Geopolitics and Spaghetti Bolognese AI transcript and summary - episode of podcast The Blindboy Podcast

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (Geopolitics and Spaghetti Bolognese) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Go to PodExtra AI's podcast page (The Blindboy Podcast) to view the AI-processed content of all episodes of this podcast.

The Blindboy Podcast episodes list: view full AI transcripts and summaries of this podcast on the blog

Episode: Geopolitics and Spaghetti Bolognese

Author: Blindboyboatclub
Duration: 01:00:04

Episode Shownotes

Geopolitics and Spaghetti Bolognese Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_01
Grin for Paris Hilton, you big stinking Tilda Swinton's. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. If this is your first episode, maybe consider going back to an earlier episode, or even beginning from the start.

00:00:15 Speaker_01
There's nearly 400 episodes now, I know that seems like a tall order, but a lot of new listeners genuinely do go back to the very start of this podcast and binge the absolute fuck out of it, which is what I like to hear.

00:00:29 Speaker_01
I intend this podcast to be a perpetual auto-fictional novel. It's minus two degrees in Limerick City. Now if you're listening from Canada, or I was in Oslo last year, if you're listening from Oslo, minus two degrees mean fuck all.

00:00:45 Speaker_01
I was in Oslo last year, it was about minus 12 at night time. If I took my gloves off, after about two minutes, my hands started to physically hurt. So that's real cold, I understand it. But here in Limerick it's minus two. And I fucking adore it.

00:01:04 Speaker_01
The sun is slanty and golden all day. The sky is this thin baby blue with a little hint of yellow to it. And the air is completely dry. It's this incredibly still, sparkly coldness. And I think it's my favourite Irish weather because it's predictable.

00:01:24 Speaker_01
You can rely upon it. I've spoken many a time about sunny weather in Ireland. Yes, sometimes we get a nice sunny, hot, clear day, but you can never really enjoy it because there's the consistent threat of rain.

00:01:38 Speaker_01
And when a dry, hot, sunny day, a Mediterranean type day actually does present itself In Ireland, we spend all of our time worrying about whether we're enjoying it enough or not. You can't actually relax.

00:01:52 Speaker_01
You walk into town wearing shorts and you're thinking, oh, fuck it, maybe I should be at the beach. Then you go to the beach and it's like, oh, maybe I should be back at home drying clothes. Look at the wonderful drying that's out there.

00:02:04 Speaker_01
What a waste to be at the beach. But with freezing cold, December stillness, you know what you're getting? highly unlikely that it'll suddenly rain. If it does, it's not that disappointing anyway because the weather's kind of shit.

00:02:19 Speaker_01
So when it's freezing cold and dry and clear, you can just relax. You can relax and you can plan things. So what I've been doing is going on very long walks, dressed head to toe in cortex and padded clothing. And I've even got long johns.

00:02:35 Speaker_01
I'm wearing fucking long johns. I've got long johns, a set of trousers that go over the long johns, and then Gore-Tex trousers that go over that. Three fucking layers. Harnessing the insulatory properties of pockets of warm air.

00:02:52 Speaker_01
Like I'm a fucking chaffinch up on a tree. I've an impenetrable, puffy jacket. Waterproof, warm, the whole shebang. Fingerless gloves with a retractable mitten attachment. They're called shooter mittens, they're what snipers wear.

00:03:08 Speaker_01
Well, they're what I wear when I walk around Limerick City drinking a hot chocolate. And finally, I've got hiking boots. Proper, decent fucking hiking boots. Full divorce, dah, hiking boots. And of course, a woolly hat. And I'm considering a balaclava.

00:03:24 Speaker_01
I'm considering going full balaclava. The thing that's stopping me from wearing a balaclava is, look we're all adults here, we know that I don't wear a plastic bag on my head all the time, only when I'm on stage.

00:03:37 Speaker_01
The vast majority of my life is spent walking the streets with a human face. So I'm in this strange situation whereby the only part of my body that's exposed to the elements is my face.

00:03:51 Speaker_01
And the solution to that is a balaclava, which is a perfectly acceptable thing to wear when it's this cold.

00:03:57 Speaker_01
But if I wear a balaclava walking around Limerick and all you can see is my two eyes coming out of the balaclava, then I might get recognized in the street in Limerick as blind boy. That's how the United Healthcare Assassin got caught.

00:04:11 Speaker_01
This week, he's been arrested. He wore a COVID mask and a hat to disguise himself so all you had was his eyes. Then the police released a lot of photographs of him with his mask and his hat and his eyes.

00:04:24 Speaker_01
And he got identified in a rural McDonald's in Pennsylvania because he was wearing a COVID mask. He was wearing a COVID mask and a hat and people identified his fucking eyes. So if he went around with his face, Nobody would have identified him.

00:04:39 Speaker_01
So that's why I can't wear a balaclava in Limerick City. What do you want me to say about the UnitedHealthcare assassin? A man who did very, very evil things was shot dead in the street. A CEO of UnitedHealthcare.

00:04:53 Speaker_01
I know the company has healthcare in its name and we call it a health insurance company. In America, what a company like UnitedHealthcare actually does It's a giant pile of cash that makes money by denying healthcare to the most vulnerable people.

00:05:15 Speaker_01
Okay, I know we call it health insurance, healthcare. These are just words. The actual business model is to make profits by denying healthcare. It's quite an evil system. It's a very evil structure that targets the most vulnerable people.

00:05:37 Speaker_01
Sick people, sick children, people with terminal illness. Illness is part of the human condition, it can't be avoided. So companies like United Healthcare, they make profits by denying healthcare to people who are dying of cancer.

00:05:55 Speaker_01
Instead of calling it a health care company, we could call it an exploitation of human suffering company. But we don't say that. This is health insurance in America, in America.

00:06:07 Speaker_01
America is quite unique amongst developed nations because it lacks a guaranteed right to health care. I'm not saying it's perfect here in Ireland or it's perfect over in the fucking UK.

00:06:20 Speaker_01
But our health system isn't driven purely by unfettered capitalism and profit. It is in America. People who get cancer in America, people who get pregnant in America can end up with serious debt.

00:06:34 Speaker_01
So people who can afford it in America, they get health care insurance, they get health insurance from companies like UnitedHealthcare. And then UnitedHealthcare, it's a giant pile of cash that makes profits by denying people healthcare.

00:06:49 Speaker_01
But it's not just the insurance companies. In America, because of lack of regulation, the healthcare providers like hospitals, physicians and the drug companies charge way higher rates. than they do in other countries.

00:07:05 Speaker_01
So the entire system is pitted against the vulnerable. When you're sick, you're vulnerable. Human beings get sick. That's part of the human condition. That's what we do. We're healthy and we get sick.

00:07:17 Speaker_01
And when one of us gets sick, we should care for each other, not in America, which I think that's really evil. I don't have any other word for that other than that's incredibly evil and it should be illegal.

00:07:31 Speaker_01
And the CEO of that company was shot dead in the street, was shot dead in the street.

00:07:37 Speaker_01
And the person who's been arrested for shooting, a fellow by the name of Luigi Mangione, he released a manifesto and he clearly states in the manifesto, the US has the number one most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly 42 in life expectancy.

00:07:55 Speaker_01
UnitedHealthcare is the largest company in the US by market cap, behind only Apple and Google. It has grown and grown, but as for our life expectancy, no.

00:08:06 Speaker_01
The reality is, these companies have simply gotten too powerful and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allowed them to get away with it.

00:08:17 Speaker_01
So you have it there unequivocally and explicitly, Luigi Mangione, who's been arrested for that shooting, for shooting that CEO, there he is saying it. I did it, and this is why I did it.

00:08:30 Speaker_01
And even though you have it there, his manifesto, a lot of the media are choosing not to publish it. MSNBC had a whole article

00:08:39 Speaker_01
talking about how the shooter had played a children's video game and we're trying to blame a video game on why he shot the CEO.

00:08:46 Speaker_01
The US media is scrambling for any narrative other than this man was radicalized by the normalized evil of profit-driven health insurance. And the media is doing that because it's playing the role of the ideological state apparatus.

00:09:05 Speaker_01
The media is propagating and holding up capitalist ideology to maintain social order and control in a way that feels voluntary. What they don't want is a bunch of American people going Maybe what that healthcare company is doing is actually evil.

00:09:25 Speaker_01
Maybe they're doing an evil thing and that should be illegal and should be stopped.

00:09:30 Speaker_01
And corporations are frightened because I've seen a number of US corporations this week have started advertising for professional security for their CEOs in response to the shooting.

00:09:42 Speaker_01
Some health insurance companies have their CEOs names are no longer publicly available. They took them down off their websites.

00:09:50 Speaker_01
Also a couple of days after the shooting, one particular company called Anthem, another health insurance company, Anthem were about to bring forward a policy around anaesthesia, right? Where

00:10:05 Speaker_01
If you've got health insurance with Anthem, okay, and you need to go in for an operation, you're gonna go under anesthetic. Obviously, incredibly expensive. Anesthetic is profoundly expensive.

00:10:15 Speaker_01
And anesthesiologists are specialists in America getting an operation. Your anesthetic could be upwards of 100 grand to get an operation.

00:10:25 Speaker_01
So you better make sure your health insurance company is covering your fucking anesthetic if you're getting an operation.

00:10:31 Speaker_01
So this company, Anthem, were about to bring forward a policy whereby if you got an operation, let's just say appendix, but some complication happens in the middle of the operation and the surgeon has to operate on you for longer than agreed, then Anthem wouldn't cover your fucking anesthesia to protect profits so that the insurance company can earn more money.

00:10:56 Speaker_01
So when you critically analyze it like that, it's evil. That's fucking bad. That's cruel. That's evil. But Anthem aren't going to go ahead with that now. They announced this week they're not going to do it.

00:11:08 Speaker_01
They haven't given the fact that the CEO of another health care company was shot. They haven't given that as the reason as to why they're not going ahead with that policy.

00:11:18 Speaker_01
But the shooting has large corporations very, very worried because healthcare impacts everybody. Everybody gets sick. Everybody needs to pay insurance.

00:11:27 Speaker_01
Whether someone's rich or someone's poor in America, a lot of American people have got heartbreaking stories about a loved one who suffered unnecessarily. because a health insurance company refused to pay for health care.

00:11:43 Speaker_01
They do this three ways, delay, deny, defend, which is a standard practice in the US with insurance companies. When someone comes in who has insurance, wants coverage for their medical treatment,

00:11:57 Speaker_01
The insurance company, they'll delay that claim, they'll flat out deny it, or they'll defend why they shouldn't pay it out. Delay, deny, defend was also written on the shell casings of the bullets that the assassin used when he murdered the CEO.

00:12:14 Speaker_01
And he's now a terrorist. He's now portrayed as a radical terrorist. He's a murderer. He's an evil and bad person. Even though he released a clear manifesto saying why he did it. He's being portrayed as someone who was radicalized through video games.

00:12:31 Speaker_01
To deflect from conversations around why health insurance in America might be evil. And why is that clearly evil system not seen as evil? Why is it completely normalized? It's normalized through the ideological state apparatus.

00:12:49 Speaker_01
That's a word I've used before. It comes from a theorist called Louis Althusser. Schools, religion, the media. America is the land of the free. Manifest destiny.

00:13:00 Speaker_01
The land is yours to take if you can take it even if there's poor people or indigenous people in the way. This same freedom applies to corporations. Corporations are treated like people in America.

00:13:11 Speaker_01
A giant pile of cash has the right to do what the fuck it wants to survive and grow bigger. And with this individual liberty to be as free as you want, it's yours for the taking.

00:13:22 Speaker_01
But if you want to do that, you also have to take individual responsibility. If you're sick, that's on you. It's not the responsibility of the community. You're free to be wealthy and you're free to be sick. If you're poor, that's your fault.

00:13:37 Speaker_01
This is America. You're completely free to be whatever you want. If you're poor, it's obviously your fault. So if you do get sick, Because everyone gets sick. If you do get sick and you can't afford to pay for it, well, that's on you.

00:13:49 Speaker_01
Because you can't be poor in America. You're free to be rich. There's no such thing as poor people in America. There's just rich people that haven't happened yet.

00:13:57 Speaker_01
Because a lot of the ideology of American capitalism, particularly, and these American notions of freedom, they're rooted in what's called frontierism. America is a colonized land that was only colonized in the past 400 years.

00:14:13 Speaker_01
Europeans colonized the place on the east coast and were told this place is fucking massive. It's yours. Explore. Conquer. Set new frontiers. Take what's there. It's there in front of you. It was an official policy known as Manifest Destiny.

00:14:33 Speaker_01
You'd think a Trump now would make America great again. In 1844, the Democrats won and Manifest Destiny was the phrase. To the west is all this undiscovered land. It's yours. Go forth. Go west. Take it. This is the land of the free.

00:14:51 Speaker_01
Complete unfettered freedom to take what you want. It's there. But it's the home of the brave. There's your individualism. You better have your fucking health insurance. Better be brave. But manifest all that freedom. It's there. It's there.

00:15:03 Speaker_01
If you're brave enough. It's there. And what manifest destiny means is it's not a matter of if you become rich and plentiful. It's a guarantee. It's predestined. It's there.

00:15:15 Speaker_01
You just have to manifest it by going out onto that wild frontier and taking what's yours, taking what is there for you. But what about the indigenous people? Oh, they're not real. They're not, they're like animals or plants. Just conquer them as well.

00:15:33 Speaker_01
That's frontierism. That is the narrative. That's the narrative of the United States. It's the narrative of how history is taught in the United States. Movies, TVs, books, the media and in attitudes towards business.

00:15:51 Speaker_01
A corporation's right to profits is like a pilgrim's right to stake a claim in the land. and make it their farm. Highly individualistic, highly selfish. And things like regulations and rules.

00:16:05 Speaker_01
These are basically pesky indigenous people who are preventing you from conquering the land. All of that informs the ideology that normalizes and allows and permits. A healthcare industry that is clearly evil.

00:16:22 Speaker_01
No, we cannot treat your cancer because you don't have enough money is evil. Oh, you do have a bit of money. You've got insurance. Well, so even though you have insurance, so you've been given us a lot of money, right?

00:16:37 Speaker_01
Even though you have health insurance, We're going to figure out a way to to not pay for your cancer treatment so that we can earn some more money. Is that OK? So that's evil. And the CEO who oversaw all of that was shot dead in the street last week.

00:16:55 Speaker_01
And do I want to see a bunch of CEOs shot dead in the street? No, but I'd like to see I'd like that man's job to be illegal. Health care should be a human right, a human right. Nobody should die because they can't afford health care.

00:17:12 Speaker_01
Nobody should be in debt because they availed of health care because they got sick. These things should be unconscionable and illegal. There should be rules and regulations and red tape and it should be really difficult.

00:17:27 Speaker_01
for individuals and corporations to exploit people's health for profit. That's not a very controversial position for me to have. And it's also, it's not a big unattainable dream. They can do it in Canada. Completely different health system up in Canada.

00:17:43 Speaker_01
There's universal coverage up in Canada. If you're poor and you get cancer in Canada and you can't afford insurance, do you know what happens? You get treatment for free, paid for by everybody's taxes.

00:17:57 Speaker_01
And I'm sure I've got some Canadian listeners who are ready to mail me now because the Canadian health system isn't as perfect as I'm making it out to be. Probably not. I'm guessing not. But what I do know

00:18:09 Speaker_01
I know a couple of people, Irish people my age, who've been living in Canada, working there since the last recession. And they want to come home, but they're not. And the reason is, they want Canadian citizenship, just for the healthcare.

00:18:24 Speaker_01
For the healthcare alone. So it's definitely better than Ireland. So I don't want CEOs shot in the street. Because at the end of the day, that man Brian Thompson, he had kids, he had a family, and they're grieving.

00:18:37 Speaker_01
But their dad's job was so evil that it should be illegal as a job, it shouldn't exist. And the man who shot him, He's gonna go to jail for a long fucking time. He's gonna be made an example of. Because what he did is very dangerous.

00:18:52 Speaker_01
And has the potential to cause a class-based revolution in America. It has the potential to raise class consciousness. So he needs to be severely publicly punished by the system.

00:19:03 Speaker_01
To send a clear message to anybody else who's thinking about shooting a CEO. That you'd be punished with the full extent of the law. It's early to call but I reckon, I think they might go domestic terrorism on him.

00:19:15 Speaker_01
I'm not sure if the crime is considered federal yet and how he 3D printed a gun but he's going to be labelled a radical terrorist. And you can agree with that if you like but you know what's completely normal?

00:19:26 Speaker_01
Do you know what's not only normal but it's celebrated? They're 17-year-olds, US soldiers, 17-year-olds right now, and they're deployed in Syria. They're in Syria. The government of Syria fell apart last week. Syria is about to descend into chaos.

00:19:42 Speaker_01
Now you remember the podcast I did a couple of months ago about the Middle East where you can trace...

00:19:48 Speaker_01
traced the turmoil in the Middle East to the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 where Britain and France divided the area of the Middle East to put it into consistent sectarian division for perpetual chaos so that the resources in the Middle East could be exploited to benefit the West.

00:20:10 Speaker_01
Well, that's still happening. So right now there's 17, 18, 19 year old American US troops deployed in Syria. And I'll tell you what they're doing. I don't even have. I'm not going to even tell you what they're doing.

00:20:24 Speaker_01
I let the president of America tell you what they're doing.

00:20:28 Speaker_00
left troops in Syria. You know what I did? I left troops to take the oil. I took the oil. The only troops I have are taking the oil. They're protecting the oil. I took over the oil. We're not taking oil. We're not taking oil. Well, maybe we will.

00:20:41 Speaker_00
Maybe we won't. They're protecting the facility. I don't know. Maybe we should take it. But we have the oil right now. The United States has the oil. So they say he left troops in Syria. No. I got rid of all of them other than we're protecting the oil.

00:20:53 Speaker_00
We have

00:20:55 Speaker_01
So that's not AI, I didn't fake anything there, that's actual Donald Trump, President-elect, saying the quiet part out loud. Explicitly saying that the US troops are in Syria to take the aisle. Why is he taking the oil?

00:21:13 Speaker_01
Because he feels entitled to the oil. That's manifest destiny right there. That's unfettered American capitalism. We're taking the oil for the freedom of profits. But it's not your oil. And then the people of Syria say, but that's our oil.

00:21:29 Speaker_01
We thought you're America. The deal was when America comes into our country, you liberate us and bring democracy. What about our oil?

00:21:37 Speaker_01
And then the people of Syria become a sick patient, ringing up their health insurance company under the mistaken belief that they were covered. You are in your fuck covered. That's our oil now because of profits. Because Trump doesn't give a fuck.

00:21:51 Speaker_01
He's not mincing his words there. He's explicitly saying why US troops are in Syria. What he's supposed to say is we are helping Syria peacefully transition to democracy. We are rebuilding Syria. That's what Kamala Harris would be saying.

00:22:07 Speaker_01
But Trump, Trump is like, no. You see, Kamala, she would do something evil, but tell you she's not doing something evil. I'm going to do something evil and tell you I'm doing it out of sheer brazenness. So, we're in Syria, taking the oil.

00:22:25 Speaker_01
We're taking their oil. It's ours now. And the troops are there to defend the oil that we're stealing. Is that okay? And they're going to get away with it because of chaos.

00:22:34 Speaker_01
Like I said, you go as far back as the Brits, 1917, as soon as they figured out oil was present in the Middle East.

00:22:42 Speaker_01
All Western meddling in the Middle East has been to create chaos and destabilization for the extraction of resources to benefit you and me, to benefit you and me as citizens of the global north within the American empire.

00:22:59 Speaker_01
That sounds like a conspiracy theory. There's no conspiracy theory. That's just capitalism. That's capitalism and colonialism.

00:23:06 Speaker_01
It feels like a conspiracy theory because we're used to having it described to us using a very different set of words and value systems. And Israel is just a giant Western aircraft carrier in the middle of all this.

00:23:21 Speaker_01
Take it back to the man who shot the CEO of the health company. The media will portray this person as a terrorist, as a radical, as a criminal, as a murderer, as a bad person. That's normalized. That's a normal view within the media.

00:23:37 Speaker_01
That's how it's going to be portrayed. What's also completely normal and acceptable is that There's U.S.

00:23:44 Speaker_01
troops, 17-year-olds, and they are in Syria, stealing the oil, and they're going to shoot dead civilians in Syria while protecting the oil, and then they'll get medals, and they'll be called heroes.

00:24:00 Speaker_01
And the entire ideological structure and framework within the media is going to portray those soldiers as heroes that are protecting freedom and democracy. They're protecting capitalism.

00:24:13 Speaker_01
They're stealing oil from the people of Syria and they'll shoot anybody who tries to get in their way. These men are heroes. They're killing for the values of their country. That fellow who shot the CEO, he views himself the same way.

00:24:26 Speaker_01
As far as he's concerned, the health insurance companies are at war with the American people. So he shot one of them. So now he's a terrorist. Guess who's not a terrorist anymore?

00:24:38 Speaker_01
Abu Muhammad al-Julani, the leader of HTS, who overthrew Assad in Syria this week. If you read the media, he is a rebel leader, he's a revolutionary, and he's not a terrorist. He was a terrorist in 2017 when he founded al-Nusra Front.

00:24:57 Speaker_01
the Syrian wing of Al-Qaeda. Do you remember Al-Qaeda? They flew two planes into the World Trade Center as an act of terrorism and a symbolic act against American capitalism and globalization. ISIS basically. So he was a terrorist back in 2017.

00:25:14 Speaker_01
The US embassy in Syria, they still have the tweet. The tweet is still up. where they have his photograph, he's dressed in traditional Islamic gear, it's a wanted poster, there's a price on his head.

00:25:26 Speaker_01
In 2017, the US were like, this fella's like a terrorist, he's in ISIS. But now, he's called a rebel leader, and he's dressed identical to President Zelensky. And last week, I saw a headline in the Telegraph that said,

00:25:41 Speaker_01
how Syria's diversity friendly jihadists plan on building a state. And that's probably happening. That's probably the CIA and maybe Mossad. That's what they do. They've done it loads of times before. That's what they do.

00:25:55 Speaker_01
This fellow was this fellow was arrested by the Yanks, went in as a jihadi and come out as a revolutionary. He was literally like literally a specially designated global terrorist, according to the US. He was up there with Bin Laden.

00:26:12 Speaker_01
Now he's not anymore. He's a freedom fighter. He's not a terrorist. He's dressed like President Zelensky. He's diversity friendly, and he's going to bring stability to Syria. Now he took Assad from power. But I'm not defending Bashar al-Assad.

00:26:27 Speaker_01
He was horrendous. He was horrible. He used chemical weapons on his own people. An absolute dictator. But do you think America want Assad gone because he's cruel to his people? No.

00:26:37 Speaker_01
Number one, Assad funds Hamas and gives sanctuary to leaders of Hamas in Damascus. So Israel, who are next door neighbours to Syria, they want Assad gone. Assad was an ally of Iran so the US and Israel want him gone.

00:26:52 Speaker_01
There's a huge area of Syria called the Golden Heights which has been occupied by Israel since the 70s I think. Now that Assad is gone, right now Israel are bombing all of Syria's military infrastructure to destabilize and demilitarize the country.

00:27:08 Speaker_01
And Netanyahu announced it the other day, they're now effectively, they're annexing the Golden Heights to make it part of Israel. And then on top of all of this, now that Assad is gone, Russia is gone from Syria.

00:27:20 Speaker_01
So now Russia no longer has a heavy presence in the Middle East. So this is all a big strategic win for America and Israel and most likely utter chaos and destabilization for the people of Syria.

00:27:33 Speaker_01
But that's good for America too because now they can, as Trump said, they can steal the oil. You can steal the oil when a country is destabilized. That's where oil came from the last decade.

00:27:45 Speaker_01
That's what America did in Iraq under the premise of democracy. So that's what happened in the past week with Syria. And based on past behaviour and how it's been spoken about in the media, I reckon it's the hidden hand of the CIA on Mossad.

00:28:00 Speaker_01
Do you know who else worked for the CIA and was funded by the CIA? Bin Laden. That's not conspiracy theory. It's fact. It's fact. Look it up.

00:28:08 Speaker_01
In the 1980s, Bin Laden was the head of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan fighting the Soviets and they were fully funded by the CIA. Ronald Reagan called them freedom fighters. And then they became terrorists. The lad who shot the CEO, he's a terrorist.

00:28:24 Speaker_01
The US soldiers defending oil, defending oil rigs, they're heroes. It's all down to the narrative that supports the ideology of capitalism. How the fuck did I start talking about this? This podcast was supposed to be about Bolognese.

00:28:37 Speaker_01
I wanted to do a podcast about Bolognese. So yeah, that's that fella who shot the CEO. That's the reason I'm not wearing a balaclava and limerick. It's freezing cold. It's freezing cold.

00:28:51 Speaker_01
All I want is to be able to walk around in the cold while every centimeter of my body is toasty and warm. I adore doing that. It brings me great meaning. It brings me great happiness. However, my face is fucking freezing.

00:29:06 Speaker_01
My face is freezing because the rest of me is so dry and warm. So the logical next step is to wear a balaclava. To wear a balaclava. But the events in the news of the past week have made me realise that I can't get away with a balaclava.

00:29:20 Speaker_01
I can't wear a balaclava in Limerick City. Because it's just a set of eyes. And then a person is going to come up to me and say, Oh are you blind boy?

00:29:30 Speaker_01
I'm a stranger and I'd like to have an unplanned and spontaneous conversation about horse outside and then I'm gonna run.

00:29:40 Speaker_01
I'll literally run away and the parameters of social acceptability for a balaclava change rapidly depending on the speed that you're traveling while wearing a fucking balaclava.

00:29:52 Speaker_01
So I can walk around Limerick wearing a balaclava but I can't run through Limerick wearing a balaclava Now I'm a criminal. And if a stranger stopped me on the street to talk about horse outside, I'd run. I would literally, I would run away from them.

00:30:06 Speaker_01
So thank you to the United Healthcare Assassin for helping me come to the conclusion that I shouldn't buy a balaclava. And also, Like I adore walking around in the freezing cold while being incredibly warm and dry. It gives me a feeling of control.

00:30:24 Speaker_01
I strive to operate under a philosophy of I've no control over what happens to me, but I have full control over how I react to what happens to me. And what I'm referring to there is my emotions, my attitudes, my views.

00:30:38 Speaker_01
I have the freedom to respond to my environment. And when it's really cold, that's a harsh, unpleasant environment. So I respond to that environment by dressing up really warm.

00:30:51 Speaker_01
So doing that reminds me that I have the choice to do that with my emotions too. But when I do that, I realize that it is impossible to mindfully experience the wonderful warmth of being wrapped up in the cold.

00:31:05 Speaker_01
without wondering what it's like for somebody who can't wrap up in the cold.

00:31:09 Speaker_01
So every December, I buy hats and gloves for people who are homeless on the streets, people who are begging for drug addicts, for people who are going through addiction in particular. It's not expensive, it's like 10 quid.

00:31:24 Speaker_01
If I see a person on the street who's begging or who's going through addiction, I buy them hats and gloves. And the people who are experiencing addiction in particular, they're very, very grateful.

00:31:36 Speaker_01
It's clearly, this makes a massive, massive impact on the quality of their life. Because people experiencing addiction, If they get a tenner, they might not be able to buy gloves and a hat with that money.

00:31:49 Speaker_01
Because they're in addiction, so they need their drugs just to feel normal. So I'm saying this, I'm not looking for brownie pints for ye to think, oh isn't blind boy so kind and lovely. It's not a gigantic financial investment.

00:32:03 Speaker_01
A tenner for fucking gloves and a hat. That's the price of a lunch. But if it's fucking, if it's freezing, if it's absolutely freezing, be the person who thinks of that. Just run into the shop, get the gloves and the hat and give them to that person.

00:32:16 Speaker_01
It makes a huge fucking difference to their quality of life. Like imagine, like imagine being outside all day long and you don't have a fucking hat and gloves.

00:32:25 Speaker_01
The other thing is if these people are sleeping rough, something like a hat and gloves, you lose a lot of heat through the head. A hat might save a person's life if they were sleeping rough, you know?

00:32:36 Speaker_01
And the thing is too with Christmas, people have their heads up their arses at Christmas. People walk around town just thinking of shopping, distracted by lists and things they have to do. So homeless people don't get noticed as much.

00:32:47 Speaker_01
But I'm saying this on the podcast because I know, I'm not looking for brownie points, but I know that ye will listen to this and then one of ye is going to buy a homeless person gloves and a hat tomorrow.

00:32:58 Speaker_01
You'd be thinking about it and that's exactly what that person needs. And the reason I think about it is, I can't walk around town in my double gartex and pockets of fucking air, relishing warmth.

00:33:11 Speaker_01
I can't do that while there's someone else in the street with no fucking gloves and blue hands. And unfortunately, there's quite a bit of that in Limerick, unfortunately. So I actually wanted to speak about spaghetti bolognese on this week's podcast.

00:33:27 Speaker_01
Like, I fucking love spaghetti bolognese. It's... Do you know what? Let's have the ocarina pause first, before I move on to spaghetti bolognese discourse. I'll play the ocarina now. I've got my big fat bass ocarina.

00:33:41 Speaker_01
The one that's friendly to the ears of dogs. You're gonna hear an advert for something here. Very pleasant indeed. That was the ocarina pause there. You'd have heard an algorithmically generated advert inserted there.

00:34:18 Speaker_01
I include the ocarina pause so that you don't get startled. Don't get startled by an advert. I don't know what fucking advert plays. Acast put in the adverts. Sometimes they're very loud and shocking. So I like to put in an ocarina pause to warn you.

00:34:32 Speaker_01
Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page. Patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast.

00:34:40 Speaker_01
If you enjoy this podcast, if it keeps you informed, if it brings you mirth, merriment, entertainment, whatever the fuck this podcast brings you, please consider paying me for the work that I'm doing. This podcast is my full-time job.

00:34:53 Speaker_01
It's how I earn a living. It's how I pay all my bills. It's how I pay for my equipment. It's how I rent out my office. It's how I have the time and space to research and write this podcast each week.

00:35:05 Speaker_01
All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month. That's it. But if you can't afford that, don't worry about it. You can listen for free.

00:35:14 Speaker_01
You can listen for free because the person who is paying is paying for you to listen for free. So everybody gets the exact same podcast and I get to earn a living. It's a wonderful model based on kindness and soundness.

00:35:27 Speaker_01
patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast. And also if you're becoming a new patron, please only sign up on a desktop, right?

00:35:38 Speaker_01
If you sign up to my Patreon and the Patreon app on an Apple iPhone, dirty bastards Apple will take 30% of the money that you give me.

00:35:48 Speaker_01
So please, if you are becoming a patron, try and do it on the desktop through patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast. And also, avoid signing up as a free, a free member. That means fuck all to me.

00:36:03 Speaker_01
That's just the way for Patreon to harvest your data and to have your email. But it doesn't financially support the podcast in any way. So if you are going to become a patron on Patreon, please give me actual money. or listen for free.

00:36:19 Speaker_01
And also it keeps the podcast listener funded. It means that this podcast is listener funded, paid for by the listener. I'm not beholden to advertisers. No advertiser can come in here and tell me what to speak about or how to speak about things.

00:36:33 Speaker_01
I can do whatever the fuck I want because this is listener funded. It's how we've been doing this now for seven years, nearly 400 episodes. I adore this model. It brings me... wonderful, immense joy each week.

00:36:46 Speaker_01
To make a podcast about what I'm genuinely curious about and what I genuinely care about each week, rather than worrying about fucking advertisers who just want, they want podcast episodes based on how many listens you can get.

00:37:00 Speaker_01
That destroys creativity. OK, some upcoming gigs. All my gigs now are in 2025, so you can get some tickets for Christmas if you like. Vicar Street on Monday, the 27th of January. Come along to that beautiful, delicious Vicar Street gig.

00:37:15 Speaker_01
That one's selling out quickly. February, the 2nd of February. No, sorry, the 9th of February. I'm in Glamorous Leisure Land in Galway. I have a fantastic guest for that. Friday the 21st, Crescent Hall up in Drogheda, more glamour.

00:37:32 Speaker_01
Then 28th of February, Belfast in the Waterfront Theatre. March the 7th, I'm in the INEC down in Killarney. Then on the 13th of March, I'm in the Cork Opera House. April, is it? Fuckin' Australia, New Zealand, that's sold out.

00:37:54 Speaker_01
Then, 23rd of April, Limerick, fuckin' University Concert Hall, Limerick. Biggest gig I've ever done in Limerick, can't wait for that. June, my big massive England and Scotland tour.

00:38:08 Speaker_01
So in June, starting on the 1st of June, starting in June, Bristol, Cornwall, Sheffield, Manchester, Glasgow, York, London, East Sussex, Norwich and Edinburgh is in there too.

00:38:24 Speaker_01
That tour, even though that tour is in June, that's really setting out quickly. People are buying tickets as Christmas presents. So if you do want to come to my fucking England and Scotland tour, they're in June, which is ages away.

00:38:40 Speaker_01
If you're coming to that, get your tickets now because you might be disappointed. So this was actually going to be a spaghetti bolognese podcast. I just wanted to dedicate a podcast to spaghetti bolognese.

00:38:50 Speaker_01
I didn't expect it to be anti-capitalist geopolitics but look fuck it here we are. That's what felt right and I think now it's time to talk about spaghetti bolognese. I adore spaghetti bolognese. I enjoy how no two spaghetti bolognese's are the same.

00:39:08 Speaker_01
Taste your friend's spaghetti bolognese. It'll be very different to your spaghetti bolognese. It's very difficult to make a bollocks of a spaghetti bolognese.

00:39:18 Speaker_01
At its most basic level, you're talking about frying some minced beef and then adding to this a jar of Bolognese sauce, generic Italian tomato sauce. You eat this with spaghetti and it's a perfectly acceptable meal.

00:39:36 Speaker_01
No complaints, it's comfort food, it's filling, and also it has the psychological impact. We process spaghetti bolognese as a healthy meal, even though, if we're being honest, it's effectively a hamburger that shat itself.

00:39:53 Speaker_01
Spaghetti is a type of lanky, unleavened, nervous bread. Beef mince is a burger patty that hasn't happened yet. A trainee burger. And Dalmío tomato sauce is ketchup on a horn. The most basic plate of spaghetti bolognese is a deconstructed burger.

00:40:13 Speaker_01
It's a hamburger. But if I eat a hamburger for my dinner, my brain doesn't tell myself that I've just eaten a hearty meal. My brain tells myself, you've just eaten junk food. You've just had a burger. It's just been bread, mince and ketchup.

00:40:28 Speaker_01
But spaghetti bolognese is bread mince and ketchup, pasta mince and fucking ragu sauce. But yet it feels as hearty as a stew. Spaghetti bolognese was the first. Fancy meal. No, exotic. The first exotic meal that my ma ever cooked for me.

00:40:50 Speaker_01
Now I mentioned before about pizzas. Like, I think it was my seventh or eighth birthday. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles had come out. I begged my mother, I said, please can I have a fucking frozen pizza? These were relatively new things.

00:41:05 Speaker_01
Frozen pizza, we're talking early 90s here. Frozen pizzas were, Relatively new in Ireland. And I asked my ma for a frozen pizza for my birthday. She was reluctant because it meant having to turn the fucking oven on. She hated turning on the oven.

00:41:20 Speaker_01
So my ma fried the frozen pizza for my birthday. But that wasn't the first time that my mother made what she would consider to be an exotic food. Exotic. Spaghetti bolognese was the first exotic food that was cooked in my house.

00:41:36 Speaker_01
I was a very small child, but I remember the year was 1990. And the reason I remember is that Italian 90 was on TV. This was the World Cup, the Soccer World Cup. I know fuck all about sports, but I remember Italian 90 when I was a little child.

00:41:56 Speaker_01
Because Ireland had done very well in this World Cup and it was a big deal culturally in Ireland.

00:42:03 Speaker_01
And the one thing I do fucking remember is Ireland were knocked out of the World Cup because an Italian fella called Scalacci scored a goal against Ireland and knocked Ireland out. But then what happened?

00:42:19 Speaker_01
When the commentators on TV or the news media, whatever, everyone was talking about fucking Scalacci the Italian cunt is after kicking Ireland out of the soccer tournament. Scalacci you bollocks.

00:42:35 Speaker_01
Whatever happened, some pundit said maybe the Irish team should start eating spaghetti. Should start eating spaghetti like Scalacci and then they'll become better football players. And then my older brother started demanding spaghetti.

00:42:51 Speaker_01
We want spaghetti for dinner. We want spaghetti like Scalacci. Now I went looking up the Irish newspaper archives to see how many times and when Bolognese was mentioned in Irish newspapers. It barely gets a mention.

00:43:08 Speaker_01
Throughout the 1960s and 70s you'd have the odd Italian restaurant advertising in a newspaper and Bolognese is on the menu. So it's really only around the Lade.

00:43:18 Speaker_01
80s that you start to see Bolognese begin to be mentioned frequently in Irish newspapers, particularly a brand of jar sauce called Dalmío. You have to remember too, and I've told you this before,

00:43:32 Speaker_01
There's a woman in Limerick, she's in her mid-forties, and her name is Lasagna. The name on her birth cert is Lasagna. I know Lasagna, I know her. She goes by Sanya, her name is Sanya. Anyone who knows her, her name is fucking Sanya.

00:43:48 Speaker_01
But her actual name on her birth cert is Lasagna, because in the late 70s, Her parents from Limerick went on holidays to Italy. They heard the name Lasagna, thought it sounded beautiful, and then named their daughter Lasagna.

00:44:03 Speaker_01
So there's a woman in Limerick, and her name is Lasagna. Sanya, Sanya. Quite an easy change, but her fucking name on her birth cert is Lasagna. That's how alien and strange European food was to Ireland when we were just entering the European Union.

00:44:19 Speaker_01
You have to remember, before the European Union, Ireland had an economic policy of protectionism, very insular. not a lot of imports and a post-colonial sense of looking inwards at our Irishness and not allowing anything else in.

00:44:35 Speaker_01
So that's how you get a girl called Lasagne in the fucking 70s. So anyway, I'm looking through the Irish newspaper archives and I do start to see an explosion of Dalmío sauce from about 1985 onwards.

00:44:48 Speaker_01
Now I remember my ma saying, we're not cooking that fucking exotic shit. Her exact words, we're not cooking exotic shit, in reference to Bolognese.

00:44:58 Speaker_01
And this was about 1990, so to my mother, this would actually have been considered extravagant, exotic, foreign food, this Bolognese. And it was probably expensive compared to other groceries at the time.

00:45:13 Speaker_01
But my ma gave in, because all my brothers were obsessed with fucking Scalacci scoring goals. And she went and bought a jar of Dalmío, and a tube of spaghetti. Followed the instructions. And I'll never forget it. I was a tiny little kid. It was amazing.

00:45:29 Speaker_01
It was the mouthfeel, the mouthfeel of the spaghetti combined with the sauce and meat. Whatever the spaghetti did to distribute the meat, I'd never tasted minced meat like that before. I instantly fell in love with spaghetti bolognese.

00:45:47 Speaker_01
And the best part was, My ma was pleasantly surprised at how incredibly easy the entire process was. Now my dad didn't eat any of it, he was terrified, terrified of any strange foods. He said, I can't eat that, that'll cut the belly off me.

00:46:03 Speaker_01
Didn't even know what that meant. My dad didn't eat any. But my ma couldn't believe like how much easier it was to cook pasta than boil a load of spuds and peel them.

00:46:13 Speaker_01
And then the simplicity of having something like minced meat which is usually flavourless when it's plain. Getting something like minced meat and just adding a jar to it and then you get this explosion of flavour that everyone adores.

00:46:28 Speaker_01
So my ma started to buy Dalmío sauce and spaghetti. Once a week, we'd fucking spaghetti bolognese once a week. And it was my favorite meal from my childhood. Spaghetti bolognese was the first, the first meal I learned to cook when I moved out of home.

00:46:45 Speaker_01
And I don't think I'm alone in that. I think it's most people's first meal. It's so simple, but when you eat it, it feels like a proper dinner. It's not chicken nuggets and chips in the oven. It's just as simple, but it feels like an actual meal.

00:47:03 Speaker_01
And when I started to cook it for myself, I was in my early 20s and I had absolutely no money. So when you're in that situation,

00:47:11 Speaker_01
You're no longer buying a jar of dal mio, you're making your own bolognese from scratch, using the tins of tomatoes that you get in Aldi for 16 cents.

00:47:20 Speaker_01
And then you start to realise that the best bolognese is the one that you make yourself from scratch, with garded cloves and fresh basil. But it was around that time that I started to look for authentic bolognese recipes.

00:47:33 Speaker_01
What's the actual Italian bolognese recipe if I really want to make it from scratch? And when you do that, you start to realize spaghetti bolognese doesn't fucking exist. It doesn't exist in Italy. There's no dish called spaghetti bolognese in Italy.

00:47:49 Speaker_01
If you go to an Italian restaurant, like one in Italy in particular, and ask for it, They don't have it.

00:47:55 Speaker_01
The dish that we know as Spaghetti Bolognese was invented outside of Italy, probably sometime after World War II from maybe soldiers that had been in Italy and returned to either Britain or the US.

00:48:08 Speaker_01
But the Spaghetti Bolognese that we know and love is a vaguely Italian tomato.

00:48:15 Speaker_01
slap recreated by foreigners from memory which then became so popular in the UK and in the US that Italian restaurants had to begrudgingly add this fake Italian dish to their restaurant menus because that's all anyone wanted in Britain and in the US.

00:48:35 Speaker_01
The closest thing to spaghetti bolognese in Italy is. So there's a city called Bologna. That's where Bologna is. That's where the name comes from, Bologna. It's in the north of Italy. And in Bologna, they have a sauce that's called a meat ragu, R-A-G-U.

00:48:54 Speaker_01
It's minced beef, veal, diced tomato, celery, onions. red wine and the tiniest hint of tomato paste. But it's a meat sauce. And this is meat ragout from Bologna.

00:49:09 Speaker_01
And even the name ragout, R-A-G-U, that comes from the French, R-O-G-O-U-T, which is a type of French stew. Because during the Napoleonic Wars, French soldiers brought their beef stew to the north of Italy, and then ragout is based on that.

00:49:27 Speaker_01
So that's the closest thing there is to spaghetti bolognese. But it's nothing like spaghetti bolognese. There's no fucking tomatoes in it. So spaghetti bolognese that we enjoy, it's bullshit. It's made up.

00:49:39 Speaker_01
It's an Italian slap that we just imagine, but it's still fucking delicious. It's still delicious. And over the years, I perfected my own recipe. It's very simple. I start off with the sofrito, which is Diced celery, onions, carrot and garlic.

00:49:59 Speaker_01
I fry that, then I add my meat, usually beef mince or a mix of beef and pork mince, chopped fresh basil, salt and pepper and the most important ingredient of all, San Marzano tomatoes in a can. They're just incredible Italian tomatoes. Unparalleled.

00:50:19 Speaker_01
And that's what makes my bolognese. Sometimes I might add a bit of red wine, another time a bit of Worcester sauce, whatever the fuck I want. But the San Marzano tomatoes are what make it. They're the most important ingredient.

00:50:32 Speaker_01
And what really made me notice this was a couple of years ago, just after the pandemic, my bolognese has started to become shit. And I couldn't really figure out It's like, why is it so bad now? What's going on?

00:50:46 Speaker_01
So what had actually happened, and it took nearly a year to realize this, I'd bought a new pair of shoes. They were Nike's. Nike fucking trainers, right?

00:51:00 Speaker_01
And every time I went to the canned goods aisle to buy my San Marzano tomatoes, every time I reached for my San Marzano tomatoes, I got a tiny electric shock.

00:51:13 Speaker_01
The shoes were obviously, whatever, whatever material the shoes were made out of, they were building up static, and whatever particular type of metal, these Italian San Marzano tomatoes, when I went to touch this fucking tin of tomatoes, most of the time, it gave me a fairly unpleasant shock.

00:51:33 Speaker_01
When it happened a second or third time, I began to yelp, yelping, like, ah! Like yelping, yelping in duns, touching the tomatoes, because I'm getting an electric shock.

00:51:47 Speaker_01
But the thing is, the yelping, the yelping is then worse than the shock, because when you yelp, if you yelp, in the supermarket, people stare at you. And I didn't like that one bit. That made me deeply uncomfortable.

00:52:01 Speaker_01
So I start to get the shocks from the cans of San Marzano. And then I notice, each time I go back, Now I'm wary, I'm wary of the San Marzano tin. I'm not just grabbing for it now. It's taken me 20 seconds to slowly put my hand towards the tin.

00:52:22 Speaker_01
And then I start to experience what's called anticipatory anxiety. So I don't really know when the shock is going to happen. I don't know if it's going to happen. And I don't know how intense the shock is going to happen.

00:52:35 Speaker_01
Now we're talking about a static shock here against a tin of tomatoes, so nothing major, fucking tiny. But because I'd learned to expect the electric shock, the anticipation of that negative outcome causes it to grow and grow.

00:52:53 Speaker_01
So then when I finally reach for the tin of tomatoes, to touch it, when the shock does occur, I experienced it as four or five times as extreme as it needs to be. The anticipatory anxiety had almost heightened the sensitivity around my finger.

00:53:12 Speaker_01
So now this tiny shock is deeply unpleasant. until I just said, fuck that, no more San Marzano tomatoes. Now, I didn't know it was the shoes. I didn't know it's this particular pair of Nikes. I hadn't a clue. I just thought I was going electric.

00:53:29 Speaker_01
It was the middle of the fucking pandemic or at the end of the pandemic. I thought I was becoming more electric. So I moved from San Marzano tomatoes in the tin to just no tomatoes at all. A little bit of tomato paste. I was following the bologna ragu.

00:53:45 Speaker_01
The electric shocks that I was experiencing from trying to touch the tin of tomatoes had inadvertently pushed my recipe very close into the direction of the traditional Bologna Ragu. I didn't want to use fresh tomatoes. It just didn't feel right.

00:54:03 Speaker_01
So I said, fuck it, I'll stick with this traditional recipe. But I didn't like it until I got rid of the shoes. I got rid of the shoes and then was able to return to the San Marzano tomatoes to make my delicious Bolognese.

00:54:18 Speaker_01
But anyway, there's no connection between the Bolognese that we eat and the city of Bologna in Italy.

00:54:27 Speaker_01
But my unique experience of getting electric shocks from tomatoes while trying to make Bolognese, that actually does have a direct correlation with the city of Bologna. Up until about the 18th century, people didn't know how our muscles moved.

00:54:42 Speaker_01
People didn't understand how our muscles moved or how an animal's muscle moved. Like there was a Roman physician called Galen. So I'm talking ancient Rome and Galen believed that because he used to dissect bodies.

00:54:55 Speaker_01
that the human body moves because we have nerves but nerves are effectively hollow tubes that send our soul or our spirit down these tubes to our fingers and muscles and this is how we move.

00:55:09 Speaker_01
So in the Italian city of Bologna sometime around the late 1700s there was a scientist called Galvani and Galvani was obsessed with You know, how the fuck do muscles move? How do animals walk? What's going on there?

00:55:27 Speaker_01
What's happening in the soul for movement to occur? So Galvani, he devised an experiment using frogs legs. He cut the legs off frogs and he found that

00:55:42 Speaker_01
by pressing certain metals against the legs of a dead frog that he could make the legs twitch and move with just the presence of metal on the dead frog's flesh. But the frog is dead, but the legs are moving as if it's alive.

00:55:59 Speaker_01
So Galvani, he was the first person to discover that muscles move using electricity. that our brains and animals brains, they actually send electrical signals through the muscles and that's how movement occurs.

00:56:14 Speaker_01
And what Galvani was specifically discovering there and specifically doing, by pressing the metal against the dead frog's leg, he was generating Static. Static electricity. And this was causing the muscle to spasm. And that's the exact same process.

00:56:33 Speaker_01
When I was in Dunn's, in the tinned goods aisle, trying to grab my San Marzan or tomatoes, and whatever metal that that tin was made out of, and the static build-up of my body and the rubber shoes, My fingers were becoming the frog's legs.

00:56:51 Speaker_01
I was generating a little static spark and it was causing my fingers to spasm. But the synchronicity I enjoy with this whole story is that, so around 1790, that's the time of the Napoleonic Wars.

00:57:04 Speaker_01
That's when French soldiers are going to be present in the city of Bologna. That's when the recipe, the French inspired recipe of the Bologna ragout gets introduced.

00:57:17 Speaker_01
At the same time, there's a scientist in Bologna who discovers that if he makes static from metal against a dead frog's legs, that this is how muscles move. And then I receive static shocks on my hand in a supermarket 200 years later.

00:57:35 Speaker_01
And those static shocks, unbeknownst to myself, push me towards a more authentic ragu sauce from Bologna. And I enjoy that synchronicity. Maybe that's mentally insane. Maybe I've gone too far this time. Maybe.

00:57:53 Speaker_01
Maybe those connections are a bit too much and that would get me diagnosed with schizophrenia. I'm fully aware of the gigantic, of the absolutely unhinged leap that I've made there. But you know what? I enjoy it. It means something to me.

00:58:11 Speaker_01
It's something I've thought about. I'm not saying it's true. I'm not saying it's true. I'm not saying there was some type of supernatural frog's legs Napoleonic stew time-travelling thing going on.

00:58:24 Speaker_01
I enjoy how static shocks from a tin of tomatoes inadvertently changed my Bolognese recipe to an actual Bolognese recipe from Bologna.

00:58:34 Speaker_01
And that's also the city where it was discovered that static shocks play an important part in the movement of muscles. completely unhinged. I'm fully aware of that. All right. I haven't gone mad. I just think that's fun.

00:58:48 Speaker_01
I have fun with those type of connections. All right. And I'm very, very grateful that I have the space here to do that. I can do it. I can do that here without judgment. And you can take that or leave it. And I'm not suggesting that there's some type of

00:59:04 Speaker_01
Napoleonic ghost, time traveling ghost stew going on here via electricity and frogs legs. All right, that's all I've got time for this week. That was an absolutely bizarre podcast, I think. That was a bit of a strange one. Not very festive, not very.

00:59:20 Speaker_01
Maybe I'll be back next week with something a bit festive. In the meantime, rub a dog, genuflect to a swan. And buy a hat and some gloves for a human being who's absolutely freezing, if that's not too much trouble. God bless.