The Blindboy Podcast - The Colonial history of Pumpkin Spice Lattes

Episode Date: September 19, 2023

The Colonial history of Pumpkin Spice Lattes  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

She or the bandy-legged sheep, you grieving Stevens. Welcome to the Blind Buy Podcast. It's pumpkin spice latte season. I don't even like pumpkin spice latte. It's disgusting. It's sickly sweet. And it's full of sugar. Because the bitterness of the coffee

doesn't actually work with the pumpkin spice. So I fucking hate pumpkin spice lattes. But somehow, through incredibly effective advertising, they've managed to become the taste of autumn leaves. When it's September and the evenings are darkening to the colour of a guard's pants, there's a chill in the wind and the leaves are tinting and loosening from their twigs. You feel a little sadness, it's nature reminding you of death. Winter is coming, summer is gone and somehow the pumpkin spice latte has managed

to situate itself right there in the middle as the solution in your brain to that feeling and I always end up buying one once a year, taking a couple of sips, regretting it and throwing it away. But by which time it's too late. Starbucks have already gotten my fiver and that's what happened earlier this week. It was a particularly chilly day in Limerick City. It was the first day of the year that I needed to wear a jumper under my jacket. It was overcast, but not that dark gloomy winter overcast. Autumnal overcast where the sky has the glare of a freshly painted ceiling and there was an aggressive breeze, wind with a bit of effort behind it, wind that brings the smell of alleyways and the ground and

the grass up into your nose and the beautiful sound of autumn in a city. Leaves scuttling over concrete, like the paws of a hundred hollowed dogs, weightless pitter-patters and scrapes. And I was mindfully experiencing the beauty of this. And then the pumpkin spice latte, Belle, went off in my head. The one that was implanted in there by swanky American advertising bollockses. It's the particular shade of orange.

The Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte, it's a type of creamy, vibrant orange, which matches the colour of autumn leaves at this exact point right now. It's not quite dark auburn, it's the fiery orange of a freshly dead leaf. And that visual trigger via advertising is how the pumpkin spice latte bell rings in my head. And it wasn't a joyful feeling. It was a feeling of self-loathing. The thought came into my head, ah, I bet they have pumpkin spice lattes now up in Starbucks. I fucking hate those. And then I couldn't stop thinking about that gingerbread taste. And I couldn't stop thinking about that gingerbread taste and I couldn't stop thinking about that cold whipped Starbucks cream that's made out of styrofoam

and I gave in I was like there you go now you fucking wanker there you go walk on up to Starbucks you prick to buy the drink that you hate so that you can have one sip of it or two sips and throw it away

go and do it you fool so I did I bought a small one and I took the only nice sip of a pumpkin spice latte, which is the first sip. That first sip where your hands are warmed by the cup. It comes up towards your nose. You notice the wonderful aroma of cloves and ginger. Your brain is prepared for a hot drink. Your brain is prepared for a hot drink. Then you take a sip and it's like, oh my God, this cream is cold. You take a sip. It's initially pleasurable.

And then it begins to taste like hot sugary vomit. And you're left walking around with a drink you don't want to finish. So I did that earlier this week. And I immediately felt the desire to self-flagellate, to punish myself. So the first thing I did was I said I bet you this drink isn't ethical at all. So I googled and yeah turns out I was right. It turns out in 2020 Starbucks were investigated and it was found that coffee beans in their supply chain were picked using child labor in Guatemala. And as I sipped at my pumpkin spice latte, I just got more and more pissed off

with the drink. And I asked myself, how did this happen? How did we end up with this? How did this become a thing? It's colonization in a sip. There's so much fractured history and pain in its taste profile. You've got coffee interacting with pumpkin interacting with ginger nutmeg and cloves. The most striking thing about a pumpkin spice latte is it simply doesn't work. The bitterness of the coffee does not work well with the ginger in particular. Both coffee and ginger have a bitterness to them, an alluring bitterness, which by themselves works wonderfully, but together they compete. And the tang of ginger

in a pumpkin spice latte actually brings out a particulate, gravelly, gritty, sedimentary, sandy texture to the coffee, which is something you don't normally taste so they're it's they're fighting with each other the coffee and the spices are fighting with each other in the cup and my tongue is getting stray slaps and the sweet foamy milk is mediating between those two competing flavors and it shouldn't need to do that. You will get a similar experience with a chai latte, but not as extreme. So I was walking around Limerick with this drink that I hate in one hand and then my fucking phone in the other hand, trying to research the colonial history of this drink. Coffee comes from Ethiopia in Africa. Coffee for years. Coffee beans were a closely guarded secret in Ethiopia.

Ethiopians would only trade coffee beans once they'd been roasted. So the person who purchased those beans could not plant them and tried to grow their own coffee plant. But even if he tried, it was really difficult, especially in Europe, because there weren't any climates in Europe that could grow coffee. But then in the 15th century, the Dutch took a load of coffee beans and figured out how to grow them in an island that they had colonized in Indonesia called Java.

So Java coffee is the first coffee that was grown outside Ethiopia by the Dutch. But then in the 17th century, French colonizers brought a coffee plant to the French colonial island of Martinique in the Caribbean and successfully grew coffee there. And coffee grew fantastically in the Caribbean. And then it spread all the way to Central America. And when coffee made it to the likes of Guatemala and Costa Rica, then it exploded. It really flourished. They had mountain ranges and micro

climates and nutrient rich volcanic soils. And of course this coffee was being farmed and picked by enslaved people. Either people who were transported from West Africa or the indigenous people of like Guatemala and Costa Rica. But another crop that comes from Central America and is indigenous to Central America was the pumpkin. The big orange pumpkin that we know today had actually been domesticated in Central America 8,000 years before any European colonizers arrived and the knowledge of pumpkin cultivation had spread from Central America all the way up to North America to the indigenous people there. The people who we would call Native Americans. So in the 1600s, when the first pilgrims we'll say from England colonized North America, the area around Massachusetts, Boston.

Those first colonizers would have been English Protestants, Puritans and Calvinists. They would have been relatively wealthy people. Not super rich but wealthy enough in the 1600s that they could go to America and set up colonies. But this was the 1600s. These were among the first European people going to North America and colonising it, trying to live there. Which in the 1600s, it's a bit like trying to live on the moon or live on Mars. You've gone too far to come back and this environment is new. You're not suited to it. So when these English pilgrims arrive in like Massachusetts in the year 1620 on a ship called the Mayflower. Life is very very hard because they've brought with them a bunch of crops from Europe that don't really grow in North

America because it's a different land with a different climate and different nutrients in the soil. They also brought with them diseases like diphtheria and typhoid. So the first year of English colonization in North America in Massachusetts was really hard and half of the pilgrims died from starvation and disease. So they're fucked. These English pilgrims in Massachusetts are absolutely fucked. They're miles away from England. They can't sail back. fucked. They're miles away from England. They can't sail back. They're gonna die. Now it's the spring of 1621

in Massachusetts. So about six months have passed. Half of the pilgrims haven't survived the winter. And all of a sudden a Native American man shows up by the name of Tisquantum. And this Native American man is able to

speak English. And the pilgrims are like what the fuck we're the only english people in america how do you speak english and then tis quantum says well i was actually kidnapped by an english man about five years ago and he sold me as a slave in malaga in spain then a lot of spanish monks Malaga bought me, taught me how to speak English and taught me all about the Bible and Christ. Then I came back to Massachusetts on a ship and your diseases had killed my entire tribe. So then the English pilgrims go, Jesus we're so sorry about that Squanto. But anyway we're English and as you can see we're all starving and dying here and none

of our crops will grow but we are English so we'll kill all ye if ye don't help us so then Tisquantum says fuck I'm gonna go back to my tribe the Patuxet tribe and what we will do is we will show you English pilgrims

how to grow our crops and how to fish and how to hunt and how to live in this new land America. We'll show ye how to do this in exchange for ye not killing us. How does that sound? And then the Brits go great. So in the spring of 1621 the Native Americans of Massachusetts showed the English pilgrims Native American agriculture. Specifically what the Native Americans, the knowledge that they showed the English pilgrims was known as the three sisters method of growing beans, corn and pumpkins. Three foodstuffs that the English had no knowledge of but the Native Americans had been eating and growing for years and how it worked was so corn grows quite tall on a stalk so you'd grow your

corn and the big strong stalk would reach to be maybe five or six feet high but then beside the corn you grow your beans because beans are runners and they climb up things so the beans grow beside the corn and they climb up the stalk but then to keep the soil moist and to stop weeds from growing you planted pumpkins which grew on the ground and they had long leaves and tendrils so corn beans and pumpkins grew together perfectly so this is what the indigenous people the knowledge that they gave to the English colonisers so

the English got food because they were starving and the Native Americans got we won't murder you with our muskets and guns that we have so all through the summer the pilgrim's crop of beans, corn and pumpkins grows and then it gets to autumn of 1621 and it's time to harvest. The pilgrims have loads of food

now. They're gonna harvest all their beans, corn and pumpkins. They decide to have a feast, a harvest feast which would have been traditional back in England too. They have a big harvest feast and they invite some of the local Native American people to join them. And that is what's called Thanksgiving. That's what Thanksgiving is, that's the American holiday of Thanksgiving. What the pilgrims learned there was the importance of the pumpkin. This new strange, it's not quite a fruit, it's not quite a vegetable, but it's massive and it grows brilliantly here in Massachusetts. What the pilgrims learned was the importance of

the pumpkin for staying alive in North America because half of them starved the previous year and with the pumpkin it's massive and you can preserve it in many different ways and it stays fresh for ages. but this is what I started to realize as I was walking around Limerick City drinking my disgusting horrible fucking pumpkin spice latte so the Native Americans had many uses for pumpkins they were very important to them they would eat it as a savory food the flesh of the pumpkin, they would roast it, they would dry it for later, they'd eat the seeds of the pumpkin, they'd dry the flesh of the pumpkin and make a flour out of it. They would use hollowed out pumpkins for storage. But when the English pilgrims in Massachusetts

started eating pumpkins, they had slightly different taste buds to the Native Americans. So by the mid-1620s, because the Native Americans had shown the English how to survive in America, the English colonies started flourishing and they were self-sufficient and the Native American people were dying because of European diseases and being murdered. And as the English colonies grew, by the mid-1620s, more ships started to come over and these ships would bring like cows from England and they'd bring spices from England and what the pilgrims would do each harvest each autumn in Massachusetts is they would get their pumpkins and they wouldn't eat them like the

Native American people would do they'd get their pumpkins and put the pumpkin in a fire right. Cut the top off the pumpkin. Slice out a lot of the flesh and then in the pumpkin they would put cow's milk. Now Native American people didn't have cows. They had wild bison but from what I find online. Native American people didn't drink milk. But English people did. So English people would get a pumpkin. Put it in the fucking bonfire. Cut the top off. Fill it with milk.

And then add their three favourite spices. Nutmeg. Ginger. And cloves. And then on top of that they'd put a lot of honey. So in the 1620s in Massachusetts you've got pilgrims basically making a pumpkin spice latte just with no coffee this sweet milky spicy drink inside in a pumpkin mixed with the pumpkin flesh and from that they invented the

pumpkin pie but then I realized in Limerick City as I was drinking my pumpkin spice latte I'm like ah that's what this is. It's the American taste of Thanksgiving. A taste that I'm not familiar with because we don't celebrate Thanksgiving in Ireland. I don't know what the fuck this shit is but that's what this is supposed to taste like. The pumpkin spice latte is a weird simulacrum of the American taste of Thanksgiving and pumpkin pie. Now I get it. And then I start to think, yeah, we don't really have pumpkin pies or that type of taste or flavor over here in autumn. But what have we got? Oh, we've got Halloween. Yeah, we've got Halloween over here in Ireland. And then I started researching more. Yeah, we've got Halloween over here in Ireland.

And then I started researching more. So when the American pilgrims in the 1600s were doing their harvest festival and cutting the tops off the pumpkins and filling them with milk and honey and spices, as the English colonies grew in America, Irish indentured servants also went to Massachusetts as the colonies grew. Because Ireland at that time is an English colony. So Irish indentured servants make their way over to Massachusetts. Now they're not slaves of the English. It's important to make that distinction.

They're not slaves because as indentured servants they could have their freedom one day. But the Irish indentured servants there, they would have been very poor. They would have been serving the English people. And what happened was, mid to late 1600s, the English are having their harvest festival. They're cooking their pumpkins in the fire, hollowing them out, filling them with milk and spices. Then they drink everything that's in it and eat everything.

What's left is a pumpkin that's completely hollow. But then the Irish indentured servants, they celebrate Halloween because Halloween is an Irish festival back home. It's Samhain. Now back in Ireland at Halloween, the Irish people would get turnips. They'd get a turnip and they'd carve the turnip to look like a head, a jack-o'-lantern. But like I said, in America, European crops were failing. So the Irish would get the scraps of the English pumpkins and then carve them into jack-o'-lanterns. And that's why we have pumpkins at Halloween. It was Irish people who were looking for turnips, but they found pumpkins. They had to make them out of English people's pumpkin spice lattes. Now I've done a detailed

podcast on that specific group of Irish people, that specific group of Irish indentured servants that would have been in the Massachusetts, Virginia area. They used to eat lobsters at a time when lobsters weren't really considered food. There were these weird insect fish that would wash up on beaches and the Irish indentured servants were so poor this was the only meat that they ate. But I did a full podcast about the history of lobsters and Irish indentured servants in Massachusetts called Lobster Purple. So I was having a great old day walking around Limerick City, pumpkin spice latte in one hand, and fucking my phone in the other,

just frantically googling, and researching, finding out the history of how this drink came to be in my hand, and I was pure chuffed with myself. And then whatever way I swiped, the actress Drew Barrymore came up. You know Drew Barrymore. I think she was

in E.T. as a child. You know who Drew Barrymore is. Hollywood actress. Big star. So this article about Drew Barrymore comes on my phone. So Drew Barrymore is involved in a controversy at the moment over in America. Currently the Writers Guild of America are on strike, okay? And Drew Barrymore has a TV show called The Drew Barrymore Show. And Drew Barrymore decided I think it was two weeks ago that she's going to go back to her Drew Barrymore show without writers.

Effectively meaning she's crossing a picket line. That makes her a scab. And when she announced this there was huge backlash. And people rightfully told her you're crossing the picket line you can't do this you're turning your back on your fellow actors this is a terrible thing to do and then she released an apology video and reeled back her decision but as I was watching Drew Barrymore

doing the apology video I almost felt sorry for her I got the sense that okay yes this is a bad thing she's doing crossing picket lines is terrible but there was something about her words and demeanor it just suggested to me that she kind of didn't understand. It's like she didn't know that crossing the picket line was so bad. It was a level of privilege that made her effectively clueless and it was so clueless that I just got this feeling of that has to be generational privilege she she really doesn't get this and also my dad was a union organizer so like I don't cross fucking pickets because it was explained to me at a young age as to why strikes are important. And I had this sudden explosion, this sudden moment of creative flow,

I suppose you'd call it. I stopped in my tracks and noticed that my pumpkin spice latte was kind of going cold in my hands. But I had this intense blast of concentration. Now, I follow a lot of autistic people on TikTok and a lot of autistic people claim that sometimes they can have experiences that feels like they can predict the future and sometimes I have intense experiences like that I know I'm not predicting the future it's most likely an intense sensitivity to pattern recognition that can occur in the autistic brain. The finest example of it is that film A Beautiful Mind with Russell Crowe. If you look at that it's about the

economist John Nash. It's based on a true story. I don't know if John Nash was autistic. He gives autistic vibes. He was definitely schizophrenic but there's scenes in that film where Russell Crowe has moments of inspiration and the world lights up and patterns just make sense. Patterns jump out, out of nowhere. And it's very intense. And I used to look at that film as, when I was like 19 or 20, I used to look at it because I would relate very heavily to the moments of intense inspiration that Russell Crowe's character would get. He would stare at a group of pigeons and then all of a sudden the world would go quiet and the pigeons would glow and he'd see a pattern in those pigeons and he'd have this smile on his face like all the secrets of the world were revealed to him and then immediately afterwards he's withdrawn

and socially awkward and burnt out and I used to look at that and I'd say, fuck it, that's what it's like. That's what it feels like for me when I get flow. That's what it feels like. I now realize years later that that was, it's artistic focus. That's what that is. So when I was walking down the street with my pumpkin spice latte, I thought the saga was over. I thought I'd figured out.

Okay, there's coffee in there. I've figured out this business with the pumpkins. Thanksgiving, milk, honey, spices. It's all making sense. So I've got the latte in my left hand and then Drew Barrymore's apology video in my right hand. And I got that moment of intense flow.

I got this overwhelming sense. It's the place where hot takes come from. The world stopped, and intense patterns emerged via this extreme feeling of joy and excitement. And I'm sure if you walked past me, I looked fucking mad. I just got this feeling of,

I don't know why but there's something about Drew Barrymore and the history of pumpkin spice lattes that's connected and I'd no evidence for it nothing it's just a deeply intense feeling but it's a feeling that I know well and whenever that happens I follow that feeling. So I immediately went online and searched for Drew Barrymore's ancestry because the vibe I got was her cluelessness around crossing a picket line and not obeying a strike her cluelessness was so great and innocent almost that it must be intergenerational it must be generational wealth and I was fucking right so Drew Barrymore's father was born in 1932 he was a fella called John Drew Barrymore he was an actor I thought okay her dad's an actor that's

not not too uncommon but then his dad is an actor too born in 1882 called John Barrymore so now Drew Barrymore's granddad is an actor. What's going on? This is a dynasty of actors. And then I go, well, who's his dad? Well, his dad is a fucking actor too. He's born in 1849. Jesus Christ, Drew Barrymore's great grandfather is an actor. And then I look up his name and his name is Herbert Arthur Blythe. And he's born in India. Now that doesn't sound like an Indian person's name. Ah he's a Brit who was born in India in 1849 and he's a very famous actor in the 1800s and he was the first person to call himself Barrymore because he doesn't want to be up on stage called Herbert Arthur Blythe so he invents the name Barrymore and

that's where the Barrymore acting dynasty comes from which I didn't know about so Drew Barrymore comes from wealthy actors going all the way back to the 1800s and then I go the fuck is this fuck is this prick doing being born in India though it's a white Englishman being born in India in the 1800s now I know a thing or two about India in the 1800s and the Brits and colonisation. Like, I wonder is this anything to do with spices? Is this? I wonder who his da is? His da is born in the early 1800s and he's called William Edward Blythe.

And he is a surveyor for the British East India Company. The colonisation of India by the Brits, the spice trade. From about the 1600s onwards, the British East India Company were the corporate wing of the British Empire. When the British would colonise a country, take it over, kill the indigenous people, the British East India Company would come in survey the land and turn the extraction of wealth and resources from that country into a business that's what the British East India Company did and Drew Barrymore's

great great great grandfather was a surveyor for the British East India Company pumpkin spice latte what are Company. Pumpkin spice latte. What are the spices in pumpkin spice latte? Cloves, ginger and nutmeg. All of these spices are indigenous to Southeast Asia. The spice islands as the Brits call them. The British East India Company flourished on the spice trade. The British East India Company took spices like ginger, nutmeg and cloves from India, from Indonesia, Southeast Asia. They took these things, extracted

them and then traded them around the world. By the 1600s to 1700s, the British East India Company were bringing spices from Southeast Asia to the Caribbean to North America. The British East India Company are the reason that the pilgrims when they got their fucking pumpkins from the Native Americans. The British East India Company are the reason that the flavorings they wanted to put in there are nutmeg, ginger and cloves. It's the fucking three spices of the pumpkin spice latte and drew barrymore is very much involved in this i was right her family wealth and privilege goes back four generations to the fucking british east india company and that's why that's why she doesn't understand why it's a bad thing to cross strikes because she comes from

unbelievable generational wealth from colonizers so by that time i think i was just standing in the middle of the street my pumpkin spice latte had gone completely and utterly cold and i was thrilled at myself I was just I wanted to high five my own head I was just like thank fuck this is your job thank fuck your job is to actually

drink a pumpkin spice latte connect it with Drew Barrymore and then tell it all to people on a podcast thank fuck that's your job and not just something you bother people with. Because I'll be honest, if I'd have seen someone that I knew, I'd have ran up to them,

been so excited that I didn't say hello, and immediately start speaking about how my pumpkin spice latte is connected with Drew Barrymore's ancestry. And then I'd leave without saying goodbye, and that's how you get a reputation for being eccentric. That's how people who are neurodivergent get reputations for being eccentric.

But I didn't have to do that. I said, this will make a really interesting podcast instead. I can focus that energy there. Isn't that wonderful? I want to make it clear that this, this wasn't an advertisement for Starbucks. Like I said in 2020 an investigation found that one of their supply chains used child labour in Guatemala. So you don't say

things like that during an advertisement for the company. Starbucks is just ubiquitous anyway. Like Coca Cola or Pepsi. Don't think it counts as an advertisement if you mention them. But inadvertently I guarantee you a advertisement if you mention them, but inadvertently, I guarantee a load of you are going to want to get pumpkin spice lattes now that I've mentioned it. And what I'd say to you is, the ones in Starbucks are fucking shit. They're rotten, let's be honest. They're not nice. What you're chasing is the dragon of that first taste. That first sip is nice, but you never finish the drink. Make your own pumpkin spice latte.

I'm going to do that for myself this week. Now first off, I need the pumpkin puree. Now you can buy shitty American pumpkin puree in cans. I reckon an American sweet shop might sell canned pumpkin puree. But pumpkin puree is easy to make. Pumpkins are in, they're in shops now because it's Halloween. Or if you can't find a pumpkin, use a butternut squash.

Pretty much tastes the same. But what you want to do is you want to get your pumpkin, cut it in half and then roast it in the oven. Maybe a half an hour, you'll know when it's done. The seeds are magnificent. Not only is the flesh cooked. The seeds of a pumpkin or a butternut squash. When roasted in the oven are magnificent. And then just scoop out the flesh.

Lovely and cooked. And fuck it into a blender and turn it into a puree. And there's your pumpkin puree or butternut squash puree. Spoon about two teaspoons of that pumpkin puree into a mug or into a little saucepan if you like. Add a pinch of ground nutmeg, a pinch of ground cloves or cinnamon if you like, and a pinch of ground ginger.

Fuck in a bit of honey or sugar to taste. Now this is the controversial bit. Do you add coffee or do you not? If there's any coffee hipsters out there amongst you, I guarantee you someone listening to this podcast runs a coffee shop. Can you figure out the correct way to prepare a shot of coffee

or the right bean to use so that the bitterness of that coffee doesn't fight with the ginger and create that dusty feeling if you can find the right fucking coffee to mix with the pumpkin spice latte you're onto a winner but you could also just leave leave the fucking leave the coffee out so you've got pumpkin puree your three spices bit of sugar and then add in your hot milk and stir it up. Yum yum. Personally I think that would be nicer. That sounds like a turmeric latte.

Like I love turmeric lattes. Teaspoon of turmeric or a little less. Into some hot milk. Stir it around. Add those spices I mentioned. And a bit of fucking sugar to taste. Froth it up if you like. Turmeric lattes are beautiful. If you do it right, if you do it right, Jesus, turmeric can taste like coconuts and it soothes the insides of

you. So don't go to Starbucks for your pumpkin spice latte. Make it yourself at home or see what your local hipster cafe will do for you. Cafes. If you're a small little local cafe and you want to have a go at a decent pumpkin spice latte, tag me in your Instagram stories and I'll share it for you. Don't tag me on Twitter because that's a fucking sewer. You don't even have to call it a pumpkin spice latte. You can call it a silken Thomas after my dearly departed dead cat. But speaking of Twitter being an absolute sewer, I watched that documentary at the weekend about Russell Brand and the disturbing allegations of sexual assault against him. It made me feel like fucking shit. I'm not

going to give a content warning because I won't go into the details of the documentary but he's someone who really plugged my work a lot over the years, especially rubber bandit stuff. He full-on proselytized about it to a large audience that he had. That documentary was upsetting to watch. And it was upsetting to listen to the stories of the women that were coming forward. A lot of you have asked over the years. A lot of you have asked for me to get Russell Brand on this podcast as a guest. And I never approached him. Because around 2018, 2019, his content just started getting weird.

2018, 2019, his content just started getting weird. He started making videos on YouTube that were clearly directed towards, like, American Trump supporters. Like an Alex Jones, Infowars, Tucker Carlson type audience. Conspiracy theory queuing on people. People who are racist online and transphobic. And I just got bad vibes when that happened. Regarding allegations of sexual assault I know as much as anyone who watched that documentary, the Dispatches documentary, but his content and commentary took a dark turn before

the pandemic and it really put me off. And God help anyone this week who is living with trauma around sexual abuse because Twitter has been the worst I've ever seen for victim blaming and demonizing women who come forward and it's all exacerbated by the structural change that happened to Twitter since Elon Musk has taken over. Most of the content you see on Twitter now are blue tick accounts. Accounts that have paid for blue ticks. And a huge proportion of these people behave in quite bad faith. And whether it's Russell Brand, Andrew Tate or Donald Trump. Let's not forget four months ago a jury in New York found him guilty of sexual assault in a civil trial, not a criminal one.

But Twitter, now called X, is in this toxic spiral where allegations such as these are being seen as a plot, a grand conspiracy plot, rather than the stories of people who've been victimised. And the only content you see is from the people pushing that narrative. So it's been a very shitty week. It's time now for the Ocarina Pause. What have I got here that I can... I don't have my ocarina. I'm in my office.

What book have I got? Oh, the short stories of Seán Ó Fhaoláin. Seán Ó Fhaoláin was an Irish short story writer, a master of the craft and I have an out of print book belonging to him. Again another fucking legend of the Irish short story that's out of print you can't buy his books

so I have the stories of Sean O'Fallon with a very disturbing front cover. It's a painting of Sean O'Fallon's face he's an elderly man but the person who painted it painted his face out of the Irish countryside and I'm sure in the illustrator's mind it sounded like a good idea but the actual final result is deeply disturbing. I'm gonna hit myself into the

head with this book. Doesn't look too heavy. Looks like it'll be a good wallop. Nothing too painful. I'm gonna hit myself into the head with this book of short stories and you're going to hear an advert for something. Okay. Slightly painful. There's a slap to it you see. It's going to leave a red mark on my forehead. On April 5th You must be very careful margaret it's the girl witness the birth bad things will start to happen evil things of evil it's all for you no don't the first omen i believe girl is to

be the mother mother of what is the most terrifying 666 is the mark of the devil. Movie of the year. It's not real. It's not real. It's not real. Who said that? The first Omen. Only in theaters April 5th.

Rock City, you're the best fans in the league, bar none. Tickets are on sale now for Fan Appreciation Night on Saturday, April 13th, when the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game and you'll only pay as we play.

Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at TorontoRock.com That was the Sean O'Fallon pause. I think my favourite Sean O'Fallon short story is one called The Trout. You'd probably get it online if you looked for it. It's a story about the anxiety of childhood. It's about a little girl who finds a trout, a live trout, that's like hibernating in a mud hole in the side of a hill and whatever way Sean O'Fallon tells the story, the girl's about 10 years of age, whatever way

he tells the story it conveys to the reader that on an existential level the young girl is leaving behind the naivety of childhood and encountering an awareness and terror of her own mortality he was a brilliant writer so support for this podcast comes from you the listener via the patreon page patreon.com forward slash the blind buy podcast if you enjoy this podcast if it brings you solace, enjoyment, distraction. Whatever has you listening to this podcast, please consider paying me for the work that I'm doing, because this is my full-time job. It's how I earn a living. It's how I pay my bills and rent this office. It's how I'm able to deliver this podcast each week. We're coming up to, jeez, I think we're six years at the podcast this October, lads. When did I start?

October 2017. That's six years, isn't it? Six years of podcasts and three books. And I haven't missed a week. In six years, I have not missed a week. It's kind of gotten to the point where I can't tell sometimes if something was a conversation I had in my head or a podcast I did or a conversation with another person. I honestly don't know what it would feel like to not deliver a podcast each week but long may it continue because this gives me the stability of a predictable fucking income which is a difficult thing to have in a creative industry.

I have a predictable income and I earn a living doing what I absolutely adore and love and that's why I don't miss a week. Out of sheer gratitude I'll never ever take this for granted. So if you enjoy this all I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee or a pumpkin spice latte once a month but if you can't afford that don't worry about it. You can listen for free. Because the person who's paying is paying for you to listen for free. So everybody gets a podcast.

And I get to earn a living. It's a wonderful model based on kindness and soundness. And it also keeps us fully independent. I'm not beholden to advertisers. If an advertiser comes here they do so on my terms. They don't get to dictate the content or creativity. I don't have to worry about views. I don't ever have to platform a guest whose words or actions harm people

just to get a lot of views and a lot of listens. Fuck that. This is listener funded and I get to speak about what I'm passionate about each week. Gonna quickly plug some gigs. My UK tour is on in November and this is live podcasts where I'm also, it's also a book tour at the same time and it's starting on November 12th. London the Troxy, that's nearly sold out. Manchester, that's nearly sold out. Liverpool and Coventry. On the 14th and 16th of November. There's tickets left there.

Edinburgh is sold out. And then back to Ireland. Waterfront in Belfast. Last few tickets there. And then Vicar Street. On the 19th. Which is my Irish book launch. Come along to that.

What is that? it's a Sunday night gig lovely quiet Sunday night gig also this week if you've been following me on social media on Instagram in particular I revealed the cover of my new book Topography of Hibernica revealed the front cover of it it was designed by a wonderful Scottish artist

called Timorous Beasties and it's done in a style called Toil de Joy. I don't know if I pronounced that correctly, it's a French word but it's a type of 18th century wallpaper print pattern almost reminiscent of the work of the artist William Hogarth but I wanted this 18th century style to have echoes of Hieronymus Bosch like a colonial version of hell and all the drawings represent things that happen in the stories in the book so it feels lovely to have a book cover that I'm proud of because people do people do judge books by their cover people judge books by their cover and so do critics and reviewers even though they think they don't

and my first two books my first two collections of short stories the front covers were shit you know and this was an agreement I had with my book company Gill I said to them just let me do what I want on the inside

to the writing and you can do what you want with the outside and my first two books it's just my face on the front with the plastic bag. And it's not representative of the content on the inside at all. Just looks like a bullshit celebrity book that you sell at Christmas, stock and filler. It's just a book. The front cover on my first two books says, there's that fella with the bag in his head who has a song about a horse. My nephew likes him. But the front cover for my new book, Topography Hibernica, is different.

A lot of time and thought went into the front cover for my new book, Topography Hibernica, is different. A lot of time and thought went into the front cover and it is representative of the content on the inside, so I'm happy to finally have that. I'm slightly under the weather this week, I don't know if you can tell. I've got a bit of a scratch in my throat, that's why I'm whispering into the mic. But I'm going to answer a couple of your questions for the second half of the podcast. Michael asks, blind boy, you do a lot of podcasts about food. What's the weirdest food that you wanted to do a podcast about?

I do loads of podcasts about food. I really do. And it's completely unintentional. I don't know why I do so many podcasts about food. It's just there's so much fascinating history. Food is, it's an internationally understood language. It's an essential part of being human. It's a necessity. Everybody eats food. All different cultures

have different types of food. Even drinking that shitty corporate pumpkin spice latte and just tasting it and knowing if I dig deep here this will tell me some cool shit about history and I was dead right. When I speak about food I use the particular food I'm speaking about to be a structure of a story about history. Also there's something about asking people to recall a taste there's something very engaging about that request and I think that excites our imagination. The strangest food I can think of, there's a food in China in the Dongyang province and it's called a virgin boy egg. Now in China for years they've had a way of preserving eggs like hard-boiled eggs by soaking them in black tea, soy sauce, spices and that's called a tea egg or sometimes called a thousand year egg.

I believe there's a similar practice in Japan. If you order a bowl of ramen in a Japanese restaurant sometimes there's a soft boiled egg in there and it's tinted brown and that's an egg that's preserved in black tea but in Donyang in China and to this day they do this in this province in China they eat a type of egg that's preserved in the urine in the piss of boys under the age of 10 and it's called a virgin boy egg and it might sound odd to us but in this place this is their culture and this is their food culture so virgin boy egg vendors they call around to primary schools they go to primary schools in danyang and the local children piss into a bucket and the virgin boy egg vendor collects the piss of children,

of local children, it has to be local children, and then they have a procedure that takes days, where they soak the boiled eggs in various piss of different boys, if the boy is feeling sick in any way, they're not allowed to collect the piss of that boy the eggs are sold for medicinal purposes some people believe that there's medicinal qualities to children's piss um i don't think you can buy these eggs outside of this area of china i've heard people describe the taste of the virgin boy egg. It tastes like piss. It's an egg that tastes like piss and some people absolutely hate it. So that's the strangest food stuff that I can think of. I wouldn't eat one of

them myself. I'm not that adventurous. Another food I wouldn't eat that's quite strange is called casu marzo. It's a type of cheese from Corsica which is an island kind of off France and Italy. And Casu Marzu is, it's a sheep's milk cheese that is eaten by tiny maggots. So the cheese itself contains live maggots and people eat it and people love it in Corsica. And it's completely illegal. It's an illegal foodstuff. And people go to jail for making this cheese. But people still buy it and they still eat it. And it's part of the food culture of Corsica. One strange food that I would try, that I'd definitely try, is known as a fool's gold loaf.

And it's only made in one cafe in Denver over in America and it was made famous because it was Elvis Presley's favorite sandwich it consists of a large loaf of bread that's completely hot out filled with one jar of peanut butter one jar of jam and a pound of fried bacon. So it's bacon, peanut butter and jam in a loaf. But Elvis Presley in the 1960s used to wake up in the middle of the night, get into his private jet, fly to Denver, make them open up the restaurant just to make him this sandwich

and he used to do it regularly. Now I can kind of understand that craving, that urge because in Limerick there's a restaurant and they have a dish in this restaurant and it's the only time I literally went to a restaurant at unsociable hours just to taste a food that I couldn't get out of my head and I wasn't stoned or anything like that. I just couldn't stop thinking about the taste because it was so strange. There's a secret Chinese restaurant in Limerick that's hidden at the back of a Chinese supermarket called Carnival and it's one of these restaurants where a lot of the menu is in Chinese and this food it's food for people who come from China who who live in Limerick.

But there's also occasional westernised Chinese takeaway dishes on the menu. And they have a dish called a mala spice bag. It's not a bag, it's a pizza box. And in the pizza box are chips, fried chicken, peppers and onions. Standard spice bag stuff. But the spice mix that they have in this place in Limerick, it's smoky. It's unlike any other spice bag in the country. None that I've tasted.

You see, spice bags are Chinese takeaway food that's unique to Ireland. It's chips, french fries, peppers, onions, maybe fried chicken in a bag and then very salty MSG laden spices are thrown into this bag and it's shaken up so it's an explosion of flavor on your tongue. Now MSG is unfairly demonized, it's monosodium glutamate. It adds a fifth flavor to foods that's sometimes called umami. It's more than saltiness. It's a type of saltiness that causes it to salivate and it enhances all other flavors. But we have MSG in tomatoes. Ripe tomatoes have a certain amount of MSG and umami flavor in it tomato paste that 100% has got MSG in it

certain cheeses like parmesan that has MSG and umami flavour beef when prepared a certain way when it's seared and mushrooms have a fuck ton of MSG so we eat MSG naturally all the time it's just been demonized as an ingredient in Chinese restaurants. And it's because in 1968, a doctor in America, he wrote a letter to a newspaper, I believe, speaking about Chinese restaurant syndrome, which was a shortness of breath that some people experience when they eat in Chinese restaurants and he claimed that this was because

they used too much MSG. Absolutely no proof whatsoever. Then that became kind of a moral panic which was fuelled by a racism towards Chinese restaurants and a belief that Chinese restaurants are unsanitary or dangerous. So in Ireland in our Chinese restaurants we have spice bags, chips and chicken that are kind of shaking around in this umami explosion of MSG and spices. But there's a spice bag in Limerick that's unlike any other spice bag that you can taste. The spice mix is bizarre, completely strange, it's smoky have you ever have you ever come across like if someone steals a car and sets it on fire and then the smell of the burning tires and the burning metal hovers into the night and you walk past it and you taste that metallic burnt-out car smoke and it's slightly salty on your tongue this spice bag tastes like a burnt

out car and when you eat it you don't know whether you like it or not but when you walk away from it you can't stop thinking about it and that's the only dish where I've ever had to go to the restaurant at nine o'clock because I'm like I can't stop thinking about that taste so it's the mala spice bag in carnival Asian grocery store at the top of William Street in Limerick and of course I asked the lads in the restaurant I said look what it what is the what does mala mean and they're like well mala is it's a spice from Sichuan the Sichuan region and it means numbing because this mala spice has got Sichuan peppercorns in it and they numb your mouth it's it's a mad flavor it's a sensation so that numbs your mouth and

then something in there is smoked but it's like it's been smoked on a burnt out car if you've ever wanted to eat fire lighters I know a lot like that's a common thing a lot of people are like fuck it I wouldn't mind eating that fire lighter even though I know I shouldn't if you ever felt like wanting to eat a fire lighter this spice bag is for you but it's too big it serves about four people

they need to start doing it in an actual bag because the strange thing about it too it's called the mala spice bag but in Irish mala like mala means bag so technically it's called the mala spice bag but in Irish mala like mala means bag so technically it's called the bag spice bag but it comes in a box and it's the strangest dish in Limerick City so that's all I have time for this week the second half there was a little bit of a free farm ramble because I'm slightly under the weather but I'll be back next week with some hot takes

in the meantime, genuflect to a swan and tickle the chin of a Labrador. Rock City, you're the best fans in the league, bar none. Tickets are on sale now for Fan Appreciation Night on Saturday, April 13th when the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats

for every postseason game and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com. Thank you. Thank you.ご視聴ありがとうございました