The Blindboy Podcast - Rat Boy Summer

Episode Date: June 12, 2024

A phone call about an 800 year old corpse  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Stew your apples on Bradley Cooper's jokebox, you useful onus. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. There's a church up in Dublin, in the city centre on the north side, by the name of St. Mike's Church. It's a church of great historical significance, because it's really old. The church dates to the year 1095, almost a thousand years ago. It's an ancient church. And in 1095, it was a Viking chapel. It was a church that Vikings built, because it's smack bang in the middle of what was Viking Dublin.

Dublin was founded by Vikings, so was Limerick. If you've been to Dublin, because I'm aware that most of my listeners are outside of Ireland now, but if you've been to Dublin, you've probably visited old Viking Dublin, because it's right there on the River Liffey. I'm talking Temple Bar, near enough where the Guinness Brewery is, the Jameson Distillery, the real touristy areas of Dublin City, that's old Viking Dublin, and it's centered around an area called Wood Quay. Now unfortunately we don't have much left of Viking Dublin, it's a very frustrating situation. So the Viking city of Dublin probably founded around the 8th century, I'm not 100% sure. But the Viking city of Dublin

would have been mostly made of wood. The problem with wood is that it deteriorates. You remember I went to Oslo there a couple of months back and I had a big history horn on me because I was visiting a perfectly preserved wooden Viking ship that was preserved in a bog. Well the Viking city of Dublin, Wood Quay, was very unique because the marshy clay of the banks of the River Liffey is anaerobic. Oxygen doesn't exist there. So the Viking city of Dublin was perfectly preserved in the ground.

Where most other Viking cities rotted away and were built over because it was wood. Dublin was built over but the anaerobic conditions in the clay preserved a lot of it really, really well. So this area, known as Wood Quay, just on the River Liffey there on the south side, this was a treasure trove of artifacts and history about the Vikings and about the history of

Ireland and the history of the Irish people because the Vikings became Irish. Dublin was a very important global Viking city, so was Limerick. Like you ever hear the phrase, to pay through the nose, you paid through the nose. That's from Viking Dublin. If you couldn't pay your debt in Viking Dublin, they'd slit your nose off as a mark of shame.

And to this day we're still saying, I paid through the nose, if you mark of shame. And to this day we're still saying, I paid through the nose if you get ripped off. So long story short, this whole area of Viking Dublin was perfectly preserved underneath the mud of the Liffey. An archaeologist had flagged this and there was huge protests and everything. And then Dublin Council built their offices and a car park on this side of Viking Dublin and fucking destroyed everything. Destroyed a thousand years of history for this ugly fucking building and car park. Some artifacts were salvaged.

You can see them in the Viking Museum that's right there on Wood Quay beside Christchurch Cathedral. So a lot of deeply important, perfectly preserved, rare Viking history was lost in Dublin because of stupid pricks. I get real pissed off about it because every time I gig Vicar Street up in Dublin, I always try and visit the Viking Museum during the day because it's literally just around the corner. And it's a lovely little museum about early medieval Irish history and they have an excellent little bookshop with Irish history books in there and you've Christchurch Cathedral then as well, which is Viking and Norman history. But I get pissed off every time I visit it,

because it's right there on Wood Quay, and there's, you know, really well preserved swords and tools, and it's about, about five percent of what was there. And there's massive chapters, massive chapters of Irish history that we're never gonna find out about because stupid bastards wanted to build a car park and not listen to archaeologists. So if you go down the street and across the river from Wood Quay and walk up about five minutes then you reach this place called St. Mickens Church. It's a church that's still operational today and it's on the foundations of a Viking chapel. Now Saint Mickens Church is historically important because it has crypts underneath it and in these

crypts are naturally preserved mummies. You see again it's something unique to the area. So these crypts, they have limestone in them. Limestone loves water. And the limestone, it sucks all the moisture out of the air. So the bodies in the crypts, they didn't fully decompose. They preserved. They dried out like jerkeys.

And there's a body in there, in this crypt. 800 years old. It's the body of a crusader. Six foot six tall. And because of the way his legs are crossed, we know that this is probably a crusading knight. Now, 800 years ago, that's the 1200s. In 1169, the Normans drove the Vikings out of Dublin, and the Normans took over. Now, the Normans are interesting because they're effectively just Vikings.

In the 9th century, Vikings from Scandinavia, they went and invaded France, started demanding money from the King of France. Then the King of France says, here, just take that area over there. And that area became Normandy in France. Normand meaning Northman. But then those Vikings started marrying in with the French, started speaking a mixture of Norse and French. Then they invaded Britain in 1066, and then they came to Ireland in the 1100s,

so that the great-grandchildren of Vikings with French accents. So this crusade or mummy, this perfectly preserved mummy that's in the church in Dublin, St. Mickens in the Crypt, is most likely a Norman. And just because of how the body is preserved and the way that this body is buried with the legs crossed, that lets us know, wow, in the 1200s in Ireland, there were crusader

knights. Isn't that amazing? The crusaders were, they were like US special forces in the 12th century. They were elite religious knights and they went on a crusade. You know, crusade, the crucible, crucifix. A violent, holy Christian war on the Middle East that probably had more to do with obtaining wealth than religion in the same way that you know America invaded Iraq in 2003 under the premise of spreading democracy but really it was about Isle. Before anyone knew about any Isle in the Middle East

the Christians of Europe were like well we want to take over that area because Really, it was about Isle. Before anyone knew about any Isle in the Middle East, the Christians of Europe were like, well, we want to take over that area because Christ was born there. So the Crusades were multiple long bloody wars where Europe tried to control Jerusalem and crusading knights were elite forces. Like Al-Qaeda, ISIS, the war in Iraq, the religious sensitivities

in cities like Bethlehem or Jerusalem, which are now in Israel. There's a lineage there that goes to the Crusades. So in the crypt of this thousand year old church in Dublin, on Viking foundations, with this strange little anomaly of limestone walls, is the perfectly preserved mummified body of a 6 foot 6 crusading knight, who should be dissolved into dust, who shouldn't exist, but very rare and unique environmental conditions means that we have that bit of history. We don't even know, we don't know the fucking cunt's name or his nationality, we just have to guess and just because of how his legs were crossed do we know that he was a crusading

knight. Unfortunately, yesterday morning someone set fire to the fucking crypt. Some prick went down and set fire to the crypt and now the mummy is gone. The history is gone. Burnt to a crisp. And I was really fucking angry when I heard this. I was so angry and pissed off because I love history so much and because of how much we lost in that small little area of Dublin when stupid bastards didn't listen to archaeologists. But now the crypt of St. Mickens or St. Mike's Church, it's been destroyed by a fire and the

perfectly preserved mummies are gone and that history is gone. And the history lover part of myself is very pissed off about that. Now if you've been listening to this podcast a long time, if you're a transcendent ender or a steeplechasing quiver, you'll remember that I actually spoke about this particular preserved body before. Because in 2019, someone went into the crypt and stole its skull. Someone had beheaded this mummy in 2019 and it was on the nose. And history lovers like myself were really pissed off.

Someone has stolen the head of this perfectly preserved body in the crypt of St. Michael's Church. I put out a public appeal at the time, asking for the head to be returned. We'd all assumed that someone had stolen the head on this mummy and they were gonna set it online because it's an 800-year-old preserved skull. Other people wondered if the head had been stolen for ritualistic purposes, maybe something satanic.

And I never did an update. I never did an update to that podcast because the pandemic happened and I forgot and we all forgot. And when I saw this morning that the crypt was burnt in an arson attack, and now the mummy is gone forever, I was reminded and I was like,

oh, I wonder what happened. Did someone return the head of this mummy? Did someone get caught for doing it? And it turns out someone did. A man was arrested and convicted for stealing the head of the perfectly preserved crusader knight. And when I read this man's story I stopped being angry. I stopped being angry that the head was stolen and I started to become angry about something else about justice and ethics and inequality and class. Before I speak about the man who stole the head of this mummy in 2019 and the sentence that he got. I want to ask the question, at what point do human remains stop being human remains and when do they become a historical object?

So the preserved body of this crusading knight, it's 800 years old, but it's in the crypt, it's in the crypt of a church, relatively preserved. But I can get a taxi ten minutes away from this church and go up to the National Museum of Ireland and I can look at bog bodies in a museum. I've done podcasts on bog bodies before. A bog body, it's a human being who died in a peat bog and because of the high levels of acid and the lack of oxygen in that environment, their body didn't decompose, it was preserved.

So that's what a bog body is and they're in Irish museums. I'm looking at the corpse of a human being in a museum 10 feet away from pottery and stone tools from the same period. Now, bog bodies, they're a couple of thousand years old. So maybe it's like, well that's the Iron Age. These aren't real people. These aren't... But they are, they're human beings, the exact same as me and you. And I can...

And their bodies in a glass case, crumpled up, well preserved in a fucking museum. But not all bog bodies are a couple of thousand years old. There's a bog body called Meany Braddon Woman, and they found her in a bog in Donegal. She died in the 1400s. That's 600 years ago. She's mostly on display in the British Museum, but she gets toured around the world in other museums. A human being who died 600 years ago. Why is her body in a museum as an object, as a piece of history, removed of its humanity? But this crusader is in the crypt of St. Mickens' church. He died 800 years ago, mummified like a bog body, but he's not in a museum.

Because let's be honest, his head was stolen a couple of years back, and his body was burnt to bits this morning. He's gone, he's destroyed. That wouldn't have happened if his preserved corpse was in a museum. So why is his 800 year old corpse in a church and Meany Braddon woman's corpse

is free to be paraded around museums? I think the answer there is consecration. The crusader was laid to rest in a Christian burial in the crypt of a Christian church. Now nature stepped in and said, he's not decomposing, there's limestone walls here, so his body will slowly dry and become a mummy. But because it's consecrated ground, he's still human now. He's human. Whereas Meany Braddon woman was found in a bog. That's pagan,

that's not consecrated, that's nature. It's not blessed. The magic of Christianity has not been involved here. Also, Meany Braddon woman is much better preserved. All of her skin is on her body. You can make out the shape of her body. You can see folds of her flesh. You can see her hair. The Crusader mummy is a freaky looking skeleton with thin grey skin. He portrays a lot less visible humanity than Meany Braddon woman. Even though she died 600 years ago, she's not considered human. She's a historical object that gets paraded around museums, whereas the Crusading Knight, that's a human being and you don't fuck with his bones because he's consecrated in a church and blessed. And you especially don't take him to a museum and display his body alongside artifacts from the same period, which to be honest is

fundamentally absurd. So this is what has me pissed off. A man was convicted in 2019 of stealing the head from the crusade or mummy in the crypt of that church. He was convicted and sentenced to two and a half years in jail for desecrating a corpse.

That's the maximum sentence that you can give out in Ireland for desecrating a corpse, from what I can see. So why did a man steal the head from an 800 year old mummy in a crypt in a church in Dublin? He was a homeless man, he was a drug addict. And he gave his statement in court and he says, I thought I was dreaming, it wasn't reality. He'd gone down into the crypt, said he didn't remember anything, and he was out of his head

on alcohol and Xanax, he said. He then woke up later on in the middle of Dublin city and realized he's after stealing the fucking head off a corpse. If you can imagine that for a fucking hangover. So he wakes up after a Xanax and alcohol binge because he's an active addiction and then is like fuck me I've got this 800 year old head in my lap. He tries to remember, he tries to retrace his steps, he's starting to feel terrible that he's after robbing a skull. So then two days later he returned to the church, left the head in a bag with a note that said, Sorry, rest in peace.

And the judge gave this man two and a half years in prison. He was deeply apologetic in court, expressed remorse, told the judge that he was out of his head on drugs, that he's in active addiction. He showed evidence of being sorry for the crime by returning the skull. I feel sorry for that man. I don't think he deserved two and a half years in prison.

I'm not condoning his actions, but I'm more annoyed about his sentence than I am about him stealing a skull. And the judges went no way. These skulls represent a lot to people of religious belief. So that man paid through the nose. When he committed crime, the law says you must pay a debt to society. That debt was too much, he paid through the nose. This area of Dublin were St. Mike's churches. There was a huge amount of poverty there,

a lot of community trauma, a lot of homelessness, a lot of addiction, a lot of very poor people. And this man was one of those people. This area is also a hot spot of tourism. There's a lot of money to be made. That man didn't desecrate a corpse. He committed a crime against tourism and wealth. If you're wondering why I'm dedicating so much time to a beheaded mummy in Dublin, which is now destroyed completely in a fire, I'm interested in how historical objects can tell us not about the past, but they can tell us about the present too. That 800 year old mummy tells us about justice and hypocrisy. So the judge sentenced your

man for desecration of a corpse on specifically mentioned religious grounds. The maximum sentence in Ireland for desecrating a corpse is two years, that's what your man got. Now if you desecrate the corpse of someone's close sibling, and there's human beings alive right now, who experience great distress, trauma and pain because of that act, then that's when someone goes to jail for two years because you're a fucking lunatic. But an 800 year old mummy, I don't know about that.

We don't even know this mummy's name. There's no living relatives. An 800 year old mummy, it's more of a historical object. And if you wanna make the argument, the religious argument that the mummy is in a grave where it was laid, where the person was laid to rest in a church crypt, well then the church itself is guilty of desecrating that corpse. A representative of the church was on the news today

because, you know, the crypt got burnt out. The big concern is that the church no longer has revenue now. See this crusader mummy was a tourist trap, a tourist trap that's existed for years. It's right in the center of tourist Dublin, between the Jameson Distillery and the Guinness Brewery. Hundreds of Americans every week go down to that crypt to look at the scary corpse. And if you look up the tours, the tours that tourists pay to see this mummy, some of the tours are sold as scary, spooky, macabre Dublin tours.

I've seen the corpse of the crusading knight. It's terrifying looking. It's a skull with paper, thin gray skin. It's fucking terrifying. That's why skull with paper thin gray skin. It's fucking terrifying. That's why tourists want to go and see it. They want to be close to a big scary 800 year old skeleton. It's fucking freaky. And the tours are sold as macabre tours. I don't know if people still do it. But people used to go on school tours to see that mummy, and you'd shake the mummy's hand. That used to be a tradition.

Why is that not desecrating a corpse? You see, you can't have it both ways. If a man 800 years ago received a Christian burial in the crypt of a church, then you can't have hundreds of American tourists visiting every week, looking at his big scary face and touching him. That's desecration of a corpse dressed up as tourism. So the homeless man who was going through addiction, who stole the head and tried to return it, he received two and a half years because of his class and because of crimes

against tourism, crimes against money, crimes against property. I'd argued that the mummy should actually be up in the museum, where it's treated with more respect. If I go up to look at the bog bodies in the museum, it's not sold to me as part of a scary Dublin ghost tour. It's history. So this area, this St. Mike's Church, with its ancient Viking foundations, people are still paying

through the nose. The Vikings were Scandinavian. Ireland didn't have towns before the Vikings came here. We'd petty kingdoms and then we had monasteries but no towns or cities. The Vikings were the first to build towns, Dublin being one of them. And when the native Irish couldn't pay their debt to the Vikings of Dublin, they cut your nose off. You paid through the nose. Imagine how deeply unfair that was, that we're still using that term a thousand years later. A piece of language has survived. It's made its way into English, because a law in that very area was so unfair. And a thousand years from now, if society exists and records still exist and history still exists, a thousand years from now, if someone's reading about this corpse that had the head stolen and was burnt in 2024, they're gonna read about the man who paid through

the nose who got two and a half fucking years unfairly for committing crimes against tourism. And St. Michael's Church, who on the one hand is like, this is a Christian burial, the corpse must remain here, interred in its Christian ground within the grounds of this church, it must remain here, can't be sent to a museum for safety because this is a Christian burial and it must be respected. They're also engaging in the desecration of that corpse with continual tourism for profit. Just like the Crusaders, the nobility of Europe in the 1200 onwards

said we're gonna go on a holy war, a crusade in the name of Christianity. The Christian foundations of St. Michael's Church were built in 1095. Guess what else happened in 1095? The Pope wanted to start the first crusade but there was a problem. In Christianity it says thou shalt not kill. He changed the rules of Christianity and introduced just war. Killing another human is okay if you're doing it during a crusade, which is a type of pilgrimage, especially if the person isn't a Christian, like a Muslim.

The crusades were a land grab. It was rich kings of Europe wanting to take the Middle East for personal wealth, to relieve their personal debt, and to expand trade routes, all done under the guise of Christianity, taking back the Holy Land for Christianity. And the mummified body of that crusader in St. Michael's Church, who had his head stolen and returned, and now had his corpse burnt to a cinder in the crypt, is a historical object that once was. That tells us the story of hypocrisy. Hypocrisy in 2024, hypocrisy in 1095, and in the 1200s. I'm really disappointed that a piece of history is gone. It's fucking shit.

That a mummy that's been around for 800 years is now burnt and gone. But I'm more pissed off about the man who got two and a half years of his life taken away for the crime of being an addict and being homeless. Think if a middle-class person went up to the National Museum and vandalized the bog body. They'd get two and a half years for desecrating a corpse. No they wouldn't. They'd get a slap in the wrist for damage and property. And if I want the one positive thing to come out of, like this 800 year old crusader mummy, it's gone but it will always survive in history because it was such an important object. It was so unique. The memory of this corpse is going to survive in the history books and its

demise will survive. People are going to read about its head was stolen in 2019 and it went on fire in 2024. What will also be remembered is the the class system and the unfairness and the arbitrariness that can exist in the role of law. You see, the judge that handed this man, this homeless man who was in active addiction, the judge that handed him two and a half years in prison, this judge's name is Martin Norlin. He's a judge in Ireland that's very well known for giving lenient sentences to crimes that the public would consider abhorrent. A civil servant by the name of Brendan Fielan was found to have 60,000 images of child sexual abuse on his computer. The judge gave him a

suspended sentence and said that he'd been punished enough with the shame that he'd abuse on his computer. The judge gave him a suspended sentence and said that he'd been punished enough with the shame that he'd brought on his family. A suspended sentence is no jail. A man had 600,000 images of child sexual abuse on his computer and he didn't go to jail. A man called Peter Jennings, he got a suspended sentence, again, not going to jail, walking the streets, he got a suspended sentence, again not going to jail, walking

the streets. He got a suspended sentence after he was found to have 1,300 images of child sexual abuse on his computer. A fella called Martin Geirin was found with 901 images, 146 videos of child sexual abuse. Children as young as two years of age. He didn't go to jail, and the judge said that being publicly shamed is enough of a punishment for this crime.

So this particular judge, Judge Martin Nolan, rules that a man in drug addiction, living in poverty, who stole the head of an 800 year old mummy, and while being sentenced, the judge pointed out that you know this was disrespectful to people's religious beliefs about the skull. That person deserves to be off the streets for two and a half years. However a respectable civil servant from an upper middle class background lives

in a good area, has a family. He's got 600,000, 600,000 images of child sexual abuse in his computer and he can walk free. A person who does that is dangerous. A person who does that is deeply, deeply dangerous to society and dangerous to children. So that's what has me angry. Because none of that feels like justice. None of this feels like justice or fairness. And none of this feels like 2024. It feels like the barbarism of Viking Dublin with people's noses getting chopped off because they can't pay their debts. It flies in the face of my perception of modern Ireland as being a fair society and that justice is blind and it doesn't see things like class or poverty or addiction and it doesn't favor the wealthy or favor the religious.

So that's the strange history of that crusader mummy now. That's the end of the journey. I don't think he intended to be preserved for 800 years, but now he's been burnt to a crisp and beheaded and that's the end of his journey. These were just a collection of my thoughts this week. I didn't have a huge amount of time to prepare this week's podcast because I was filming a documentary all weekend. I'm completely finished filming it now, so I have more time for my hot takes, but I've been quite busy with this documentary.

So this week's podcast was me ringing you up on the phone and telling you about a corpse. This was a phone call podcast. And also, I guarantee you, I'm after pissing off St. Mickens Church. They're disappointed that there was a phone call podcast. And also I guarantee you I'm after pissing off St. Mickens Church. They're disappointed that there was a fire, that the mummies are gone in the crypt, that they were cremated. Someone's been arrested for arson. The priest in St. Mickens Church. You know, he was upset. He was straight up saying, look, we've lost our revenue stream now.

I don't know how we're gonna stay open and stay funded because we earned revenue from the tours of tourists coming to see this corpse underneath the church. He also mentioned too that, you know, these held religious significance for certain people. You can't have it both ways. We can't have it both ways. They're either the remains of a human being, buried

in a Christian church, allowed to rest in peace in accordance with the Christian belief that we assume the dead person had. Like I'm not a Christian but I do try to respect people's beliefs just out of human decency and compassion and empathy. I don't like mocking people's religion or beliefs. But it's either a Christian fucking burial, or it's a spooky mummy that hundreds of Americans pay to see and touch every day. That's the opposite of resting in peace. That's the complete opposite of resting in peace. That's capitalism and tourism.

There's no beliefs there that I need to respect. I think everyone would have been way happier if the mummy had the security and protection of a 600 year old bog body up in the museum. Or else just seal off the crypt. Seal off the crypt. And let the fucking crusader actually rest in peace. Okay it's time for an ocarina pause now. I usually don't have an ocarina in my office, but today I have, I don't even know what the fuck this is. Someone sent it to me.

It's a strange looking stone wind instrument. It's like a large ocarina, but it's the same shape and size as a mango. I also don't know how to get sound out of it. There's holes in it. It appears to be made out of stone. I have no idea what this is, but I'm gonna try and play it. I think I should play it like a bottle

because just blowing straight in doesn't work. You'll hear an advert for some bullshit here. Oh, there we go. advert for some bullshit here. There we go. From fleet management to flexible truck rentals to technology solutions. At Enterprise Mobility, we help businesses find the right mobility solutions so they can find new opportunities. Because if your business is on the road, we want to make sure it's

on the road to success. Enterprise Mobility, moving you moves the world. This episode is brought to you by FX's The Bear on Disney+. In Season 3, Carmy and his crew are aiming for the ultimate restaurant accolade, a Michelin star. With Golden Globe and Emmy wins, the show starring Jeremy Allen-White, Iowa Deberry, and Mattie Matheson is ready to heat up screens once again. All new episodes of FX's The Bear are streaming June 27th, only on Disney+. I can't play it. Wow. And when I blow into it, it smells smoky. I don't know what the fuck that was.

I doubt it offended any dogs. Support for this podcast comes from you the listener via the Patreon page. Patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast. If you enjoy this podcast, if it brings you mirth, merriment, companionship bizarrely, anytime I do an episode that I consider to be a phone call, and a phone call episode is one that I just kind of talk. People say it makes them feel like they have a friend. Whatever you take from this podcast, if you enjoy it, please consider paying me for the

work that I put into this podcast. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month. That's it. And if you can't afford that, don't worry about it. You can listen for free. Everybody gets the exact same podcast. I get to earn a living. It's a wonderful model based on kindness and soundness.

Patreon.com forward slash the Blind By podcast. And please sign up as a paid member, not a free member. And patrons are what keep this podcast going. It's what pays my wage, it's how I rent out this office, it's how I have a lovely brand new computer, it's how I can speak about whatever I want to speak about each week without worrying about advertisers. I think advertisers want podcasts about 800 year old mummies in the crypt of a Dublin church.

No, they want podcasts about the rat-buy phenomenon. It's rat-buy summer. Everyone's talking about how Timothy Chalamet and Barry Keown and Jeremy Allen White, how these men look like rats, and how Gen Z women, for this summer only, are attracted to men who look like rats. There's lots of viral articles now about this particular subject. That's what advertisers

want me to talk about. Rat by summer. I don't give a fuck about rat by summer. It's none of my business. It's none of my business. And also I don't believe it. I refuse to believe. What's Gen Z? 25 year olds? I just don't believe. Alright so every 25 year old woman right now is attracted to men who look like rats for this summer only. Is that what is that what's happening in reality? Is it? It's not. It's construct of the media. Maybe one or two people on TikTok said, I'm into rat buys. And then a journalist pitched it. And now there's like 20 articles

this week about rat buy summer. And all these men who look like rats and they're attractive for looking like rats. I'm not saying they look like rats. See, a few years back, a rapper called Megan Thee Stallion, she had a song for 2020 called Hot Girl Summer that introduced that to the lexicon. Then, Tom Hanks' weird son, Chet Hanks, said, it's not Hot Girl Summer, it's White Boy Summer. And now here we are at hot rat summer. Or rat boy friend summer, whatever the fuck you want to call it.

I'm talking about it too much now. Talking about rat boy summer. It's none of my business. I'm not interested in this. But this is what advertisers would like me to do a podcast about. Blind boy. Everyone's talking about Rat Boy Summer. Can you speak about Rat Boy Summer? No, fuck off.

It's Decapitated Crusader Carp Summer over here. Go fuck yourself. An advertiser did ask me to talk about fucking Rat Boy Summer this week. They got told to fuck off. If we put an ad on your podcast this week, they got told to fuck off. If we put an ad on your podcast this week, will you speak about Rat Boy Summer? Because this is going very viral right now. And I didn't know what Rat Boy Summer was,

I had to Google it after the advertiser looked it up, and then I'm going, young women are attracted to Timothee Chalamet because he looks like a rat this summer, is that it? That's what you want me to talk about. So I said fuck off. No. No that's not gonna hap- I've already done it now. I've done it. I should have taken the sponsorship. There's no value in rat boy summer. Has anyone asked Timothy Chalamet about this? Betcha Barry Keown doesn't like that. Betcha Barry Keown's not happy. Opening up the internet and everyone's calling him a hot rat.

The only possible thing that would interest me about this subject is... Frank Zappa's got an album called Hot Rats from 1969. Absolutely revolutionary album. It's a song on it called Willie the Pimp, which is like early hip hop music featuring Captain Beefheart. I'm not doing a podcast about how Timothee Chalamet looks like an attractive rat. Actually it's a good Timothee Chalamet film, what's it called? King, The King. It's Crusades adjacent. I think it's based on an amalgamation of a couple of Shakespeare plays. Very, very good film.

And what's his face is in it. What's your man that was in Twilight? Looks like a Jedward after a dose of food poisoning. What's his fucking name? Pollux. Robert Pattinson. Actually he's a candidate for Rat Boy Summer, isn't he? I'm not talking about Ratboy Summer. I'm after talking way too

much about Ratboy Summer. Like, this is why you have to directly support the podcast, because advertisers will be like, can you just do a podcast about what the most viral trending thing is right now? Can you do that, please? And don't think about content or what you're passionate about or interested about at all. So subscribe to the Patreon. I don't have many gigs coming up. We've got that Vicar Street there on the 18th of June that's nearly sold out. I've released a couple of tickets from the guest list. My tongue is hanging out for that gig now because you see I can go to the Viking Museum it's just around the corner from it.

And then I've got, there's nothing else really till October. I'm doing the gig in Cork at the fucking, the Cork podcast festival but that's about it. Kilkenny's sold out, that's in July. I'm gonna go see that carving, that statue that looks like Keith Duffy. Ratboy Summer is a real thing like it's not a real thing but it's the media is trying to make it a thing like seriously look up hot rodent boyfriend, hot rat, Ratboy Summer established media is on its fucking knees. So what happens is that journalists will scroll TikTok usually,

try and see if there's anything remotely trending. Then they blow it out of proportion and pitch articles about it to editors. Like a couple of months ago it was Gen Z are sympathetic to Osama Bin Laden. That in 2002 Osama Bin Laden had released a letter where he justified the 9-11 attacks and the media were saying Gen Z are after finding his letter and now Gen Z can't stop talking about how much they love Osama Bin Laden and his ideology. There was like hundreds of articles about this but it all came from like one TikTok. There was just one TikTok and the media blew it out of proportion. It was a media construct and I think Hot Rat Summer or Rat Boy Summer

is the same thing but it has it has all the talking points you want. Number one it gets to list out a bunch of famous men who are in the news. So you've Barry Keown, Timothy Chalamet, and that fella from the bear. It's kind of offensive, because now we immediately have to engage with the comments and start going, I don't think that guy looks like a rat.

Really? He's a rat? But in an attractive way. And then someone else comes in and says, Imagine we started saying this about women. There'd be uproar. What if we had mouse woman winter? You've also got a generalization about Gen Z. That always works for viral content

because it gets people fighting. Fucking Gen Z are attracted to rats. Idiots. What's wrong with being attracted to men who look like men? What's with all these rats? And then the topic. It's poised in such a way that Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, you've got your Rat Boy Summer articles.

All these male actors look like rats. Gen Z women are attracted to them because they look like rats. Mattie Healy is one of them actually. These men are attractive because they look like rats. Mattie Healy is one of them actually. These men are attractive because they look like rats. So you've got that Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and then Thursday and Friday, you get to have the backlash articles. Actually, here's why Rat Boy Summer is offensive.

Why you're wrong about Rat Boy Summer. It's just, it's a non-existent cultural phenomena that's drummed up just to create viral articles and engagement and talking points and content. And then whenever that happens, the advertisers are like, can you talk about this viral thing, this viral thing? So I'm inadvertently after actually doing it now. Even though I said I wouldn't, I'm after giving it way too much time. Barry Keown listens to this podcast. He listens to this. I don't think he looked like a rat. Although I did say once about Barry Keown

when I was reviewing his work, and he commented favorably about it, but I said, Barry Keown looks like what vinegar smells like. And that wasn't a commentary on his appearance, it's rather, that's his presence. When Barry Keown comes on screen, he's very distinctive, incredibly distinctive. It's like opening up a bag of chips and getting that bang of vinegar into the face. It's more of a commentary on his his overall presence rather than his appearance. I'll catch you next week.

I'm not doing any filming. And on Thursday morning I'm gonna be in at 9 o'clock into my office researching and writing for next week's hot take. In the meantime, rub a dog genuflect to a swan. Don't run over any fucking shrews on your bike. I nearly ran over a shrew on a bike the other day. Cycling along the canal, a lot of people started screaming at me,

pointing at me, thought there was something wrong with my tire. Wasn't, there was a tiny shrew in my path, I had to swerve. Shrew by Tuesday, shrew by Tuesday, why can't we have shrew by Tuesday? That's better than rat by summer. Pelican Man Spring. That's what I want. Here's a list of Hollywood

actors who look like pelicans and women are attracted to them for spring. Who looks like a pelican? Gary Beausey looks a bit like a pelican. Or Tolkien-esque, at least. Alright dog bless. From fleet management to flexible truck rentals to technology solutions. At Enterprise Mobility, we help businesses find the right mobility solutions so they can find new opportunities. Because if your business is on the road, we want to make sure it's on the road to success. Enterprise Mobility, moving youves the World. You So. You I'm sorry. So You Thank you.