57 minutes of me talking about a wasp on a plane

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Rankings based on Root Metrics Root Score Report dated 1-8-2025. Your results may vary. Service plan required for watch and tablet. Additional terms apply. Knock, knock. Ooh, who's there? A Boost Mobile expert, here to deliver and set up your all-new iPhone 17 Pro, designed to be the most powerful iPhone ever. You call that a knock-knock joke? This isn't a joke. Boost Mobile really sends experts to deliver and set up your phone at home or work.

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The chill of winter traverses the air. Trees are taking on the colour of camouflaged jorts. The wind is whispering to the hairs on your shins and saying stop wearing jorts. Jorts season is over. It's September next week. Embrace the waning, peach-tinged seven o'clock sunset. Get acquainted with corduroy. There's nothing wrong with corduroy. As comfortable as a pair of tracksuit pants.

you don't see carderai anymore no one's talking about carderai i'm talking about carderai because i bought a pair of carderai trousers in edinburgh the other day and i bought carderai trousers because i'd been trying out my jarts in edinburgh this was going to be a jarts summer for me i was going to wear jarts all summer but i couldn't bring myself to do it if you're a regular listener to this podcast you'll know that i tried out jarts

When I visited Glasgow in May, it worked out okay because I was in a new city and nobody knew me. But as soon as I got back to Limerick, I hadn't the courage to continue wearing jorts. So when I went to Edinburgh at the weekend... I was like, fuck it, I'm gonna wear my jarts again. And that was a foolish move. Because it was fucking freezing in Edinburgh. And I'd forgotten. Because I used to gig the Edinburgh Fringe Festival like ten years ago. I'd forgotten.

When you visit Edinburgh in August, you're essentially downloading yourself into the middle of October. So I went trouser shopping and I saw a set of carter eyes. I said, fuck it. Now, as far as I know... Carter eyes are desperately out of fashion at the moment. I could be wrong. What the fuck do I know? But I haven't seen anyone wearing Carter eyes. Well, I have, but these people were literally toddlers, like three years of age.

and I don't think I can use toddlers as a row brick for middle-aged man fashion but I bought a set of carder eyes they're just wonderful when the weather gets a little bit colder one of the comfiest trousers you can wear it feels like Tipsy silk. The light, tender falls of silk. And that cuddly fuzziness you feel after drinking two pints of beer. Tipsy silk. That's what carder I feels like on my legs.

So I bought loose-fitting beige carder eyes because they look like beige chinos from a distance, which are socially acceptable at the moment, I believe. But you have to get really up close to understand that you're dealing with a man who's wearing carder eyes.

And I loved it. I loved swishing around Edinburgh. Swishing around Edinburgh. In my warm, tipsy silk. And it made me think back to the last time I wore corduroy's. I was about 14. They were fashionable then. amongst skateboarders on account of their flexibility and I remember I had one set of corduroy's I bought them in a shop called Hobo there used to be an alternative clothes brand in Cork and Limerick called Hobo

But I had these fucking corduroy pants when I was about 14 and I loved them. And I wore them too much until one day the crotch ripped. The crotch ripped on the corduroy's. But I wasn't ready to give these trousers up. They were too comfortable. I liked the fit. I just fucking loved these trousers. Now I'd have called them pants. We don't really say trousers in Ireland. We call trousers pants.

But I don't want to confuse the poor old Brits who are listening. Because I know that pants means underpants over there. So I had this hole in the crotch. This giant fucking hole in the crotch of my carter eyes. And I went to my mother. And I said, Ma.

everybody can see my underpants everybody can see my underpants because the rip in these carter eyes is so large and i don't want to replace them i just love these these trousers i adore them so my ma said i'm gonna put a patch i'll put a patch on your corduroy trousers and I'll solve your problem so I gave her my corduroy's she went off and patched them and she came back she'd patched she'd patched my corduroy's

around the crotch with an old set of underpants so she'd cut the fabric from all jocks and then stitched it into the crotch of my fucking carter eyes so i took them because i didn't want to lose the trousers i loved them too much i didn't think about the situation critically so i went out into the streets with these fucking patched up cauter eyes and now the situation was infinitely worse because the initial problem was ma everybody can see my underpants

because there's a hole in my carter eyes. Now I had the same problem, except everyone thought I was wearing the exact same fucking pair of underpants every single day, because she'd patched, she'd patched the trousers with underpants. and I was the subject of much teasing. I'd forgotten all about it, but the memory came back. The memory came back with the feeling of corduroy on the hairs of my legs this weekend in Edinburgh. So I was at the...

I was at the Edinburgh Book Festival. I had the most wonderful time. I did two events. On both events I was being interviewed by a poet by the name of Michael Peterson. He's the writer in residence. at Edinburgh University and he's the current, he's the poet laureate of Edinburgh. So Michael Peterson was interviewing me at this Edinburgh Book Festival. I got massive doses of imposter syndrome.

because people were taking me seriously. I was at a big fancy literary festival surrounded by like academics and writers and poets and I was being taken seriously as a writer. Nobody even mentioned that I was wearing a plastic bag on my head. They were literally just speaking about books that I've written. And you have to realise back in Ireland, like I'm not, I'm not asked to speak at any literary festivals in Ireland.

The literary scene in Ireland doesn't know what to do with me because I'm that fella with a plastic bag on his head who sang the song about the horse. I don't have that issue when I'm in the lakes of Edinburgh or when I was at the Hay Festival down in Wales. Over there I'm allowed to just be someone who writes books and writes this podcast. But still for me, even sitting up on stage, it feels strange for me to be spoken about seriously as a writer.

the moments before i walked on stage i was backstage and michael peterson was announcing me on stage and in my head i was thinking hell who's this fella they're talking about i'd like to read one of his books he sounds interesting and they were talking about me so heavy doses of imposter syndrome now a certain amount of imposter syndrome is a good thing but i think i experienced a little bit too much in edinburgh so a lovely time was had and i met many wonderful people

What I'd really like to speak about, though, was the plane journey home from Edinburgh. So it flown from Edinburgh to Dublin with Aer Lingus. And it was a propeller aircraft. Now, I have a shaky relationship with this particular plane journey. If you're a seasoned listener to this podcast, you'll remember about six years ago, I was on this fucking propeller flight from Edinburgh.

to Dublin. And I nearly died on a plane with Jedward. Well I didn't, we got mild turbulence. But there was a moment where I was like, fuck's sake. Can't die on a plane with Jedward. Nothing against Jedward.

i love jedward very authentic people but you can't be you can't be the fella with a plastic bag in his head who had a novelty song about a horse who died on a plane with jedward nothing against jedward i just don't want to die on a plane with jedward so this weekend i took that flight again edinburgh the dublin on the fucking propeller aircraft i'm not scared of flying

But we all know that feeling. We know the feeling of queuing up for your plane. You look out the window and you see that you're going on a propeller aircraft. You don't have a rational response. Propeller aircraft just seem a little bit less safe. So when you get onto the propeller aircraft, there's a heightened hum of anxiety in the air. There's a culture of anxiety on the propeller aircraft every fucking time.

you look out the window and you see the giant propellers that look like swords you see them spinning you think what if one of them just comes off and comes through the plane and impales me also there's something too honest about the propellers you watch them spinning and then your brain has to go all right so those things spin really fast and now i can fly up into the clouds is that how that works because that just feels wrong i can't make sense of this at least with a jet

you're like i can't really see what's going on here but something big and powerful is happening inside in that thing and this is going to take me into the air with a propeller

It feels like my ma stitching the fucking underpants into the crotch of my carter eyes. There's something ramshackle about it. You don't feel protected. It's the motorbike of the airplane world. So we all sit down onto this fucking... propeller aircraft it's shaky everyone's staring at the spinning blades and we make our ascent into the clouds and as things chill out a bit

And we're at a steady pace. I'm relaxing. Just going to go with the flow. I'm ready to take out my book to begin reading. I notice that the man in front of me seems kind of agitated.

He's bothered by something. Something in his immediate vicinity. He's ducking and diving his head as if someone's trying to hit him. Then he does this big aggressive swoop. He swoops his hand as if he's trying to hit somebody. And I feel this... gust of air come between our seats towards me such strange behavior and i make a note in my head and i say to myself oh this man's insane okay i'm sitting behind the insane man

I hope this isn't going to be a difficult flight and then I tilt my head down to look at the page of my book and in the corner of my eye I see something on the collar of my black t-shirt. And now I'm violently swooping my hand without thinking it was a fucking wasp. Conti in front of me had been trying to hit a wasp and he swooped his palm at it and hit the wasp towards me.

And it landed on my collar. There's a wasp on the plane. There's a wasp on the plane. On the tiny little propeller plane. There's a live wasp. Not just any wasp. It's a late... August. Bowsy wasp. A bowsy wasp, it's a wasp that's acting the bowsy. It's belligerent. It's annoying. It's aggressive. It's a wasp that has a great interest in your face and in your hair.

It's a wasp that's not content with minding its own fucking business and doing waspy things. It's a bousy wasp. It's the type of wasp that you get as winter approaches. The worst wasps. And now we're all trapped on a plane. with a bousy wasp. We're sitting on a plane. We're sitting on a plane. You don't have much fucking mobility on a plane. The seatbelt sign is on. You've all encountered bousy wasps in the past two weeks.

Maybe you were at a festival. Maybe you were at a barbecue out someone's back garden. Maybe you were enjoying a pint. A bousy wasp has come up to you. Hovered around your drink. Hovered around your face. They won't leave you alone. They're following you. What do you do? You leave. You get the fuck away from that wasp. What do you do when you're on a plane? Nothing. You can do nothing. You're trapped. So I'm just sitting there frozen in silence. I...

batted the wasp off my chest and i'd sent it flying some way up the corridor of the fucking airplane in my head i'm thinking maybe i killed it maybe i killed it i didn't i look up and now there's the wasp And it's about three seats up. It's flying around a woman's hair. She notices the wasp and now she's flicking it away. She's trying to do what she can. Everybody's noticing the wasp. Social decorum is at play.

You have to be careful how you swat that wasp away. You're tied down in your small little airplane seat. You don't have that arc of movement with your hand. you do a full swing at a wasp on a fucking airplane and you're slapping someone into the face the wasp lands on a window one man tries to subtly pull the fucking plane window down to crush the wasp it doesn't work

Now more and more people are suddenly becoming aware. There's a wasp on the plane. There is a wasp on the plane. I can't run away from the wasp. I can't get out of my seat. There is a wasp on the plane. The wasp returns to the woman with the hair. has another buzz around her hair. What does she do? She screams. She gives out a big yelp. Now the people at the front of the plane, who are unaware of a wasp, are now aware of a woman who screamed at the back of the plane. Emotions are high already.

Because we're on a propeller aircraft. So now the people at the front of the plane are wondering. Has one of the engines fallen off? Is there a terrorist on the plane? I don't know. Because I'm at the front of the plane. And I can't really get up and check. There's no communication. Now to the back of the plane, where I am, the wasp is still present. The wasp is still being a bousy. And unfortunately, when that woman screamed, that turned up the collective anxiety.

The collective anxiety of everybody. It turned up. Turned up by several notches. Now there's a man. There's a man going. Dodging his head side to side like fucking Muhammad Ali. Can't move his wrists, can't do anything. The wasp is buzzing around him, demonstrating festival levels of bousiness. Do you know when a fucking September wasp... We've all seen this.

When the wasp is buzzing around your body, around your face, then you suddenly jolt in response to the wasp and then the wasp starts moving faster in a flurry. The wasp was doing that around his head. And he's just. Honking like a ghost would croak. And then what happens. The wasp starts getting drowsy. The wasp starts. disappearing underneath people's seats and crawling around the carpet some people are searching looking at the floor other people are trying to stamp

We hadn't collectively named the problem. No one had said out loud. There's a wasp. There's a wasp, everybody. How terrible. There's a wasp on the airplane and we're all trapped. Oh, watch out. You don't get stung.

At least it's not Isis, someone says. Oh, good one. Maybe it's an Isis wasp. We've all collectively named the issue. It's still not great, but we could have responded to it rationally. That didn't happen.

nobody vocally took ownership of the situation the elephant in the room the elephant in the room the wasp in the room nobody named it all of us privately internally battled our fears and anxieties about the wasp and that created an environment of of shame the shame of potential public embarrassment if we'd have all communicated and acknowledged the wasp on the plane

it would have made it better but no one was ready for that everyone was terrified i felt an intense an intense urge to address the plan and start giving people wasp facts i wanted to point out I wanted to point out how interesting it was that the wasp was getting drowsy, that the wasp was getting drowsy because there's reduced oxygen levels. When you're high up in a plane, there's reduced oxygen levels.

Now, we're able to handle that, but maybe the wasp isn't. Also, it's incredibly cold. It's very cold up in the plane. This can have an impact on the wasp's metabolism. There's a massive change in air pressure too. On all of these... these very significant atmospheric changes that are happening because we're in an airplane and we're up high in the sky our bodies can withstand that but the poor little wasp the wasp is drowsy now that the wasp can't handle

being up here in this plane i wanted to say to everybody do you know what there's a good chance that the wasp might just die or possibly go unconscious and we'll have nothing to worry about i didn't do that the reason i didn't do it it's a plane from Edinburgh to Dublin someone on that plane definitely listens to my podcast I've been on planes and buses I've sat beside people I've watched them listen to my podcast on their phone

i'm not wearing a plastic bag on my head i'm in civilian mode so if i start if i start addressing the plane with a fucking a facts-based thesis and radical wasp empathy Someone's going to go, oh, there's Blind Boy without his bag. Some cunt once recognised me on a plane because he was sitting behind me and he could see the books that were on my Kindle.

the books that I was reading on my kindle were too similar to things that I've been talking about on the podcast and he tapped me on the shoulder and said are you blind by now he was a nice fella in fairness to him but I wasn't I wasn't going to use this this flight I wasn't going to out myself publicly on this fucking flight because now I have a bigger problem on my hands. So I just shut the fuck up. About five or six minutes had passed and there'd been no disturbance from the wasp.

And I'm thinking in my head, yeah, maybe the wasp passed out. Maybe the severity of the atmospheric changes in this plane, the wasp couldn't handle it. It's dead or passed out. Maybe everything's going to be okay. And I was pretty pleased with myself too. I was pleased with myself for remaining calm, not just externally in my behaviour, but remaining calm internally.

I'm not a big fan of wasps. I really am not a big fan of wasps. I've never been stung by a wasp, so I don't know how painful that is. So the uncertainty of that, not knowing how painful a wasp sting is, That makes them quite frightening to me. But I was real happy that I hadn't freaked out, that I hadn't screamed. I'd considered getting out of my seat. I was going to get out of my seat.

and run down the corridor to the top of the airplane away from the wasp i didn't do it because i said no that would be socially unacceptable you can't do that so i was patting myself on the back for remaining calm and we hadn't heard from the wasp in maybe 5 or 6 minutes and then this prick in front of me the fella who had initially swiped the wasp onto my chest he looked like Liza Minnelli

If you could imagine, if you could imagine Liza Minnelli as a 48 year old man, that's what this man looked like. By this time, the air hostesses, they're up asking us if we want drinks. This fucking prick decides. I'll have a Bulmers. I'll have a Bulmers cider. He could have had any drink. Could have had Coke, Pepsi. Could have had fucking even a beer. This man decides. No.

No, I want an incredibly sugary drink that's made from apples that rot at this time of year. Can I have the one drink, please, that will wake up a sleeping wasp?

Can I have that drink, please? So this prick orders his fucking bulmers, pours it into his tiny little airplane plastic glass, and who shows up? The fucking wasp. The wasp wakes up, and now the wasp... the wasp is flying around his glass of fucking cider like the wasp the wasp was basically on mars the the atmosphere of the airplane was such that it caused the wasp to go unconscious on the fucking ground

and the smell of cider woke it up gave it second wings so the wasp is flying all around him now real pissed off buzzing like a mad bastard And Liza Minnelli's there with his pinky finger in the air, trying to balance his cider in his hand with T-Rex hands on him because he doesn't have the full swing of his arm because he's in a fucking airplane. So Liza Minnelli's doing that.

With a stupid look on his face like he doesn't understand what just happened. I wanted to murder him. I wanted to kill this man on the airplane. I wanted to kill him. I wanted to choke him and explain to him. that the oxygen levels, the temperature and the atmospheric pressure had caused the wasp to go unconscious and he had woken him up with a fucking drink made from rotting apples.

like anyone who's been at a festival anyone who's been at a pub will tell you a pint of cider it's like a giant bag of tits to a wasp if you want to get if you want to get a wasp deeply passionate about ruining your day then drink cider in front of it so now right in front of me see right in front of me the wasp is orbiting fucking Liza Minnelli's head

doing that aggressive shit, and now the wasp is interested in me. Now, now, now, here we have it. Now it's happening. Now it's happening. The wasp is now interested in me. Can't get out of my seat. I'm in a window seat. There's a woman beside me. I can't go into the aisle and go to the toilet because the air hostesses are two seats back. I can't swipe my hands.

with T-Rex, T-Rex arms, hand swiping because it'll enrage the wasp and I might risk hitting the woman to my side. As I close my eyes, I start to feel phantom tingles. My fear of this wasp is so great that I'm imagining multiple wasps. Like he's buzzing around my face. The wasp is buzzing around my face. I can feel him hitting my forehead.

he's drowsy as well he could land my biggest fear is that the wasp would get drowsy above my head land down my neck and go down my t-shirt he's already landed on my t-shirt like

five minutes previously so he's buzzing around my head he's drowsy there's nothing that i can do so i decide i'm gonna meditate i'm gonna start meditating so i close my eyes I breathe in through my nose. I feel my stomach expanding so that I can regulate my emotions. What I can't have here, I cannot have the anxiety and the anger that I feel towards Liza Minnelli.

I can't have these things come up in me and inform my behaviour and actions. I have to use slow, calm meditation, deep diaphragmatic breathing so that my brain has All of the oxygen that it can get. I'm noticing this. I do start thinking, there's less oxygen on a plane. And then I squash that thought. I keep with it. And I use the mindful sense of calm.

To notice the feelings that come up. To notice the sudden desire to jump out of my seat. To notice the desire to swat at the wasp as I hear its wings buzz around my ear. To notice that These feelings are not facts and I can choose to observe them and to not react. To notice that the wasp is just curious and I can choose not to react.

I begin to have empathy for the wasp. I begin to say to myself, this poor wasp is from Edinburgh and if it's lucky enough it's going to wake up in Dublin. How do you explain that to a wasp? What if he gets attacked by Dublin wasps as soon as he arrived?

Will he be lonely? I start to allow feelings of compassion emerge towards this wasp that's buzzing around my head. And with that feeling of compassion and empathy comes genuine acceptance. I can't control this situation. I can only control how I react to it and I accept that I might be stung on the face by a wasp and I accept that it might be painful and I accept.

That I don't know whether I'm allergic to wasp stings or not. And I accept that I might die. And I accept that. Getting stung by a wasp and dying on a plane. That's not a bad way to go. It's better than dying on a plane with Jedward. I accept all these things. I accept that. Even if the wasp has a crack at me. Most of my body is covered in clothes. Maybe he'll try and have a crack at my knees. I don't think a wasp can penetrate corduroy.

And through that acceptance and empathy, I got to that wonderful, the nirvana-like place in meditation. the pure centre of calm where my breathing becomes so shallow that it feels like I'm not breathing at all and there's a subtle endorphin hit that's akin to an orgasm everything becomes incredibly clear. I'm just observing all of my thoughts, all of my emotions. I'm reacting to nothing. And I begin to appreciate the absurdity.

that I'm heartling through the clouds at several hundred miles an hour over the Irish Sea while being bothered by a wasp, and I submit myself entirely to that experience. And I achieved a real sense of communion with the plight of the wasps. If it was a bee on that plane, we all wouldn't be reacting like this. I mean, bees are incredibly important. They're pollinators.

They're also dying at the moment. But we project a lot of nobility into bees. Because if a bee stings you, then the bee is going to die. And the bee is just protecting its queen. Whereas wasps are just dirty rotten pricks who have nothing better to be doing than acting the bousy and being aggressive and starting fights. But that's not the truth.

When it comes to the bousy September wasp. The bousy September wasp is responding to trauma. So wasps are useful. They don't fly into flowers like bees. and come out of the flower covered in pollen, like they have little fluffy mohawks. They don't give life the way that bees do. I mean, bees, bees tell us the story of reproduction.

Bees help flowers to fuck. That's what they do. They help flowers to fuck. They're the reason we have crops. You can see bees doing their thing and you know that their activity is responsible for food that ends up on our table. But wasps, wasps, they're not necessarily, they do occasionally pollinate, but wasps aren't useful for life, they're useful for decay. When an animal dies,

Wasps will show up and feed on the flesh. The wasps will help that animal to decompose and fertilise the soil. Wasps are hunters. They're essential to systems of biodiversity because they'll help to keep... populations of insects in control. But the thing is about how a wasp behaves all summer. So wasps have nests. They don't make honey like bees do.

They have nests that are made out of paper, bits of wood that they chew. You've seen a wasp's nest. They have a social structure similar to bees. So wasps, they have a queen, and this queen... lays eggs in the nest and she stays in that nest with her eggs but what all the wasps do all the worker wasps in the summertime so they leave the nest and they fly around

and they look for protein. This is why wasps will scavenge on a dead animal. This is where they kill insects. Worker wasps, all through the summer, they look for protein. But the wasp isn't that interested in the protein. The wasp itself does not want that protein. Instead, the wasp will eat the meat, kill the insect, then it flies back to the nest. And those little eggs that the queen has laid, they become larvae. Little baby wasps, little maggots. The wasp returns to the nest.

with its mouth full of meat and protein and then it feeds the meat and protein to the larvae and an exchange occurs which is known as trophallaxis when the worker wasp When the adult wasp feeds the meat to the larvae, the larvae then excretes sugar. And that's what the wasp is after. Imagine you had a baby. Every time you give the baby a piece of steak, the baby hands you a Mars bar. That's what the wasps are doing. They don't give a shit about meat. They fly out into the world.

They'll fly into a piece of shit, they'll fly up the arse of a dead dog, they'll kill a beetle. They might not be fertilising flowers but they're very important to the process of decay that fertilises the soil where flowers grow.

they take that protein they give it to the baby wasp and then the baby wasp goes here's some sugar that's all that wasp wants but then as it gets to around august the baby wasps the larvae start to mature it puts a silk cap around itself and it enters the pupae stage so that it can eventually hatch and now you've got All these fucking wasps who no longer have a source of sugar. They've spent the entire fucking summer giving meat to the baby wasps and getting delicious sugar in return.

And the message they're given is fuck off and die. There's no need for you anymore. The kids are raised. Fuck off and die. So as these wasps leave the colony in and around late August.

All they want is sugar. Give me fucking sugar. I want sugar. The behaviour of a bousy August wasp is very similar. to how addiction presents itself in humans and the trauma that informs it. So first and foremost, August Wasps experience societal breakdown. They no longer have a job. They no longer have a purpose. Their societal order collapses. The wasps have a dependency on sugar. They used to have jobs.

turn up with a piece of meat and a baby's gonna give you a bit of sugar that used to be their not their jobs now that's gone but they still want that sugar the desire for the sugar causes them to engage in disordered and risk-taking behavior this is what has the the the bousy september wasp interested in your pint of cider or attracted to the floral perfume that you wear

Or the mango and coconut in the shower gel you just used. Humans have sugar. Humans have the sugar that the wasps need. And just like a human, like a human who's in the throes of addiction. The wasp will engage in risk-taking behaviour that might end its life in order to obtain that sugar. They're willing to buzz around the head of a giant that wants to kill it with its fists.

just to get that sugar they're deeply unhappy and confused because they're starving their regular source of sugar is gone and they're kind of aimless they don't have social structure anymore they don't have a colony they don't have purpose

so they're aggressive if you look at the trauma-informed model of addiction and how that intersects with poverty low unemployment breakdown of community and then the emergence of of addiction as a way of medicating the trauma of all that you see all those parallels you see those fucking parallels

in bousy september wasps also that there's a there's a legitimate chance that that wasp was drunk the wasp could actually have been drunk and that's why he was falling around the plane i know that sounds ridiculous But yes, these autumn wasps, sometimes they eat fruit or apples that are rotting and they get natural alcohol from this rotting fruit. Or they drink cider, they drink bulmers.

and they get drunk they can get drunk and the connection between those two things this this emerged to me while i was meditating meditating as that wasp flew around my head on the airplane By humanising the wasp and empathising with its plight, I didn't judge its behaviour. I wasn't calling it a bousy cunt anymore. I took a trauma informed perspective.

and noticed its erratic behaviour as a response to pain. It's not trying to hurt me, it's not trying to sting me, it's trying to find out if I have any sugar. But if I start flicking my hands and... Batting it away, in its state of desperation and pain, it may attack me. And in that moment too I decided, from now on I'm going to leave piles of jelly babies out for wasps.

My neighbours can go fuck themselves. But I'm going to get sugary babies. Little jelly bit sugary babies. As almost like a safe injection centre for unemployed wasps. who are navigating the trauma of colony collapse. I'm going to give them their sugary babies. The health-informed response to trauma and addiction that we really should have in our society.

We should have this in our society. We criminalize the wasps the way that we criminalize people who are experiencing the trauma of addiction. And you can even apply a class analysis to this, like the parallels. between wasps and humans the communities that that are most likely to experience mass unemployment collapse of societal roles poverty and then the trauma

that leads to addiction, it's most likely going to be working class communities that are impacted by this. Like you look at America, the Appalachian areas where there was once thriving mining communities. then under reagan and neoliberalism all these jobs disappeared or shipped overseas now these same communities are hugely impacted by opiate addiction under neoliberalism

It's the jobs in the working class communities that get sacrificed first. These are also the jobs that as a society we don't value. We consider these jobs to be low skilled. not requiring education, to have no value at all, even though they're essential to our society. Jobs were if there was once strong unions, a strong sense of collective bargaining, rubbish collection.

truckers unions from the 1980s onwards it was all these industries that were torn apart and deregulated and had the unions busted in this race to the bottom to place profit over the lives of people wherever that was eradicated you now have community trauma we view wasps the same way we don't value the work of wasps they're the waste disposal insects

that do jobs that we consider to be ugly or smelly but their role is fucking essential if wasps disappeared tomorrow we'd be all fucked wasps are what are known as a keystone species

So these were the curious, playful thoughts that emerged when I'd achieved the sense of emotional regulation through meditation with a wasp. hitting off my forehead on an airplane let's have a small ocarina pause right now i don't have the ocarina i've got my puerto rican my puerto rican guairo which i'm gonna play and you'll hear some fucking ads I've nothing to play the guairo with, hold on.

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That was the Puerto Rican Guairopaz. My voice is... My voice is all crackly because I was smoking cigarettes in Edinburgh like a silly boy. It's also quite laid in my studio. I've been locked out of my office for three days. The lock fucking broke. Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash theblindbypodcast. If you enjoy listening to this podcast...

If it brings you distraction, entertainment, mirth, merriment, whatever the fuck has you listening to this podcast. If you enjoy it, please consider paying me for the work that I do. Because this podcast is my full time job. It's how I rent out my office. It's how I pay my bills. It's how I get all the equipment to make this podcast. It's how I have the time to write this podcast. It's how I earn a living. This is my full-time job. So please consider paying me.

For the work that I'm doing if you are listening to this podcast. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee. Once a month. That's it. But if you can't afford that. If you don't have that money. If you're out of work. Whatever the fuck. You can listen for free. You can listen for free because the person who is paying is paying for you to listen for free. So everybody gets a 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 upcoming gigs i'm in the opera house in cork for the cork podcast festival on the 15th of september coming up I've got a wonderful guest. I love gigging in Cork. I love Cork. Also, check out the Cork Podcast Festival. Just look it up on Google. The lads are running a pure fucking sound.

And there's a bunch of other events. If you're coming down to see myself. So check out the Cork Podcast Festival. In November. I'm in Mayo. In Clare Morris. That should be good crack. i think there's a vicar street somewhere not sure if those tickets are on sale yet i'll let you know when there's other gigs fucking australian tour in 2025 at the start of it somewhere

I don't want to be listing out all of it. Fucking New Zealand, Auckland, Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Perth. The whole thing is mostly sold out now. But I'm sure if you go on to Google, there might be a few tickets left for... I'm shit at promoting gigs this week. Fucking hell. Blind by Australia and New Zealand tour. You'll see it on my Instagram. You'll see it on my fucking Instagram.

blind by boat club on instagram there's only a few tickets left if you're living over there there's loads of time we'll be grand it's like more than six months away so back to the airplane and the wasp so i was at the back of the airplane The wasp was flying around me. I don't know how long it was because I was in the throes of meditation. So it could have been one minute or ten minutes. But I promised myself.

I was going to stay in a meditative state for the entirety of the plane journey. Plane journey is a wonderful opportunity to meditate. So I was going to stay in that base level.

of here and now present moment calmness until we landed and the wasp could do whatever it wants can land on my shoulder if it wants because I've accepted that it's outside of my control What I also found was quite lovely was because I was empathising with the wasp and compassionately putting myself into the wasp's shoes I then began to experience

self-compassion like meditation can be like that when you get deep into it all these different layers peel back when you're meditating and you have a silenced mind And emotions are things that you notice rather than react to. The calmness of that, your mind just starts revealing. deeper emotions, deeper emotions or even memories. Type of shit that might pop up in dreams. Meditation can do that. So I started to experience it.

Feelings of self-compassion for a younger version of myself. I think the reason that... I mentioned earlier in the podcast that I'd been flying back from Edinburgh Book Festival. And what was... plagued with feelings of imposter syndrome. Feelings like I didn't deserve to be at Edinburgh Book Festival or when I heard...

Like writers that I look up to and that I respect. People with titles and letters after their names. When I heard these people saying that, they enjoyed my writing. I wasn't believing them. I didn't believe them.

And I know that that insecurity stems from school. Growing up autistic in school. Differences in my behaviour, differences in how I see the world, differences in how I... regulate my emotions these were labeled as as disruptive and wrong and stupid so it can be very difficult for me to there's a barrier there when it comes to believing that i deserve to be

speaking at something like the Edinburgh Book Festival. And the self-compassion came up during my meditation when I started to think about my first pieces of creative work. That I would have been doing when I was in school. When I was in like 60 or leave insert year. 16, 17 years old. And I used to do prank phone calls and record them. Now of course.

I wouldn't have considered this writing or creativity or anything like that at the time. I would have considered it just messing, causing trouble, being disruptive, being bald, showing off.

making other people laugh people in my class recording prank phone calls playing them for for people in my class just to show off because at the same time i would have been desperately failing in my studies and consistently under the threat of being expelled for disruptive behavior and i did a prank phone call 20 years ago when i was in school about a wasp

and when i listen back to it now i do view this prank phone call as a piece of writing a piece of creativity even though i'm 16 or 17 it operates within the same creative universe as this podcast now and and the short stories that i write and i'm gonna play this prank phone call for you to hear and i'd love to have a time machine to go back 20 years

And say to fucking 16, 17 year old me. You're not messing. You're not being disruptive. You're not showing off. What you're doing is creativity. This is writing. You just don't know that it's that yet. And even though you're failing your leaving cert, you're good at something. And this is the thing you're good at. And this thing is called writing. Even if the teachers tell you you can't write. So this is a prank phone call called The Wasp.

And it's like 20 years old. And I rang up a bookshop and told him I lost my wasp. Patty, how's it going? Patty, I don't mean to alarm you now, but I was in about a half an hour ago inside there. And my name is Liam Flagg, and I had with me in a bag a very rare Polynesian wasp.

and unfortunately I somehow managed to, I left it on a counter or whatever but I've serious reason to believe that the wasp actually is in your shop now. Oh please don't say that, I have a terrible fear of wasp, you're messing with me aren't you? No, I'm not. No, the thing is about the wasp, it's stinging. I'm not messing it all, unfortunately, Patty. I'm very serious. I came back from Paranesia about three weeks ago, and the thing is that it's actually a very expensive...

Wasp and that that's why I wanted it won't go outside because of the difference in climate So it'll stay inside because of the heat. What would you put it in? I had it in a matchbox with a little clip at the front but I've every reason to believe that it's after getting out because I actually have the matchbox and the wasp isn't in there.

The only time I checked it was when I was inside that shop. So the wasp is in the shop at the moment. What does it look like? It would look like a traditional wasp, except its face is more like a hat. Right. Do you know? The thing is that it's either very low or very high. You won't catch it flying around the place, if you know what I mean. And it's absolutely deadly at hiding. Oh, really? So that's the thing. Oh, God. And if you want to look, are you able to whistle in the key of E?

What? Have you got a loudspeaker on the phone actually? Have we got a loudspeaker on the phone? There's a thing about this particular Polynesian wasp, it's Latin name is Vespa Bessaris. And if you want to actually get this wasp to come out from where it is, it cannot stand any tone that is exactly in the key of E. If you try on that loudspeaker, are you able to whistle in the key of E? No, can you whistle in the key of E?

If you'd like to look, will you put it on, if you put this, I'm not joking here, if you put this on loudspeaker and I whistle in the key of E, that wasp will drop it. I don't know, which one is loudspeaker, this one? Make sure everybody can hear it now, love. I can't press it. One, two. Three. Hello? Any sign? I can't get it on the speaker. Hold on one sec. If that wash peels that, it'll drop to the ground like the twin towers. Hello, did you... I'm trying to put it on...

Two seconds now. Bear with me, Patty. Don't panic. A very important thing. You're wearing very heavy shoes because that wasp, it cannot sting but it can bite and it will go for fees. If it sees an exposed toe, then forget about it. You're so lying. Who is this? I don't believe it. I'm an expert beekeeper by the name of Liam Flagg and I'm being very serious. The wasp is worth about 500 quid. I'm hoping to cross it with the Irish honeybee. Oh, really? Yeah. But a bite? We don't...

It'll nibble, it'll nibble the toe off you. I might go underneath your toenail. Set up house, it's a solitary wasp. My shoes are okay. That's fantastic. Hold on, press that loudspeaker while I whistle in the key of E. It's a matter of life and death for the wasp. It won't work. Can you copy that tone yourself? Hold on, will you do it after me, please, Patty? I'm not doing this. Have you got relative pitch? Do you play an instrument all yourself, though? No.

Paddy, very important. I want you to whistle after me, please. Sure, how come you can't come back into the shop and do it? Why can't I come in? Yeah, where are you that you left it? You can't be too far away if you've only left it. I'm after actually managing to get myself trapped inside a very large cake.

I was eating a ghetto. My friend bought me a very large ghetto, and there was an unfortunate joke whereby it was hollow on the inside, so I'm actually calling you from inside a cake at the moment. Oh, really? Is it nice? Paddy, put yourself in my situation. Would you enjoy a cake if you had a wasp that you loved that was missing?

No. Listen, I have to go. I have to go. I don't know where it is. If you can come back then and try to find it. If you'll find a wasp, would you ever email it to me, okay? And that'll be fine. What's the email address? I'll write it down. BrendanTheWasp at yahoo.co.uk Okay, got it. It's actually his email address. He gave me the passport. Bye-bye, Penny. Okay, bye. Thanks. So that was me when I was a kid. Legally a child.

And I used to record phone calls like that and put them onto CDs to make my friends in school laugh. But I wouldn't have considered it to be creativity or writing. But it is fucking creativity in writing. that's that's a comedy sketch where i've written a character called liam flag who was a very eccentric it was actually it was me predicting what it was going to be like in my fucking 30s

But it's a very simple comedy sketch. I'd have been looking at fucking Reeves and Mortimer, Monty Python, all that type of stuff. It's a comedy sketch about a man who has lost his wasp in a bookshop. And I would have spent... a good few hours researching everything about wasps so that i had wasp facts and i would have written down specific jokes and gags and had multiple different potential endings

depending on how the other person responded. It's a comedy sketch where an unknowing member of the public plays the straight character. It's not really about pranking someone, it's about writing a little surreal creative universe. where strange ideas can flourish. And I can say that now because 20 years later I'm still a fucking writer. But teenage me, teenage me could have done with that piece of information.

I remember when I used to do those calls. I used to get... I used to experience what I'd now call the feeling of flow. The feeling of creative flow. But I would not have considered that to be creativity or art. Not back then, it was just messing. Creativity in art was whatever a teacher told you was creativity in art. And in the early 2000s, early internet days.

me arriving into a school with a fucking cd and a prank phone call that would have just it would have been considered disruptive and and the cd would have been confiscated i suppose i'd like to end the podcast by thanking that wasp on the plane

I want to thank that wasp on the plane for facilitating me with the environment to have a good 45 minutes of meditation and to explore feelings of self-compassion. And what happened to the wasp? The wasp flew around the plane, then would disappear for like five minutes while it crawled around the carpet. And then near the end of the flight,

The wasp went down one of the windows and a man who had been sleeping through the whole thing just woke up, saw it and killed it with his jumper. And then the man beside him got this soft... smiley pillowy look in his face a subservient puppy look as if he wanted to have sex with the man who just killed the wasp with his jumper

he was in awe of this man's strength and masculinity this sleeping man he was about 70 this sleeping man who had slept through the entirety of the wasp ordeal just woke up and the first thing he did when he opened his eyes was kill kill the wasp with a jumper so rest in peace to the Edinburgh plain wasp he never made it to Dublin probably better off probably better off went out with a bang

Ended up on an airplane. Got pissed off Liza Minnelli's cider and then got his head kicked in. I'd take that death. I'd take that death. Did you hear about Blind Bite? What did he do?

He drank Liza Minnelli's cider on a flight from Edinburgh and someone martyred him with their fists. I'd take that over a fucking dine on a plane with Jedward. Alright, dog bless, it's nearly four in the fucking morning here because I was locked out of my office. Wink at a swan. Rub a dog. Leave a few jelly babies out for the last of the summer wasps. I'll catch you next week.

Hi, this is NBA champion host of road tripping Richard Jefferson and today I want to talk to you about boost mobile the holidays can get hectic fast family travel gifts and trying to keep up with it all. That's why Boost Mobile is keeping things simple this season with deals that make holiday shopping feel like a treat, not a chore. When you bring your own phone and switch to Boost Mobile's $25 unlimited plan, you get

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