Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Tickle a Vincent, you jaundiced Morris. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. If you're a first-time listener, consider going back to an earlier episode to familiarise yourself with the lore of this podcast. And if you're a regular listener, you know the crack. I've been getting acquainted with a weighted blanket this week. It's like a blanket that's made out of chainmail.
It's covered in a soft fabric, but it's exceptionally heavy. It's 10 kilograms. It's a 10 kilogram blanket that I wrap around my body. It had been recommended to me as an intervention, or no, I suppose an accommodation, because I'm autistic.
for ages I thought that's a lot of bullshit how could a heavy blanket help me in any way that sounds like nonsense but I have to report it's fucking magnificent I don't know what it's doing and I don't know what it's helping all I can say is that it definitely fucking works whatever that is I can't put words to what that is
When I wear the weighted blanket, if I'm just sitting on the couch, after about 10 minutes, I don't know, I get the feeling of, the feeling you get when you've just had a really, really good stretch. I get that feeling. So I have difficulty switching off. My mind is consistently active. My body is consistently active.
The example I always use is I work in an office building and in my office building there's loads of other offices on my corridor and to save money the building doesn't allow light switches in individual offices so instead the lights turn on if you move and on my corridor there's there's some people who sit down at their desks And they remain so still that the lights just turn off.
And they sit in their offices, not in darkness, just with daylight coming in, but they're so still that their lights don't turn on in their fucking office. And I marvel at the impossibility of that. Like, do I have one of those lights in my office? Do I? Fuck. I had to have a manual light switch installed in my office because I can't stay still.
and consistently stimming, moving my fingers, moving my legs, getting up, walking around, non-stop movement, which meant that my light was on all day long because I kept waking it up and I had to get a manual light switch installed and then a soft light in my office so that the bright lights wouldn't overstimulate me and it wasn't easy getting that light either.
When I went to the company that owned the building and I'm like, I'm autistic, I need to have a fucking light switch. They were like, fuck off.
So then I had to threaten them with the Employment Equality Act of 1998, which is what you can do if you are an autistic, if you're diagnosed autistic or neurodivergent and something in your workplace is overstimulating you and fucking with your capacity to do work. Your employer is, they're obligated to do what's called a reasonable accommodation and that's under the Employment Equality Act.
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Chapter 2: What is the importance of biodiversity in spring?
You remember Sea Monkeys, don't you? You buy them in the pet shop.
The fella, they're brine shrimp. Yeah. But the fella who figured out, oh, I can make this into a kid's toy, he did. But he used those millions to fund the KKK. That's a fact.
Well, we'll stick with the Daphne then.
Yeah.
What were we doing with them?
Let's have a small little ocarina pause now before we go back to the chat with Kali. Because I loved even listening back to that there now. I'm going to play the ocarina and you'll hear an advert for some bullshit, alright?
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Chapter 3: How can individuals contribute to biodiversity through small actions?
I'll try and play it gently so that I don't... You know, some people like to go to sleep to this podcast and I don't want to wake them up with an aggressive ocarina. And the purpose of the ocarina is to warn you that you're going to hear an advert and it might be someone with a loud Dublin Four accent. So we play the ocarina to warn you. I'll play it gently.
bit high-pitched way too high-pitched what can I do that was the ocarina boss support for this podcast comes from you the listener via the patreon page patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast
If you like listening to this podcast, if it brings you distraction, entertainment, mirth, merriment, education, whatever the fuck has you listening to this podcast, please consider supporting it directly via the Patreon page because this is my full-time job. It's how I rent out my office. It's how I earn a living. It's how I pay all my bills. It's how I purchase all my equipment.
It's how I have the time to deliver a podcast each week, to write it, to go on the road, to do gigs. This is all possible because of direct listener funding. 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. Just listen for free. Listen for free.
Because the person who's paying is paying for you to listen for free. So everybody gets the exact same podcast. I get to earn a living. It's a wonderful model based on kindness and soundness. So that's patreon.com forward slash the blind buy podcast. And also it keeps us fucking independent. Advertisers come here as guests on my terms. That's very rare.
Usually advertisers come in and they're like, well, we're advertising on your podcast. So therefore you need to get more listens. here's some ideas about how to get more listeners. And if you don't, if you don't do what we ask, then we're not going to advertise on your podcast. Have you tried being more controversial?
Have you tried speaking about things that you don't give a fuck about just because these things are popular? And I've worked in television. I still work in television. That That infrastructure, that model, that way of creating right there, that's what fucking destroyed television. Destroyed it. Ideas, creativity, originality, risk-taking, passion, all out the fucking window.
Let's aim for consistent mediocrity just to keep the advertisers happy. We don't have to fucking deal with that. This is listener funded.
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Chapter 4: What are the benefits of building a pond for local wildlife?
No advertiser has any say whatsoever on the content of this podcast. I show up each week and I speak about what I'm legitimately passionate about. That's what I've done every week for eight years. And that's what I love doing. That's what gives me a sense of purpose and meaning. And it's what has me consistent in my output. So just a couple of gigs now.
I'm really happy to be at the end of my Irish tour. I loved doing the gigs. and getting to be in a room with people who are listening to this podcast and have the crack, that bit is fantastic. But getting home at four in the morning once or twice a week, that bit is not fantastic. So I'm really looking forward to a couple of months of quietness. But this Saturday, I'm in Galway.
I'm in Galway at Leisureland. That's that gig that was rescheduled because I got the chicken pox. Come along to that if you want. There's very, very few tickets left. That'll be good crack if you're around Galway. Then on the 5th, 9th of May, daytime gig, right? 1.30 in the day up in Maynooth at Maynooth University as part of the Arts and Minds Festival. I've got a cracker of a guest for that.
That'll be really interesting. So if you're doing fuck all at 1.30 on a Saturday, come along to that one. Then on the same day, at around 5 o'clock, I'm at Wellfest, which is at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham. A lovely fucking venue. Wonderful venue. Wellfest is at that. And I'm going to do a live podcast. Even though I'm aware that I just spoke about needing to take a fucking rest from gigging.
And now I just told you I'm doing two gigs in the same day. But that's the last of it. That's the final ejaculation, if you will. Then I'm chilling the fuck out. And my next gig is until the middle of June when I'm in Berlin for two nights. Where is that in Berlin?
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Chapter 5: How can community gardens impact local ecosystems positively?
The Babylon Theatre on the 19th and the 20th, I believe. 19th is sold out and a small amount of tickets left for the 20th. Looking forward to Berlin. Apologies last week for calling the Czech Republic Czechoslovakia.
a few of my listeners from the Czech Republic mailed me to correct me and I apologise for that because that's it's like someone calling Ireland Britain alright so sorry about that I know what the Czech Republic is it's just I'm old enough to remember when a country called Czechoslovakia existed and it's just stuck in my head Sheffield in July at the Crossed Wires Festival on the 5th of July.
Then October, big tour of England, Scotland and Wales. So we're talking Brighton, Cardiff, Warwick, no sorry, Coventry, the Warwick Arts Centre in Coventry, Bristol, Beacon Hall, Guildford, London, Glasgow, Gateshead and Nottingham. And I know those gigs are a long time away, but a lot of them, London and Glasgow,
I think, I haven't gotten official confirmation, but there was people saying they can't get tickets anymore for those. So if you are coming, don't wait, because those tickets will be gone, even though it's months away. So that's that tour. Now back to the chat with Colleenis. I don't want to say you've moved away from dangerous insects, but you've become much more like about biodiversity.
But how I first came across you is you were the fella who had, I had to ask him to stop eventually. You came to a gig in Cork, man, with the most poisonous spider in the fucking world inside in a Chinese takeaway container.
And you said that three or four times. I'm like, it's a lockbox. It had specific locks on it. It wasn't just... It looked like a Chinese takeaway container, but I would not bring the most dangerous spider in Ireland to your gig in a Chinese takeaway box.
That might be my anxiety. I don't blame you. My anxiety, but it was the six-eyed sand spider.
Yes.
Yes, and look, come here, the claim is that their venom is so strong because they're desert creatures, and desert creatures tend to have this really funky venom.
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Chapter 6: How does Collie Ennis define a successful rewilding effort?
The most revolutionary drug of the past three or four years is Ozempic. We all know Ozempic and GLP drugs. That comes from the bite of, is it a Gila monster?
Gila monster, yeah. It's based on their venom. And venom has so many uses in general. I mean, everything from breast cancer to strokes to erectile dysfunction, all sorts of shit that venom can sort out. And these animals, again, it's kind of like we're kind of putting a human dimension onto what they're worth. But they're just living their lives.
They're just trying to get by and survive like they have for millions of years. But
And again, if you're going to quantify it and look at it in a human-centric way, if we get rid of them, if we lose rainforests, if we wreck deserts, if we kind of lose all these important habitats where these creatures have been home for millions of years before we were around doing what we do, we're selling ourselves short with these potential cures for all sorts of stuff.
But it's, I guess I had on this stage, the last gig I did here, I had Professor Jane Stout, who you work with. And what I was chatting to Jane about was how in your field, in order to get people to give a shit about this stuff, you have to make the argument for capitalism. So when we're speaking about, you know, venom, it's like, well, they're not just insects, they can cure diseases.
And the other thing we were speaking about was It was the UN's, was it the biodiversity report that the UN did? The UN did this huge report where they had to use the language of finance. No, it was water. The UN said the world is approaching water bankruptcy. That because of how we're exploiting the ecosystem, that fresh water is disappearing.
But all the language that they used was they had to go, this is like having a bank account and you think the money is there, but it's going to disappear. And they had to do this because they need politicians and people in finance to care about this stuff because these are the people with the necessary power to try and stop it.
Yeah.
Which is bleak.
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Chapter 7: What role do invasive species play in local ecosystems?
Apparently they're quite disturbing when you see them in real life as well.
They look like a living board shit.
What? Are you coming across a lot of them?
Every time I see them, I nuke them from space. They are everywhere. The land of gentry actually kind of brought them in.
oh so they're not as recent as i thought no they probably were here for a long time before they started to really reproduce so um ferns would have been brought over from new zealand to ireland and to the uk to big centers and then of course the more exotic plants and stuff you had in your house the richer you were so people were getting these huge tree ferns and all these kind of
posh exotic plants from all over the world. And New Zealand's climate is quite similar to Ireland.
Have you been there?
Not yet.
There's parts of New Zealand where you're walking around and you think you're in fucking Dublin or you think you're in Limerick. Even the walls.
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Chapter 8: How can we effectively manage invasive species in Ireland?
So there was a point in Australian history where humans came over with all their cattle and the camels and the exotic animals. But there was no bovines naturally in Australia ever. There was only marsupials. And marsupial shit is very dry and crumbly. So every dung beetle, and dung beetles are hugely important species. They take shit and bury it and recycle it into the soil.
They give the nutrients.
Yes. Okay. For their young. So their life cycle depends on the poo ball and their baby eating it and then coming out as an adult. So anyway, the Australian dung beetles are smelling all this cow shit and they're landing and they're drowning because it's not the marsupial dry shit. So what happened then was there was nothing around to bury the cow pads.
And there was Australians who couldn't go out to have a beer outside because there were so many flies. The flies just multiplied and it was a massive problem. So I think he was a Hungarian scientist. He came up with the idea of, right, we're going to have to sort something out in Australia. So he went to Africa. And he picked out every kind of dung beetle you could imagine from over there.
And he systematically tested with very scientific methodology, not like the cane toad. He didn't just put them out there. He really tested his theory and tried out different species. And eventually he found a few species that he could let go.
they started going around burying all the cowshit and the Beatles saved the population of Australia from disease, from all sorts of horrendous conditions of flies just taking over the country.
That's fucking so, so for a while, cow shit became like plastic. It couldn't be decoiled.
Get rid of it. That is amazing. So the beetles came in and rescued it, but thanks to a crazy Hungarian, I think he was Hungarian, but anyway, scientist over there. And like, it goes to show, like, if you're careful about putting invasive species, not invasive, potentially invasive species into an area to solve a problem. Nowadays, we call it nature-based solution.
So say for a species of plant like rhododendron or for Japanese knotweed, which people have big problems with. Now in their local areas, they're controlled by species that are in there. But the problem is you can release a species into Ireland and go, it's going to take over. It's going to take care of the Japanese, not weed, but it won't. It might kill everything else.
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