The Blindboy Podcast - Protestant Footsteps

Episode Date: July 10, 2024

How listening to plants can tell us stories Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Greetings you wrinkly Vincents. Welcome to the Blind By podcast. If this is your first episode, consider going back to an earlier episode to familiarize yourself with the lore of this podcast. Thank you for all the kind words for last week's episode where I spoke about the value of mindful walking and where I focus my attention on plants and the sound of rain. I've been thinking about dandelions a lot this week because we take them for granted, because they jut out of tarmac and concrete. We consider dandelions to be weeds. But dandelions are an incredibly resilient

native wildflower. They bloom in early spring. When most other flowers aren't out yet, the dandelions pop out of the fucking earth or pop out of the concrete in late March. Dandelions are the first colourful signal that summer is about to come. When bees are waking up in early spring when it's still cold and the bees are re-establishing their colonies for the summer, the early yellow dandelion flower is often their only source of nectar. The the early yellow dandelion flower is often their only source of nectar. The humble little yellow dandelion that pops up in March when nothing else is ready to come up, the nectar from that dandelion ensures the survival of all the other wild flowers that are going to bloom afterwards because it keeps the bees healthy. When the dandelion flower withers

and becomes a fluffy dandelion clock and the April wind blows it up into the air and you lift your eyes skywards to follow the fluff, for me, that's when I first start to notice, oh shit, the evenings are getting a bit longer. There's a different quality to the sunlight. That floaty dispersal of evening dandelion clocks in like April, that's what directs my attention towards the sky.

Because I'm not too interested in the sky. In winter, it's too gloomy. But those fluffy dandelions, the first wildflower to bloom in early spring, it doesn't just service the bees. That fluff, that fluff is collected, collected and used

by the birds in early spring when they're laying their eggs. They line their nests with dandelion fluff so that their arses can be comfy in their nests. Because the birds are like, I'm gonna lay an egg, I'm gonna have to sit on it for ages. I'm not sitting on a lot of twigs, I need something comfy and warm here. Let's get this natural fur, this natural fluff that's all around us in the fields, the dandelions, and let's line our nests.

That's an ecosystem. And then of course, like the dandelion, the dandelion clock, that float, that's a seed. Each one of those little bits of fluff is a seed. And the seed can float off, only so far, to land on a bit of earth and grow into another dandelion. But sure if the birds are taking the fucking fluff, they could be flying off two miles with those seeds. And now, wherever the bird has its nest, dandelions will grow underneath. That's an ecosystem.

Millions of years of evolution, everything working together to benefit the survival of everything else. That's what I love about dandelions. Hardy little wildflowers that will grow out of tarmac if they need to. There's no fear of dandelions. And when I was a child we'd call them pissy beds. And that wasn't just a limerick thing. Dandelions are native to all of Europe. In France, they call dandelions piss and lits. So why is this? Why did I grow up calling dandelions piss the beds? The French call them piss and lits, and if you grew up in fucking...in England you probably call them piss the beds too. There's a reason. That's oral folklore.

That's oral storytelling. Using the land or the water or the plants to tell us important stories that benefit our survival. Even when you can't write it down. It's the yellow flower that looks a bit like piss. It's the piss flower. And you'd even wonder, did the dandelion evolve to look yellow, to let us know that it looked like piss, so that we'd pluck it and disperse its flowers and make tea out of it?

A symbiotic, mutually beneficial relationship in an ecosystem. And I've said it a million times before, but my belief is that, you know, we're animals. Human beings are animals. We're animals. But we're animals that have the capacity to use language in a complex system of communication. And stories and folklore and mythology are what keep the human animal in line with the ecosystem. When a little yellow flower looks like piss, and it's named after piss, that's a little story. And that little piece of meaning allows us, the human animal, to respect that flower, to ascribe value to it. But what important

information is being held in that name? P piss the bed or pissy bed. Wherever dandelions would grow, historically people would use it as a medicine. They'd make dandelion tea for stomach aches, to aid digestion and to help with the health of the kidneys. Dandelions are a powerful diuretic. They make you piss and if you drank a lot of dandelion tea, you'd wake up in the middle of the night and you'd need to piss. So that's why it was called Piss the Bed. Not just Ireland, France, all over Europe.

People understood the dandelion to be an essential health supplement that just grows everywhere. And the name tells you that story. That's oral culture, you don't need to write that down. And in a culture where you don't have access to the amount of vitamins and nutrients and calories that we take for granted today, or even access to clean water, a good diuretic is essential for the health of your kidneys. Where dandelions are native, the meaning that they bring is This is a life-giving, very positive Joyful plant. But dandelions aren't native to America They were brought to America on the Mayflower, which is the first ship of

English colonizers to North America, which was in the 1500s I think, and indigenous American people, Native American people, when they started to see dandelions, they didn't call them pistebates. They had a very different name for dandelions. Indigenous American people called dandelions white man's footsteps because wherever European people colonized in North America dandelions grew near their settlements. So to Native American people the sight of a dandelion, this lovely little yellow flower grown out of the ground. That means death, disease, terror, danger, genocide. These little yellow flowers are white men's footsteps. Keep the fuck away.

Because if they won't murder you, they're going to give you a disease that you have no immunity to. They're going to give you smallpox. Stay away from the yellow flowers. That's white men's footsteps and wherever those yellow flowers are, the colonizers are nearby. Another example of this is hedgehogs. Hedgehogs are not native to Ireland. Hedgehogs were brought to Ireland by English colonizers, by the Normans in the 13th century. The Anglo-Normans to be specific.

The grandchildren of the French Normans who conquered England. The Normans were taken over violently. They brought with them hedgehogs. And hedgehog, it's an old English word. What does it mean? It's very simple if we speak English. It means a hog that lives in the hedge. It's a pig that lives in the hedge. Because the Normans brought hedgehogs to Ireland for food. They ate them. They ate hedgehogs. This was a source of meat for them. That's why it's a pig of the hedge.

You eat pigs. The word hedgehog in Old English, it connotes a positive meaning. This is life-giving. This is food. This is delicious. This is tasty. It's a little pig that lives in a hedge. Yum, yum. But when those Normans, the first English colonizers in the 13th century, when they were building their first castles, building their forts, the hedgehogs that they'd brought with them to eat, those hedgehogs began to escape and live in the forests and live in the hedges.

And then the indigenous Irish people, the native Irish people, when they're near Norman forts, they start to see all these strange little new animals walking really slowly on the ground with spikes on their backs. What the fuck is this? So the old Irish word for hedgehog, for this new animal that they'd never seen, the old Irish word for hedgehog is gráinog, and it means ugly little thing.

Now what I love about that is, hedgehogs aren't ugly. If you've ever seen a hedgehog, they're unbelievably cute, with their little pointy noses and their cute ears. Hedgehogs are adorable, so there's a passive aggression there in that name Gráinneogh. It reminds me of when you give your dad dog when you bring a dog into the house and your dad doesn't want it. A little adorable puppy, cute

wagging its tail and then your dad goes, I don't want that little thing, look at that little wretch of a thing get it out, I don't want it. Clearly talking out of his arse because the puppy is gorgeous and then one night you walk in and you're da in the living room and he's rubbing the dog and being all nice to it and then when he sees you seeing him

he has to go back to pretending that the dog is a little skinny wretch and he hates it. That's what the name Gráinneogh means to me. The indigenous Irish had to pretend that hedgehogs were ugly little things had to pretend that hedgehogs were ugly little things because of who brought them over. Those fucking English cunts over there in their castle, those fucking pricks who were trying to take over the land. Them? Look what they're fucking eating.

Look at the state of that thing. Looks like a walking testicle. Grand yog. Ugly little thing. Clearly it's like no, no they're cute. The hedgehogs are gorgeous. Will you be quiet? It's the Normans you've got a problem with not the fucking head job call it cute animal belonging to a wanker don't blame the hedgehog those

two different names those meanings the two separate groups of people can apply to the same animal tells us a story about conflict, an emotion. You can go back further 300 years before that. 1066. The Normans conquered England. The Normans were from France. They spoke an early form of French. The people in England who were being conquered were Anglo-Saxons. They spoke an early form of English. The two groups had completely different names for certain animals. A cow for instance. A cow is an old English word, Anglo-Saxon word, but as soon as that cow becomes food and it ends

up on a plate, now it's beef. From bof, an old French word. A chicken, when it's walking around in the field. Chicken is an old English word, Anglo-Saxon word. As soon as that chicken ends up on a plate and someone's eaten it, it becomes poultry. From poulet, a French word. Different names from different groups of people about the same animal. And what story does that tell us? It tells us about class structure and power and wealth. The poorer people, the Anglo-Saxons, who've been conquered, they're raising the animals.

The rich people who've done the conquering, who are in power, they're eating the animals. That's the Normans, the French, English in the field, French on the plate, same animal. What has me thinking about this stuff this week? The relationship between certain plants, their names, and specifically the land and storytelling, the stories, the stories that plants and animals and landscape can tell us if we can slow down enough to listen. So in last week's podcast I spoke about finding a tiny little island in the middle of Limerick City, which is untouched native Irish rainforest. Go back and listen to last week's podcast if you haven't heard it, but I identified a tiny little

island in the middle of Limerick City and this island is pretty much untouched by man. It's pretty much untouched by man. It's native, biodiverse Irish rainforest. It's how the land should be without human interference. And it's just this tiny little island in the heart of Limerick City, on the river near the canal, across the way from the Absolute Hotel. There's no way to get onto this island without a boat. And loads ye, you went onto Google Maps to try and see this island. Loads ye were messaging me on Instagram. So what I did was, I recorded a little video, a video of the island from across the river

and I posted it on Instagram, at Blind by Bow Club if you want to see it. And this island is pristine. There's yew trees, there's sally trees, there's ash. I think there's a big oak. And then all around the verges of this island are reeds and meadows of native wildflower, bursting with purples and yellows and blues, and a little stork who hangs out there and you can see the butterflies, the butterflies just hanging out there pollinating all the wildflower. It's a perfect beautiful little ecosystem and it's like that because no one fucks with it. You can't go there to fuck with it. It's wild. But as I took the video and I zoomed in, I noticed sticking up amongst the wildflower

was the most dangerous plant in Ireland. A big, tall, giant hogweed. When people in this country worry about invasive species, they often think of something like the false widow spider, which is a fairly recent introduction to Ireland we'll say the past 15 years. It's a spider that you can find in your house and it can bite you. We don't have biting spiders in Ireland so people freak out about these false widows. Even if they do bite you, it's no worse than a bee sting.

By far the most dangerous invasive species in this country is a plant called Giant Hogweed. This plant could fuck your life up. First off, once you see one Giant Hogweed plant, you'll never forget it because they're spectacular, they're beautiful, they're massive. I've seen Giant Hogweed on that river grow to maybe 20 feet high. Huge gigantic thick stems with massive green leaves the size of umbrellas and they can grow to be 20 feet tall. And these strong white flowers on the top. The type of plant that if you were a little child and you saw this, you're gonna run over to it immediately and try and rip off those stalks and hit your friend with

it and have crack with it and pretend that it's an umbrella. It's the coldest looking plant you'll ever see. But that's what makes it so dangerous. The sap of this plant. If you touch off this plant, The sap of this plant. If you touch off this plant, it releases what's called a phytotoxin. If you were to fuck around with this plant, play with the leaves, break off a bit of the stem and handle it, all the juices will get on your skin. If you rub your eyes, they get in your eyes. Now it doesn't sting you, it doesn't burn you. What this sap does, it's a phytotoxin.

The sap on your skin reacts with sunlight to create what's called phytophotodermatitis. Your skin loses its ability to resist sunlight and you get incredibly bad burns. Extreme blisters, extreme burning. If it gets in your eyes, you can become permanently blind. And this isn't the damage to your skin that this plant can cause. It doesn't go away. You'll get extreme blistering every time your skin is exposed to sunlight. It's an invasive species. It's called giant hogweed, and it's in Ireland. It's native to the Caucasus Mountains, which is far east Europe, almost Asia, underneath Russia. So when I posted a video of that little island, that little native rainforest in the middle of Limerick City,

I was so pissed off to see that giant hogweed plant right there in the middle. See, that plant had a flowering head. And if that's left there, that flowering head will drop between 10,000 and 50,000 seeds. So then more giant hogweed will grow on that island next year, right in the middle of a little wildflower meadow, a native wildflower meadow, at the edge of this island. What'll happen is, the giant hogweed is massive, huge, and its gigantic leaves shade out all the sun as more plants grow. The wildflowers underneath, they're having a fucking hope because they can't get any sunlight so now they won't grow anymore.

The hogweed itself also makes the soil toxic for other plants to grow. And then eventually, after 10 or 15 years, if left unchecked, the hogweed will reduce the integrity of the soil on this little island. And then the island itself will disappear because the river will erode the soil on this little island, and then the island itself will disappear because the river will erode the soil away. You see the wildflower and the reeds that are on this island, the native flowers that are supposed to be there, they've got a root structure and that root structure holds the soil together.

But if the giant hogweed takes hold, it reduces the soil integrity and then what'll happen is the island will just wash away because there's no root structures there to hold it together. So giant hogweed, it's not only incredibly dangerous to anyone who touches it, it destroys the ecosystems of riverbeds. It's a really bad plant. And that area there, by the Shannon River in Limerick, that's known as a Ray-Perrine area, it's a very unique protected habitat where a river meets land. It's an endangered habitat and the giant hogweed could destroy it. Wonderful in the Caucasus Mountains, where it's native to, where it survives in an

ecosystem there and has a purpose. But on the last patch of Irish forest in Limerick City, it's gonna destroy it and it'll kill all the little fish that live in the reeds. It's terrible. It needs to be removed. But when I posted this video and showed the giant hogweed from across the river, a few people said, how do you know that's giant hogweed? That might be native hogweed because we have native hogweed in Ireland. It's called cow parsley. It looks like giant hogweed but it's a lot smaller and it's harmless. So I wanted to be sure. I wanted to be sure because I'm going to try and do something about it. Now I'm intimately familiar with giant hogweed on that stretch of river because I've been looking at it for about 15 years. That stretch of canal and river that goes

from Limerick City Center all the way out to Yarty's Couch. I know every plant on that river. I know every fucking cormorrade. I know Pine Martins there, foxes, Yarty a Harn the Otter, pike, shrews, swans, ducks, and I know every single patch of giant hogweed on that river. Because for more than 10 years when I see giant hogweed I ring the council and I say you have a responsibility to go down and remove the fucking hogweed because a child is going to blind themselves. And in fairness to the council, they've done a very, very good job at eradicating the giant hogweed up and down that river.

They come out in hazmat suits. To remove this giant hogweed, specialists have to come out head to toe in hazmat suits because that's how dangerous it is. And then they place signs with a photograph of the giant hogweed that just says warning stay away don't touch this plant. And they've reduced the population. In the past 10 years I've seen them reduce the population of giant hogweed by maybe 85% so I was left with the problem. I can't get across the river to this little island. Now I'm fairly sure that

that's giant hogweed but it's not massive yet. They don't get like 20 feet tall until about August so maybe it could be native hogweed, which is fine. So I'm scratching my head going, how am I going to find this out when I can't get to the island to see close up? And then I found the most incredible fucking website. It's called Biodiversity Ireland.ie. This website, which is a public resource, it's an interactive map of Ireland, and you can type in the name of any plant or animal that you can think of.

Press search, and it will show you on the map, down to the square fucking meter where that plant or animal has been recorded. So I type in giant hogweed, I zoom right in, and smack bang there, right in that little island, is a recorded sighting of giant hogweed from 2018, right on the little island. So either they removed it and it's back, or they did nothing about it. So I was satisfied that okay, there's giant hogweed on that island, something needs to be done. But okay, there's giant hogweed on that island. Something needs to be done but then I zoomed out and I zoomed out even more and I zoomed out even more and

Now I'm looking at an entire map of Ireland and I can see in all of Ireland these little purple dots every single place where giant hogweed has been recorded. And a pattern starts to emerge. The map of giant hogweed in Ireland looks like a political map. It looks like a map of the Cromwellian plantations. So then I pulled up a map of the plantations of Ireland and I put it alongside where all the giant hogweed is. The fucking maps are nearly identical.

I'm like what the fuck is going on here? What am I after uncovering? So from the 1500s onwards in Ireland, that's when we were really colonized. Bad colonization. Like the Normans with their hedgehogs in 13th century. That wasn't great, but eventually they kind of assimilated. But from the 1500s onwards, that's when you start to see proper genocide. An attempt by the English to eradicate the people of Ireland and replace us with Protestant settlers. The map of giant hogweed sightings in Ireland corresponds with the areas that have the highest amount of deliberate Protestant colonization in Ireland. Basically from Queen Mary the first to Elizabeth fucking

Cromwell the enforced removal of Catholic Irish from the land and then putting Protestants in that place like flat out colonization and then the creation of an apartheid state with the penal laws. So giant hogweed is...I'm like, okay, this is Protestant footsteps. Giant hogweed is Protestant footsteps. Now I'm not being sectarian there, I don't give a fuck if you're a Protestant, you're a human being. But I'm stating the historical fact of the plantations of Ireland.

So I've noticed a definite pattern here. Wherever giant hogweed is growing, that's where the Protestant plantations occurred. That's where the heaviest concentration was, with the exception of a few patches in the west of Ireland. But still this isn't making sense, because the plantations, that started in the 1500s, and giant hogweed wasn't introduced to Ireland until the 1800s. Giant hogweed isn't just a problem in Ireland, it's a problem in England too,

it's a problem in parts of America. It was the Victorians, the Victorians in the 1800s. They're the ones who took giant hogweed from its native environment in the Caucasus Mountains and then brought it to Western Europe. The post-enlightenment Victorian society, the height of the British Empire when Britain was incredibly powerful, the Victorians fetishized taking plants from all parts of the British Empire and then building these fabulous gardens, wonderful big estates with plants from all around the world, or with

the emerging middle class, small little lawns that had fancy plants from around the world. The Victorians did a lot of damage to biodiversity. They introduced a lot of invasive plant species and animals, and we're still paying the price. So why am I seeing, why is the map of giant hogweed in Ireland the same as the plantations of the 1500s, if giant hogweed wasn't brought in until the 1800s? It's telling us a story, and the story it's telling us is about wealth and apartheid and class structure. The areas where Protestants were planted in Ireland in the 1500s

were the 1800s. Their descendants were the ruling elite. They had all the money and all the land. Now I know why there's a bunch of giant hogweed on that stretch of river in Limerick. The highest amount of giant hogweed on the river is up by the University of Limerick. Exactly where Yarty's couch is, where Yarty Ahearn the Otter lives. Six years ago that was infested with giant hogweed. I regularly rang the council about it.

I pestered UL about it. I was given an award in 2016 by the University of Limerick. It was an award for contributions to public debate or something. I used my award ceremony to talk about giant hogweed. I should have gotten my autism diagnosis then. I've been pestering cunts about giant hogweed for 10 years on that river. But hundreds of years ago, the University of Limerick was a giant country house, owned by a member of the East India Company, who took part in a battle in India on behalf of the British Empire called the Battle of Plassey. That's why that area is called Plassey. It's

named after a place in fucking India, because of the Brits. So a few hundred years ago, the area of Université of Limerick was straight up fucking landed gentry colonial house. And giant hogweed in the 1800s. The Victorians, they called it the cartwheel plant. They would bring giant hogweed and plant it by the river as a beautiful decorative plant. They'd also use it as a barrier. Instead of putting up a fence, the wealthy Protestant colonial landowners of Ireland would boundary their land with giant hogweed because it was dangerous. What better way to keep the poor starving Catholics out of your land would boundary their land with giant hogweed because it was dangerous. What better way to keep the poor starving Catholics out of your land than to boundary

your land with a plant that would permanently blind you and burn your skin? Giant hogweed is Protestant footsteps. And when you zoom out on that map, the hogweed map is the map of the fucking plantations of Ireland from the 1500s because that's where the wealth was. The great great grandchildren of those Protestant planters who benefited from the penal laws, which were laws that meant that Catholics couldn't own land, couldn't own a horse, couldn't own a weapon, couldn't receive an education, couldn't speak their native language. Their great great grandchildren still held the power and wealth and they had the big gardens and the big land and they planted the giant hogweed and you can see

that pattern there today on a fucking biodiversity map. And you know where the highest concentration of giant hogweed is? Where it's fucking endemic. Up in the six counties, up in the north of Ireland, the Ulster Plantations, where the highest amount of Protestant colonizers were given land by England. It's Protestant footsteps. No disrespect to any Protestants listening. This has nothing to do with sectarianism. I mean, it's the 10th of July today. In two days' time on the 12th of July, all the orange men up north are gonna march and burn big bonfires to remind us and to celebrate the exact plantations I'm talking about. I'm just pointing out that they planted a lot of dangerous hogweed while they were doing

it. I've just found a very interesting pattern that has really, really excited me. In the giant hogweed map, it's just this huge concentration up there in the six counties in the north, and then there's a vein going down the middle of the country, and then it widens out again as it gets to Limerick and Cork. I find that utterly fascinating. But also we need to remove all the giant hogweed as a decolonial act. So then I started typing more shit into this Biodiversity Ireland map, typing in every animal I could think of. I typed in raccoons for the laugh. Since 2016 there's been about 35 sightings

of raccoons in Cork. And I mean, you type raccoons into this map of Ireland and it shows you little dots and then you click on that fucking dot and it's like 2016 raccoon spotted out my back garden and there's a photograph, a photograph of a fucking raccoon out of back garden and Cork eating out of a dog's dish. I haven't figured out why there's raccoons in Cork, but I'd wager there's a place down in Cork called Fora Wildlife Park, which is an island that's like, it's like a weird zoo. It's a zoo that doesn't have any cages. I'm looking at Fora Wildlife Park there. Because also, I typed in a copiu. A copiu is a type of gigantic Brazilian rat.

And then again, since about 2015, down in Cork, loads of sightings of copius, and then for the laugh, I typed in wolf. I typed in, I wonder has anyone spotted a wolf? And then when you type in wolves, it's amazing, there's, there's, the last sightings of wolves on this map is from like the 1600s. There's no recent sightings of wolves. And when you do click on the wolf sightings, every single sighting of a wolf tells you a story of unbelievable violence.

Like I clicked on Limerick for the wolf sighting, and it was in a village called Kilmalloch. In 1591, a pack of wolves were spotted, and it's because the village was massacred. The village of Kilmalloch was massacred. All the people were killed in 1591 and burnt to the ground, so all the wolves showed up to eat the corpses. And then up in Sligo, there's a wolf sighting from 1588 and all it says is

wolves feasted on corpses from the Spanish Armada wreck. So the sightings of animals are telling me very important stories about Irish history, very sad stories. Anytime the wolves are sighted, because Irish wolves were very reclusive, they wanna be off on their own in the forest. Anytime the wolves are sighted, it's the feed on human corpses. And that giant hogweed observation, where the map of giant hogweed is almost identical

to the plantations of the 1500s, that's not even the hottest take of this podcast. I got fucking bollocks deep into Japanese knotweed. And the story that Japanese knotweed can tell us is fucking fascinating. But first let's have a little ocarina pause because I don't want to interrupt this story. Okay, here's the ocarina pause.

I've got this big giant stone ocarina here that I can't really play. You're gonna hear an advert for something. I can't fucking work. Picture this. You're at a picnic with pals and bam, you suddenly feel unwell. But going to the clinic, not the ideal weekend plan.

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Gonna learn how to play that. That was the Ocarina Pause. Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash the Blind By Podcast. If this podcast brings you mirth, merriment, entertainment, enjoyment, whatever the fuck it brings you, please consider becoming a patron. This podcast is my full-time job. It's how I earn a living. It's how I have time to write this podcast each week. How I have time to think and formulate hot takes and spot patterns and do the research. It's how I have the space to week. How I have time to think and formulate hot takes

and spot patterns and do the research. So I have the space to fail. It's how I have the money to rent out this office to pay for all this equipment to record the podcast. This podcast is my full-time job. I adore making this podcast. I love being able to write each week and to deliver to you something

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Have I any gigs? I don't really have any gigs until fucking... Cork Podcast Festival in September. That's not a real festival. It's a festival. It's Cork. It's in the Cork Opera House. It's one of these things that's called a festival but it's not in a field.

It's a gig and it's part of a lot of other gigs. I'm gonna be at the Edinburgh Book Festival as well. In August I think. Again that's not really a festival. It's a gig in a city in a thing that's called a festival. Now I'm doing fucking Electric Picnic. Which is an actual festival. That's an actual festival festival, a big loud field.

Big loud field full of people. I mean, what am I gonna do? I have to do Electric Picnic. I can't not do Electric Picnic. I have to do Electric Picnic. I've gigged Electric Picnic every fucking year since 2007. There's probably people at Electric Picnic this year who were born when I started gigging Electric Picnic. I don't like being at Electric Picnic at all. Nothing against the people who enjoy festivals, nothing against the festival. I outlined my position last week. Festivals are stressful, really

stressful. But what am I gonna do? Turn down fucking electric? I have to do electric picnic. I have to do electric. It would be foolish of me to not do electric picnic. It's fucking Ireland, it's the biggest festival. You have to just do it. So I will be doing a gig at electric picnic. Come along if you're there. I'm playing in a fucking massive tent, a huge tent this year. The gig itself will be good. The bit where I'm doing the gig will be good. The bits around the gig, which he won't be involved in, it'll just be me.

That's the bit I don't like. So hopefully I'm literally going to Electric Picnic, going, doing my gig and then leaving immediately and going back to Limerick. Because I said it last week, when I turned down Glastonbury, just fucking festivals are just stressful. They're really stressful for me. No disrespect to the festivals, no disrespect to anyone who enjoys festivals. It's a very intense feeling of dizziness. It's like being hit into the head with a million rubber hammers. But do come and see me if you're at Electric Picnic.

I'm actually grand when I'm up on stage. That bit's fine. And that's the only bit that matters. Except when I get chased by wasps. I always get chased by wasps. At fucking Electric Picnic and they're trying to get into my bag. Electric Picnic's on earlier this year year actually. It's on in August, which means it's not country wasp season. Usually electric picnic is like September, which is when wasps, wasps are

just a bit more aggressive in September. I've heard, I can't confirm, but I've heard that wasps in September, they eat, the fruit is on trees, and when wasps eat fruit in September on trees, there's a little bit of alcohol and they get drunk and aggressive. I can't confirm that, I can't even remember who told me that. But hopefully this year at Electric Picnic, because it's August, a wasp isn't gonna fucking fly around the mouth of my plastic bag and try and get into my face and sting me. It happens if I drink beer or cider or anything sugary with the plastic bag on my head, and I'm outdoors at a festival. I'm just a wasp magnet. I've told you before about... I think it was 2017 at Electric Picnic and a wasp got into my bag and I had to punch myself in the

face on stage and people just thought I was insane. No one knew how I was doing it. So before the ocarina pause I spoke about giant hogweed, an invasive species, a dangerous invasive species that's a threat to biodiversity in Ireland. And when I go off my walks in Limerick along the river, like I said, I see the signs for giant hogweed that the council put up with a photograph of the giant hogweed saying, do not touch dangerous plant. The other warning sign that I see, and this is very common, and I'd be shocked if you haven't seen one of these,

where you live as well, no matter where you are in the world, I see warning signs for Japanese knotweed. It says, do not cut Japanese knotweed. And it has a photograph of the Japanese knotweed. The theme of this week's podcast. I'm interested in. How the landscape, how plants, animals.

Can tell us stories that if you listen and look in the right way, a story will emerge. Like giant hogweed will tell you the story of Protestant colonization. Dandelions will tell you a story about your liver. Hedgehogs will tell you a story about resentment. With Japanese knotweed, what if I told you that Japanese knotweed will tell you the story of why you can't afford to buy a house? So Japanese knotweed It's not dangerous to touch

But it is incredibly fast growing and it can take over areas Very quickly it can consume areas. If you live in a city Chances are you've seen signs about Japanese knotweed. You're aware of Japanese knotweed. It looks a bit like ivy. It's a sprawling green vine that covers everything in its path. Plants, fences, old cars, whatever the fuck, Japanese knotweed, I think it can grow like 8 meters a month. It's very difficult to destroy. The warning signs always say, do not cut. If you cut a tiny bit of Japanese knotweed off, it will grow into a new plant. Like giant hogweed, it was introduced by the Victorians as an

ornamental plant that soon got out of hand. I'm obsessed with Japanese knotweed. I find it fucking fascinating. Here's why. So Japanese knotweed, as you might have guessed, is native to Japan. In Japan it's not a problem at all. It's native to Japan. People eat Japanese knotweed. It's used for medicine. It's a beneficial plant in Japan. People love it. It's like dandelions to them. Young Japanese knotweed is said to taste like rhubarb, like lemony rhubarb. They love Japanese knotweed in Japan. Here's what makes it unique. Japan is on a tectonic fault line. Japan experiences a lot of earthquakes.

There's also a huge amount of volcanoes on Japan. If you think about what a volcano is, it's a hole deep into the earth, deep into the earth and full of lava. And in lava, you've got rock, heavy metals, minerals that belong deep down in the earth. But when a volcano explodes and it shoots all that lava and ash into the air, it comes crashing down, it burns the earth, and leaves volcanic ash that's heavily rich in minerals and heavy metals. Heavy metals that most plants can't survive on. Most plants can't survive on effectively a toxic soil that's polluted with heavy

metals. I'm talking cadmium, lead, zinc, copper, nickel. These heavy metals that they come from the center of the earth and they get shot out of the fucking volcano and they can make the land toxic Japanese knotweed evolved in that environment Japanese knotweed thrives in soils volcanic soils of Japan that are rich in heavy metals

Soils that other plants couldn't grow on because it's too toxic. But even though volcanoes are scary and dangerous, they're still a natural byproduct of tectonic movement. They're part of nature. And Japanese knotweed has evolved over millions of years to be able to survive in effectively a toxic environment. And when it grows in Japan, it's in its natural habitat. It's safe, it's not invasive,

it has natural predators, fungi. It stays in check. But then when the Victorians took Japanese knotweed away from Japan, and Japanese knotweed came to Western countries. That's when you start to see it go fucking insane. Now the Victorians introduced it, but it's really only started to become a massive problem in the past 40 or 50 years.

Not just in Ireland, huge issue in the fucking UK, huge issue in Ireland. Huge issue in the fucking UK. Huge issue in America. If dandelions are white man's footprints and giant hogweed are Protestant footprints, I would call Japanese knotweed Thatcher's and Reagan's footprints. So Margaret Thatcher in the UK, she was Prime Minister, Ronald Reagan in the US, he was President, both of them in the 80s. Their policies created the type of

inequality that we see today. They both perpetuated neoliberal economics. They wanted to push all aspects of the economy to the private market. They wanted to deregulate business, so remove regulations from business so that capitalism can do whatever the fuck it wants. America and Britain used to have a fairly solid working class. In Britain people had jobs, in factories, in manufacturing, in mines. Entire communities, especially in the north of England, had high levels of employment in the industrial sector.

These people belonged to unions. They had workers' rights. They had full-time contracts. Some of them worked for the government. Margaret Thatcher closed the mines. She crushed unions. Manufacturing jobs left England, left Britain, and now cars and appliances and industry is pushed to emerging economies in the global south.

Your car or your washing machine isn't being made in Sheffield anymore or Bristol. It's being made in Pakistan for someone who's being paid fuck all and then imported back into the UK. The job in the coal mine doesn't exist anymore. Thatcher destroyed industry and working class jobs in the UK. Britain before Thatcher had a lot of industries that were state-owned or partly state-owned. British Telecom BT, that was a state owned company. Margaret Thatcher privatised it.

British Gas, she privatised that. British Airways, she privatised that. British fucking steel. The steel industry used to be nationally owned, then she privatised it. Rolls-Royce. Entire industries, thousands of employees that were government employees,

that had unions, that mean they had full-time contracts, workers' rights, pensions, a large working class who could afford to own a house, who could afford to have a car, who could afford to live their life? Who could afford to have a car? Who could afford to live their life? Who could afford to have kids? A working class that had a social net. A working class that had a community.

Through a process of privatization, deregulation and Boston unions, she got rid of all of that. And now all of the power of industry went to private hands, private hands. And when it goes private, the only thing that matters is profit. That's it. People don't matter. Workers don't have rights. Profit. So British industry falls apart.

Massive unemployment. Communities torn apart. Entire mining towns with a history of mining just fucking gone. That's just one aspect of Thatcher's terrible legacy. Ronald Reagan did the exact same shit in America. When was the last time you heard of Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Cincinnati, Milwaukee? You don't hear about these places anymore in popular culture. When I was a kid, watching TV from the fucking 80s or reruns from the 70s, you'd hear the names of those cities all the time. Because they were heavily

populated industrial centers. Now they're practically derelict. Ronald Reagan gutted industry. In America too. The exact same shit that Thatcher did. Those American cities that I called out there, that's what's known as the American Rust Belt. The Rust Belt of America. The cities that used to have huge amounts of industrial jobs and a functioning working class. Cars being made in America, washing machines being made in America,

indigenous industry and people in full employment with unions and rights, and a social net. What the fuck does this have to do with Japanese knotweed? So these areas in industrial cities all around the world were at one point, these were thriving sites of industry, mines, factories, whatever the fuck. These places became derelict. They became what's called brownfield locations.

Vast swathes of land, post-industrial land, that's vacant and toxic. Particularly mining sites. What do humans do when they mine? When humans mine, we become a volcano. Humans dig deep into the earth and pull out toxic heavy metals, copper, zinc, cadmium, whatever you want. We extract into the earth and we pull these minerals that belong in the earth and we take them out and we bring them to the surface. Except it's humans doing it, it's not natural.

A volcano knows what it's doing. The post-industrial wasteland that was left by Thatcher and Reagan's policies are now where Japanese knotweed is fucking thriving. Because nothing else can grow in these brownfield sites because the earth is toxic

with heavy metals. But Japanese knotweed, that comes from volcanic sites in Japan, where naturally the earth is full of heavy metals from volcanoes. Japanese knotweed tells the story of neoliberalism. It's Thatcher's footprints, it's Reagan's footprints. It thrives in sites of toxic heavy metals where nothing else can grow. And now it's a huge issue. Apparently it can penetrate concrete. Japanese knotweed can reduce the value of a property because it can damage foundations. That's according to the gigantic world bank Santander. Santander have said that if Japanese knotweed is found to be near a

property they need to assess whether they can give someone a mortgage or not. That's how dangerous Japanese knotweed is to urban environments. Japanese knotweed really really started to tell the story of Thatcher's footprints around the time of the 2012 London Olympics. The centre of the 2012 London Olympics, it's an area called the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Fucking gigantic sports arena and stadium built specifically for the London Olympics in 2012. But what was there before the Olympics? It was the industrial heartland of working class East London. There were manufacturing jobs there,

chemical plants, petrol and gas works, scrap yards, waste facilities. This was the toxic industry that was destroying the environment but providing thousands of people in the East End of London with decent working class jobs with pensions and unions and security and the capacity for the people in the East End of London from the 50s, 60s, 70s.

The capacity for the post-war generation to live a meaningful life where they had employment and a place to live and a family and didn't have to worry about poverty. Thatcher killed all that and what you were left with was this massive brownfield site in the east end of London. A massive, vacant, abandoned, toxic wasteland with the soil destroyed from years of the petrol industry and the gas industry and nothing would grow there.

Nettles wouldn't grow there. This was toxic land. And then Japanese knotweed comes in and says, I don't mind a bit of zinc, a bit of cadmium, a bit of lead. This is just like the volcano back home in Japan. I'll grow here. And Japanese knotweed fucking took over the whole area of this place in East London and then when the 2012 Olympics came along and they wanted to build this Olympic Park, Britain had to spend 70 million pounds just to get rid of the Japanese knotweed in this site. And now all the people living in

East London who aren't working class anymore, they're incredibly wealthy people who can afford the property there. They're all now worried about the Japanese knotweed fucking up their mortgages, fucking up their property value. Japanese knotweed is like a type of fucked up revenge. It tells the story of neoliberalism. Wherever Thatcher and Reagan destroyed the industrial areas where jobs used to exist, that's where Japanese knotweed thrives and it's attacking money. Japanese knotweed is Thatcher's footsteps, but on the plus side of it, scientists are looking at,

they're fascinated by the fact that Japanese knotweed can thrive in areas that other plants would just consider too toxic. The fact that it loves heavy metals. And they're looking at, can we use Japanese knotweed in a controlled way to make a toxic area not toxic again so it can be rewilded? And regarding giant hogweed, they did some wonderful trials there last year with certain breeds of sheep. Black-faced sheep.

Up in Scotland they had a problem with giant hogweed and they found that if they got the right amount of sheep to graze, that these sheep could develop a taste for giant hogweed and selectively eat it. But because their skin is pigmented dark, such as sheep that have grey or black faces, because their skin is pigmented dark, they're not susceptible to the chemicals in the plant that will cause their skin to blister under sunlight. So that was this week's podcast. Even though we're destroying the environment and biodiversity and living amongst invasive non-native species,

can we still listen to these species for them to tell us stories? Just like mythology and folklore is informed by native plants and native animals. If you listen to the hogweed, it'll tell you a scary story about murder and colonisation. If you listen to the Japanese knotweed, it'll tell you a story about neoliberalism. They're not nice stories. It's not like the lovely story of the dandelion. Look at my yellow flower and make a tea out of me and I'll help your kidneys.

It's not like that story. It's much closer to the story that the Native American people have for dandelions. This yellow plant is dangerous and it means death. Okay, it's nearly four in the fucking morning here. The hot takes were too intense this week. I needed to give it the time that it deserves. But now I'm losing the ability to speak. Dog bless. Rub a dog. Don't touch the giant hogweed. Don't cut the Japanese nutweed. Tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk.

I'm Sarah Milroy, director of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinberg. If you love impressionism, you'll love what we have on view this summer at the gallery. River of Dreams, Impressionism, you'll love what we have on view this summer at the Gallery. River of Dreams Impressionism on the St. Lawrence features more than 150 sublime works by some of Quebec's most beloved artists. Join us for a journey down the St. Lawrence and see how Impressionism flourished in this country a century ago. Buy your tickets today at mcmichael.com, home to the art of Canada. you