snakes, but it was associated with the protection of cattle.

• 52:16Blindboy Boatclub?

  Cause we were pre-Christian Ireland, we were a cattle-based economy. We moved with cows. Our epic tales, like the Tain, it's about a cattle raid. And the protection of, of cattle and milk and dairy was central to our pre-Christian economy. Cattle was money. The king was whoever owned the most amount of fucking cows. So our basilisk was about protecting cattle from the evil eye. Certain people would have the evil eye and they would stare at cows. And people up until like the fifties and the sixties, around calving season, when the cows would be full of milk,

• 52:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  people would tie ribbons, they would tie ribbons around their cows to protect them. Or they would protect the water that the cows drank, they'd put a horseshoe into the water. Or they'd get water from a fairy well. Or in one instance, one of our great illuminated gospels from the sixth century, the Book of Duro, they found this because a farmer had been using it, like this sixth century fucking book. A farmer had been dipping it, dipping it into his cattle's drinking water to protect them. What are they protecting them from? Some people had the evil eye and they would stare at cows.

• 53:38Blindboy Boatclub?

  And if they stared at those cows, the cow's milk would dry up or it would come out sour. Fairy milk. The fairy milk would leak from the tit of a sour cow and rise up into the nostrils of Graham Norton. Didn't I tell you earlier, it would all make sense in the end? So we had that basilisk, but it was a bit, bit different. It's a person who stares at cows. And you have to ask the cow to not stare back, which is ridiculously Irish, cause you can't fucking do that, can you? You can't tell your cows, don't look at that man, even though he's trying to look at you. The final thing I want to say about the basilisk. And this is what I find utterly fascinating, this is what I fucking adore about the basilisk.

• 54:22Blindboy Boatclub?

  Every culture has this serpent-like creature that you must never look at. And the act of looking, the act of seeing, once that happens, it's done. You freeze, you turn to stone. And throughout history, it reappears. Medusa had the snakes in her hair, that's fucking ancient Greece. Orpheus's wife was bitten by a snake and then he can't look back. He can't stare at it. The Saxons have the big snake that goes in a circle, goes in a circle around the tree of the universe. The serpent determines fate, then you knock on wood. If you don't want to tempt fate, there is a brilliantly plausible theory

• 55:06Blindboy Boatclub?

  that the basilisk exists in human culture as a very early folk memory. So here's the thing. Homo sapiens, like me and you, people like me and you, we've been around for three hundred thousand years. You could get a baby from three hundred thousand years ago and just raise it now and it will become the exact same as me and you. But three hundred thousand years ago, people like me and you came from Africa, close enough to around South Africa, and then walked north.

• 55:46Blindboy Boatclub?

  Eventually, we made it up to North Africa, where we would now have Morocco, Egypt. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors, when travelling the desert, very rarely, incredibly rarely, would have come across like Egyptian cobras, venomous snakes that aren't just deadly, but they're physically intimidating. A cobra has that hood and they hiss and they have that eyes and that stare. But see nowadays, we live in the Anthropocene. Humans are the most dominant animal on earth, we have changed the earth.

• 56:27Blindboy Boatclub?

  And humans come across poisonous insects and poisonous snakes all the fucking time because we've encroached on their territory. But highly venomous snakes or spiders, like you see this in Australia, the highly venomous ones, they tend to be incredibly isolated in the middle of the fucking desert. And they're so isolated that when they come across prey, they have one shot. That's one of the explanations as to why the fuck does a snake need to be that poisonous? Why, why do we need this? Why does nature need this? Well, the snake needs it if it's so isolated that it might see prey once every two or three months. So it needs to be deadly.

• 57:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  So humans like me and you, let's say two hundred and fifty thousand years ago. Now here's the other thing. There's six billion humans on the planet now, six billion. Two hundred and fifty thousand years ago, there might have been maybe two hundred thousand humans on the entire earth. Our ancestors, so a tiny population and spread out wide. So the chances of that small human population, hunter-gatherer in the depths of the desert of Egypt and Morocco, the chances of them coming across a cobra, incredibly rare, but it definitely happened.

• 57:50Blindboy Boatclub?

  And it would have been so rare and so strange and so terrifying that the encounter would become legendary. So if you think of the cobra in particular, scientists looked at, you know, why do cobras need that display? Why does the cobra stand up and display its large hood, its neck, with those two staring yellow eyes and that tongue and the hiss? It's to frighten mammals, to frighten. We have three responses, fight, flight and freeze. If you're walking around the desert two hundred and fifty thousand years ago

• 58:32Blindboy Boatclub?

  and a cobra pops up, standing with its hood and those eyes hissing, it's so terrifying. You don't run, you don't fight, you freeze, you freeze. And it's in that moment of freeze that the cobra jumps and bites. The cobra has one shot. Its intimidation makes its prey freeze just for a little bit of time before it can have a crack at it. So the theory is that's where the basilisk comes from. This could be early, early human folklore, hundreds of thousands of years old. There's a group of humans, maybe five humans out in the desert. Suddenly this creature appears and your friend who simply looks at it,

• 59:15Blindboy Boatclub?

  who simply stares into the cobra's eyes, freezes like stone and then they're dead. And that led to early humans creating this creature, this folk creature. There is a basilisk, there is a creature out there so terrifying that simply staring at it is enough to freeze you, to turn you to stone and then you're gone. Cause realistically, everyone's gonna run away. Everyone's gonna run the fuck away from what happened and possibly not return. They just have a story of what they saw. And then human history progresses and the basilisk returns in multiple motifs

• 59:57Blindboy Boatclub?

  across multiple different cultures, mostly with a serpent-like presence, the presence of the snake. And one of the threads that you can follow the point to a distant, distant memory of the Egyptian cobra specifically. Two hundred and fifty thousand years ago, humans from the south of Africa make it up to the north before we get to the fertile crescent, the Levant, Persia, all that area and then on to Europe. You can read early medieval English texts from the 10th century, the 11th century. The basilisk, this mythological serpent creature that if you stare at it, you die,

• 1:00:40Blindboy Boatclub?

  that appears in English manuscripts, in bestiaries, in books, books of beasts and mythical creatures. But in the English manuscripts in the 10th century, it depicts the weasel. The weasel is the only creature that can kill the basilisk, which is really fucking strange. Now, England does have snakes. England has adders. We don't have snakes in Ireland, nothing to do with St Patrick, we just don't have snakes in Ireland. England does have adders. And some, I think one species of those, those adders is actually venomous. And there are Anglo-Saxon stories. They killed one of the Vikings in a pit of adders.

• 1:01:22Blindboy Boatclub?

  I think it was Ragnar, the fella that the Vikings TV show is based on. I think he was thrown into a pit of adders by an Anglo-Saxon king, something around the 5th century. Anyway, weasels don't give a fuck about snakes. Weasels in England do not attack adders, they're not their prey. So why, in 10th century medieval English literature, are they depicting the basilisk? And saying that the weasel is the enemy of the basilisk and the weasel is the only animal that can kill this basilisk? Well, what is true is back in Egypt, back in Morocco, the natural predator of the cobra, of the deadly Egyptian cobra, its one predator is the mongoose, which is very,

• 1:02:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  very similar to a weasel. In fact, people in Morocco and in Egypt started to domesticate mongooses specifically to kill Egyptian cobras. So it's that connection. It's the early medieval English texts that showed the weasel as being the enemy of the basilisk, that might show evidence for an early folk memory of Egyptian cobras long, long, long ago in our past. So that was a very long way of telling you why I won't lie to you and say that I'm in Coventry. I'm not. I recorded this podcast five days ago in Limerick. But you're listening to this and hopefully I'm in Coventry.

• 1:02:48Blindboy Boatclub?

  But I won't say that I'm in Coventry because touch wood, I'm not tempting fate, I won't stare into that basilisk. But a final thought, the practice of touching wood, as I mentioned, to touch wood when you tempt fate, that may have its origins in Germanic paganism, Anglo-Saxon paganism, pre-Christian beliefs, where you venerate and worship trees, so you touch wood to bring about protection. I don't need to touch wood to bring about protection. In pre-Christian Ireland, trees were a big deal.

• 1:03:26Blindboy Boatclub?

  We had our sacred trees, but we didn't, we didn't venerate trees the way that the Saxons did. We didn't have a, an entire cosmology, a belief about reality and the universe, that we lived in a giant tree. This wasn't our thing. In Ireland, our thing was water, sacred wells that bubbled up from the other world, or water that took the form of various types of mists, which would offer a gateway to the other world. We venerated water. We were a North Atlantic rainforest. It was the rain that protected the land of Ireland. What do you hear now?

• 1:04:11Blindboy Boatclub?

  The rain. I couldn't have lied to you and told you I was in Coventry even if I wanted to. Because you'd hear that rain and go, we know the sound of your tin roof, Blind Boy. We know the sound of your office fucking roof in Limerick when it's raining outside because it fucking rains all the time. We know you're not in Coventry because we can, we have ears, we can hear it now. So I don't need to touch wood. The rain is actually protecting me. I can't tempt fate even if I wanted to. The rain won't let me. Right, that was an unbroken podcast. I couldn't break that with an Ocarina pause. Sometimes I'll do a podcast and

• 1:04:56Blindboy Boatclub?

  it has space for a natural pause, a part two and a part, a part one and a part two. That story there, that past hour, it was so strange and so non-linear and took so many tangents and circling back on itself. I knew I couldn't break it up. I couldn't afford to lose you and then bring you back in. It had to, I had to go all the way through. So before I finish, support the Patreon, support the Patreon. This is my full-time job. What you just listened to there was written, there was a gigantic amount of research. I need time and space to do that every week. And the only way I can do that is if it's my full-time job.

• 1:05:41Blindboy Boatclub?

  So that's what the Patreon allows. So if you enjoy listening to the podcast, if you like the distraction, if you like to learn new things, whatever the fuck, as you're listening to the podcast, please consider supporting it directly via the Patreon page, patreon.com/theblindbypodcast. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee, once a month, that's it. If you can't afford that, don't worry about it, just listen for free, because the person who's paying is paying for you to listen for free. And if you're paying, you're paying for someone else to listen for free. Everybody gets a podcast, I get to earn a living. It's a wonderful model based on kindness and soundness. So listen, you know that I'm on tour. Well, I've done it, I've just done, I'm not on fucking tour.

• 1:06:26Blindboy Boatclub?

  I've just done an entire fucking podcast about why I wouldn't say that and now I've just done it accidentally. I'm not on tour, I'm back in Limerick, but as you listen to this, I will be on tour. I'm not touching wood, the rain is looking after me. We touch wood for the crack. Bit of Anglo-Saxon and pre-Christian Irish solidarity. As you listen to this, I'm on tour, which means that the gigs that you can come to when this goes out, tonight, as you listen to it, not actual tonight because this is last Friday. As you listen to this on the 21st of fucking, the 21st of October, gigging in Coventry,

• 1:07:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  the Warwick Arts Centre, probably no tickets left, but I'll be chatting to Claire Murphy, the storyteller, all right? Then Bristol on the 22nd, Professor Ronald Hutton, the expert, world-renowned expert in pre-Christian Britain, the Anglo-Saxons, I cannot wait. Guildford, G Live, almost sold out, gonna be chatting to Scroobius Pip. I've had Pip on the podcast before. Look, Pip lives near Guildford, a ex, ex rapper, maybe he's still doing a bit of music, a legend, all right?

• 1:07:48Blindboy Boatclub?

  Rapper, actor, podcaster, and the person who got me into podcasting, the person who introduced me to Acast, the person who, in about 2014, I was in a miserable apartment in London, gigging to about 100 people, and Scroobius Pip had just started his podcast Distraction Pieces, and he said to me, will you be on my podcast? And in 2014, I listened to podcasts, I knew what they were, but it hadn't bubbled up in my mind as a possibility of something that I could do. And Pip called around to the apartment with a suitcase, and he had a recorder and he had two microphones. And when I saw that in front of me, I said, this is something that I could try, I could try to do this.

• 1:08:32Blindboy Boatclub?

  And I was a dirt poor musician, barely scraping by, I was living out, living off of 50-pound notes that I was keeping in a biscuit tin, and I'd only allow myself to take one out a week. And I said to Pip in 2014, are you earning a living from podcasting? And he said, yes, I am. And it lodged into my brain in 2014 as a possibility. And it took three years for me to go, fuck it, I'll give it a go. Why not? Give it a go. And I got onto Pip and I said, look, I think I can record my voice, but how do I get that voice recording and turn it into what we call a podcast? And Pip said, let me introduce you to Acast. Pip is great crack. So I'm gonna have Scroobius Pip in Guildford, I can't wait to see him again. That is Saturday, the 24th.

• 1:09:17Blindboy Boatclub?

  And then on the 26th, Monday, I am in London, that is sold out, an incredible, phenomenal guest, a shaved-headed economist, his name rhymes with Barry, I can't tell you who it is, gig is sold out anyway, it doesn't matter. Similarly, Glasgow, the gig is sold out, doesn't matter if I tell you who the guest is. Then on to Gateshead there on the 29th, where I will be speaking with the magnificent Darren McGarvey. Final gig then on the 1st of November, where I'm 95% sure I'm gonna be speaking to a scientist, just don't have it confirmed yet. So that's that tour, that's the tour, fan.co.uk forward slash Blind Boy.

• 1:10:02Blindboy Boatclub?

  And then I'm kinda chilling the fuck out, kinda chilling the fuck out until Australia and New Zealand there in April 27. I have a nice little one in Sligo there that's sold out in November, and I just added a gig in Waterford in December. The 11th of December, Waterford does a festival called Winterfell, it's gonna be in a spiegel tent.

• 1:10:28Blindboy Boatclub?

  I tried to avoid, avoid gigs in December because of Christmas parties, but I reckon the 11th would be safe. Do not bring your office Christmas party to my live podcast in Waterford on the 11th of December. If you work in HR, if you're trying to figure out, what will I do with the employees? What will I do with them for the Christmas party? And you work in an office in Waterford. Please do not look at the Blind By Podcast, at the Spiegel tent in Winterfell on the 11th of December. Please do not look at that and think, that'll be fun. I'm gonna bring the entire office to Blind By's live podcast. Sure, he wears a bag in his head, he's gas, isn't he?

• 1:11:13Blindboy Boatclub?

  It will not be fun.

• 1:11:16Blindboy Boatclub?

  You'll have 11 people, two of them will listen to my podcast. The other nine won't give a fuck. They're on their Christmas party, they wanna have a night out. They wanna chat with each other at a live podcast. They're gonna wanna chat with each other. Of course they will, fair play to them, have a bit of crack. But in my experience, one office party at a live podcast can fuck the whole thing up for everybody. So much so that I, I stopped doing gigs in December. So unless literally everybody in your office party is a 10 foot Declan, like I'm trying to protect you here. Anyone else would just be happy to sell the fucking tickets. I'm actively, actively asking people not to come here.

• 1:11:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  But if you're not at an office party and you wanna come to my live podcast, come to the Winterfell fucking festival in Waterford. I'd say Waterford's a bleak old place in December. Fuck me, not as bleak as Limerick. Equal in the bleakness front there, Waterford and Limerick. It's two cities, two cities in Ireland, both of them with, founded by Vikings, around the same time. And for some reason, both cities, there's been a complete collapse of retail in the city centre. Anyway, look, dog bless, I've probably forgotten something. I'll catch you next week. I don't know what the fuck I'm gonna have for next week, because next week I'd probably be recording

• 1:12:41Blindboy Boatclub?

  in my, in the van, in the fucking tour van. I have the tour van set up so that I can record podcasts in it. So it might, might be one of them, we'll see what happens. I'm not worried, I'm excited by the challenge of something new. In the meantime, rub a dog genuinely to a swan and wink at a worm. Dog bless. Don't stare at a basilisk.

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