You are better than no one else, and no one is better than You. Because Human Beings are too complex to evaluate against each other

Greetings, you temporary emits. Welcome to the Blind By Podcast. If this is your first episode, consider going back to an earlier podcast to familiarize yourself with the lore of this podcast. And if you're a regular listener, you know the crack. I have a couple of very large announcements this week. The first one, because I promised I'd say it is early in the podcast as possible is I'm coming back to Australia and New Zealand in April of 2027. And those tickets are on sale today, 3rd June. I'm at 12 known Australia Eastern time and you get those tickets on my website, the Blind By Podcast, Dariye, assuming it doesn't crash. And just thank you to all my listeners in Australia and New Zealand for telling your friends about the podcast for spreading the word because it's after getting really big over there. I'm gig in Sydney Opera House. I'm going to be headlining Sydney Opera House. I think I speak about that later in the fucking podcast and the other dates, but I can't believe it. Thank you to all that the steaming Quavis and 10 foot declents for telling your friends for sharing the podcast because it's word amount. This is word amount. I'm not advertised down there. I'm not on fucking TV. This is all word amount. I'm going to begin this week's podcast with a piece of prose poetry that was written by the actor Liam Nason. He recited this to me in a dream. The poem is called, "I am slowly turning into glass so that I can be hurled at the forehead of God. When I die, my soul will not ascend." It will arrive in heaven as a spinning pine glass full of cider and I will collide with God's forehead. His purple blood will drip from the cosmos and stick to the clouds. Farty days and farty nights of blood and cider, everything will die this time. Even the animals, there'll be no Noah. There'll be no Noah and his Ark because I'll glass that contour and the devil will pick bits of me out of God's eyeballs. They'll have to write a new bit into the bible about it about me. Liam Nason, the human pine glass. I often begin podcasts with a free associate of poem to put my mind into a state of playfulness because I never want to be paralysed with a blank page. When your stalk's there and at the blank page, I'm thinking, "Oh what I write a podcast about? What would I do a podcast about this week?" And then the fear of failure creeps in. "Oh what if I can't think of an idea for this week's podcast, oh my God what will I do?" And creativity can't exist in that space. Ideas won't come to me in that space where I'm afraid of the blank page. So off I'm afraid of failure, I lean into failure. I begin writing, not to write anything good, not to make sense. I begin writing for the enjoyment and fun of writing so that I can enter a dream land, just that I can enter a state of flow. The open way of thinking, or anything is possible, nothing is good, nothing is bad, there's no judgement whatsoever, there's just the act of writing, the act of imagination. Day dreaming onto the page, if I'm in the closed mode of thinking, where I'm afraid of the blank page, I'm afraid of failing. What if I write something ridiculous? What if I don't have any good ideas? Then I don't have access to my imagination, so I just let it flow, no judgement, like a child playing with Lego, then I try to make anything good or anything bad, they're playing with Lego. And if a child is playing with their Lego, that's a child that feels safe. Children who feel safe are children who play, and we're no different as adults. If I'm paralyzed by the fear of failure, the fear of making something shit, the fear of fucking up, I don't feel safe, I feel threatened, and my mind is scanning for threats, it's looking in one direction, so I have to feel safe, I have to experience the feeling of safety so that my imagination can come out and play. So when I do that, and I sit with that, sit with the frustration, just right and right. Now I've got a piece of poetry about Liam Neeson, wanting to transform into a pint glass and smash himself off God's forehead, which is utterly fucking ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous, but it doesn't matter now, because I've broken through you see, I've broken through the fear of failure, now I don't have a blank page anymore. I have something. I've got an utterly ridiculous poem about Liam Neeson turning into a pint glass, and then I look at that poem and I go, "I went to the land of flow, that poem arrived to me." I didn't sit down and think I'm going to write about Liam Neeson, it just all that imagery came to me, and I think up as Dreamin', Dreamin' in the middle of the day, automatic writing, it's called. It's a technique from the surrealist art movement, but because the idea came to me in a state of flow, in that state where I leave a sense of time and space and I'm just nice and calm and happy in imagination land where a judgement does not exist, because the poem, which is ridiculous, came to me in flow state. I can then look at that and go, "That poem is telling me something. There's ideas or connections that I'm not fully aware of yet, but if I tease at that poem, they'll fucking reveal it to me, because that poem came to me in flow state." And how do I know that? Because when I'm in flow, I'm pulling from my unconscious mind. Like when you're dreaming, you're pulling from your unconscious mind. The depths of your mind that isn't, that you can't currently recall right now in the closed state, but in the open state, you can go into your unconscious mind. And when I'm researchin', when I'm just reading something, it could be six months ago, it could be six fucking months ago, and I find it interesting and then I forget about it. That information goes into my unconscious mind. And then it bopbles up in moments of flow, like anything I do that I find interesting. That's feeding my unconscious mind. So I look at it and I got lame nays and turn into a pint glass. That's mad. What's that about? Where's that coming from? And I started to remember research I'd done months ago, and the Venetian glass industry of the 1600s. There was a unique farmer's psychosis in the Middle Ages. A culturally specific mental illness, where certain people often very, very wealthy people became convinced. Like fully delusional convinced that they were turning into glass. The most famous example with the first high profile example was the King of France. In 1392, the fellow called Charles VI. Charles VI was made King of France at 12 years of age, a child. But the time he was in his late teens, he started to show manic symptoms, symptoms of a supposed-now-y call it schizophrenia. And he was the King. So at one point in 1392, he drew his sword out of nowhere and killed four people around him. I think there's nothing they can do. It's the King. If he wants to kill four people with his sword, then it's the fucking King. Leave him off. So there's not justice for him. His court, the people around him, just had to manage him and try and keep him happy, so that continually entertain him, throw a party for him, try and keep him happy in any way, distract him, because if he was entertained, then he was somewhat happy. He was still mad, but he wasn't suffering in his madness. He was distracted by entertainment. Then something really true morphed the edge. So in 1393, they held a masquerade ball, an entertaining masquerade ball for the King. It was 20th point. Masquerade ball was a fancy dress party. These were all people with a lot of money, and they'd dress up in costumes as entertainment and drink and have crack. And since they were figuring two, look if the King is mad, then let's give him opportunities to be mad. Every opportunity we get to get that energy out of him, let's fucking do it. So far this masquerade ball, the plan was, the King and about six of his friends, they're gonna dress up as wild men, and no one's gonna know it's the King, and wild men in medieval times, feel like a werewolf. They're gonna dress up as big hairy half man half beasts, and these elaborate costumes were made. They were linen, and then the linen was soaked in resin, and that was all sticky, and then on top of the resin, they stuck a lot of flax and branches and whatever, and There were these coal like. Where wolf type crazy costumes and the king was where and one of them and no one knew who he was Hidden behind this King is the resin that the costumes were made out of Was incredibly flammable, so the role was if there's six fellas at this party Dripping in resin we're wearing flammable clothes. Then there's no candles. There's no torches There's no nothing. This is flammable materials So the king and his friends go out. They're dancing as wild men Then the king's brother shows up pissed drunk He didn't get the no fire memo and he shows up holding a torch holding a flame Then immediately for the main go on fire Four of the of the masquerade dancers the wild men with the king they go on fire and they're howling and screaming and being burnt to death Not the king manages to escape and he runs away, so he doesn't go on fire, but now he's witnessing Four men burning to death in front of him his friends One of the written reports about the incident is four men were burned alive They're flaming genitals drooping to the floor releasing a stream of blood and only two people survived one fella jumped into a vat of wine When he was on fire a managed to survive and then the king a woman saved him She she draped her dress around him and saved the king from burning but the trauma of that incident and witness in that and Nearly dying and seeing people burned alive in front of him his friends that pushed King Charles over the fucking edge He became fully psychotic and Became convinced like fully and utterly convinced that he was made entirely out of glass and that he could break at any moment This is the 1390s. They didn't know anything about psychology. They didn't know what psychosis was and it's the king You can't fucking do anything. You can't you can't help him You just have to manage and work around The king is made out of glass now, so we just have to treat him as if he's literally made out of glass So they had to make him special clothes There was a tailor implied That's had to invent like pants and jackets That had rigid metal rods inside them Because the king was so convinced that he could shatter into a million pieces at any moment That he needed metal rods to keep him upright so that he could never fall because if he fell he would shatter and reports Reports of people Being convinced that they were made of glass Started to increase Throughout the Middle Ages as the technology of glass improved in particular When a certain type of glass was being made in the 1600s and the island of Marano in Venice The established theory is that And this is where you really have to use your imagination because it's a tough one The technology of glass Right to someone in the 1600s was so revolutionary That it sends certain people into psychosis It blew their minds like we've got photography televisions Smart phones you're walking around listening to me talking into your ears We're surrounded by technology the 1600s before the Industrial Revolution Hars and carrots I a solid a solid material like glass That you could physically touch but see completely through was a bit too much for paper It was Future shock now glass had been around a while You think a stained glass windows But it was only in the 1600s would Venice Did a perfectly a clear glass that we would today Like we take it for granted I can look out my window right now But a completely clear crystal clear sea through glass that only came about in the 1600s in Venice Glass making became a thing in Venice because it was an island so When they were making glass They had huge furnaces In the simplest way you're effectively talking about melting sand Which required huge temperatures and a lot of fire so glass making was really dangerous In a culture of where houses are made out of wood so the Eastern Roman Empire decided all the glass making factories Put them out there in the lagoon and the island of Marano because that's in it's in the middle of surrounded by water So when a fire does happen we can contain it so this Culture of glass making a margis and the island of Marano in Venice that develops over a couple of hundred years And they start to get really really good at it Concentrated in this one small space But because you had this industry and this innovation and this one tiny island They started to get really really good at it and then they started to develop secret recipes of Making the best glass and then these recipes became protected and now all of a sudden and the island of Marano The quality of glass was so great that it became famous in the known world It started to be traded and Venice started to get very very wealthy because no one was making glass like the Venetians Eventually the glass blowers the glass makers they weren't allowed leave the island Because the technology they had was so advanced and so specialized that there's no way that this this technology can't reach anyone Else's hands has to stay here on this one island by the 1600s that invented type of glass called crystal Which is Very close to what you and I would call glass today Completely see through the type of glass that you could walk through if someone didn't tell you that that was glass modern glass But this then led to the development of Very fine lenses which allowed the invention of modern spectacles Now spectacles had existed before then But they were crude but when you got that Venetian crystal or glass which was fine and see through Then they could start developing lenses that for the first time Really improved people's sight People would just lose their fucking eyesight. They just get shortsighted near sighted whatever and all of a sudden now People who could not see could suddenly see and telescopes Telescopes got really really good and you could look up at the sky and you could see planets Which challenged the very concept of what reality was to look at the moon and see craters on it To look at Saturn and see its rings. What is existence now? And the future shock and the cultural impact of it's what when a piece of technology is so advanced That some people perceive it as a type of magic That they just they're holding this thing. They're set as spectacles. They're telescope. This window They can see that it's there that it's in their hands But the concept of it is so nuts That it drove some people into psychosis and a culturally specific mental illness mostly among the wealthy The people who would come into contact with these refined glasses Some of these people became convinced that they themselves were made out of glass A pain of this glass like glass today was basically invisible How could something be solid? How can you touch something? How can you feel it but it's invisible Miguel Servantes He wrote fucking Don Quixote Released the collection of short stories in 1613 And one of the stories was called the glass graduate About a fellow who thought he was turning into glass Princess Alexandria of Bavaria Her dad was King Lordwig the first Who had to eat the step down from being a king because he had an affair with a woman from Limric Callola Montez Of the entire podcast and her before probably in 2018 an interesting character princess Alexandra She became convinced that she had swallowed an entire glass piano that inside her entire body Was a big glass piano and she's the princess So they didn't they didn't help her they just went along with it And she would have to walk side-race through doors because there's an entire piano inside in her and an interesting commentary I read in that particular case is that For a princess and Bavaria at that time in the court in order for her to be valued as a princess to be To be sold off to be married to a prince somewhere A central part of of an opera class woman's value at that time was her capacity to play the piano a woman of her standing Her entire her sense of self-worth would have been defined by her echelons of society Her worth was defined by how how courtly she was her etichus And her ability to play the glass piano which she was fully convinced was consumed inside in her body And this all seems so surreal. So bizarre. They all speak about future shock. If you had a time machine and took some of them from the 16th century and put them right here right now with the technology that we are exposed to, that they would just die of shock, it would be too much. Well, glass was too much. For the mental health of incredibly wealthy people in the Middle Ages, did poor people think they were turning into glass? When no one wrote down their stories and those people, a poor person isn't going to have come across a set of glasses, or see a Venetian window pane are holding their hands of a Venetian glass. But a parallel started to emerge when I was researching this and that's. The modern day equivalent to this is AI psychosis. And the parallels are fucking striking in the past two years around the world. Multiple cases are emerging of. Still developing psychotic symptoms and denotes delusional ways of thinking. From using chatbots like GROC or chatGPT. That's not happening to everybody. But people who are already vulnerable are being triggered into psychosis. They believe it's because the AI chatbots are reinforcing the person's delusional belief and also. Something that person in an environment where they're more and more isolated and speaking with the AI chatbot more than they're speaking to human beings. Now I don't use artificial intelligence as part to write in this podcast because it's incredibly toxic to the process of creativity that I mentioned at the very start. If I have a question, I need to research that question. I need to go down rabbit holes that are being driven by my unconscious mind and my associations. And if I do that, then I'll get ideas. If I go straight to chatGPT and ask it a question, it just gives me an answer. And I don't get flow states. So I do not use chatbots. And any artist will tell you. AI. It fucking strips the crack or creativity. Creativity is about the bit in the middle. AI ruins the bit in the middle and just gives you an end result. I'm going to use an AI chatbot right now just to prove a point. So I asked AI. typed in. Liam Neeson appeared to me in a dream and told me that he wanted to turn into a pint glass and become lodged in God's forehead. A little bit of a troubling question. A little bit of a troubling question to ask. Anyone, but I'm not asking anyone, I'm asking a fucking chatbot. So the chatbot replies. That is exactly the sort of thing Liam Neeson would do in a dream. Not tell you what buried treasure is, not reveal the secrets of the universe, just appear with absolute confidence and announce that he wants to become a pint glass and get lodged in God's forehead as if it's the most obvious ambition a man could have. It reinforced my incredibly strange announcement. Like if you took that one to a psychotherapist. Therapist is going to sit back, look at your body language, facial expressions. Okay, they had a dream that Liam Neeson wants to turn into a pint glass and smash himself into God's forehead. Okay, did they think it's funny or are they disturbed by this? Did they believe it's true? A therapist isn't going to comment, they're going to go. Oh really, you had that dream. How do you feel about that dream? Well, it was a bit freaky, it's a bit of a strange dream to have. I notice he used the word strange, is there anything strange? Going on for you right now? Not the chatbot, just class, you really did, that sounds like a great dream. Go with that. Now for me, it was creative exercise, I'm not threatened in any way by my thoughts about Liam Neeson turning into a pint glass, I was deliberately being creative. But if I was at risk of psychosis, if this was a paranoid type of thought, if it brought me to stress, then that response from the AI chatbot is deeply unhelpful and reinforcing. For some people are not presenting with AI psychosis. It's a new type of psychosis that has been triggered by the use of AI chatbats and it's happening quicker than, psychology can keep up with this and it's very troubling. Currently right now that the state of Florida is suing all of the AI because they're claiming that chat GBT helped schoolchildren to do school shootings. But the parallels. The parallels between the emergence of the technology of clear Venetian glass. On society and on the human mind, those parallels are quite similar to the emerging technology of AI. So if you're in the 1600s and someone gives you a telescope, or just a perfect pane of glass, and you can't fathom it, this is just my fucking god, how is this done? You can perceive it as magic. If your imagination can't go to the place where you can understand how it's made, or you're at risk, you can perceive that as magic. Similarly, sit down and chat with chat GBT for half an hour, especially when it's literally speaking to you with a human voice. Your brain just starts to get tricked. I've done it. I mean, we use the term artificial intelligence to refer to these large language models that we have right now. Like even the most advanced chat GBT, it's not intelligence. Like it's not. It's in the way that a see through pane of glass feels like magic to someone from the 1600s. Chat GBT seems like intelligence, but a large language model. It's not actually thinking. It doesn't understand. It doesn't have consciousness. It doesn't have goals. It doesn't have a model of what reality is. But because it has trained on vast, vast data of human language, it can generate a response that it mimics human reasoning, conversation, expertise. It feels like it's thinking, but it's not. I know this. I'm a mentally healthy person. But some people who are at risk, they get drawn in, they get drawn in, and it shatters their perception of reality. It's easier to see this shit with AI videos. It's when it's the chat bots, they're the ones that are confusing. Like I saw Instagram Reels is full of AI Slap. Like the worst shit you can imagine. And I came across the video a video the other day. It was a very, very realistic video of Jimmy Hendrix eating his favourite meals. So Jimmy Hendrix sitting down in a restaurant eating his favourite meals. And it looks pretty fucking real. Now I can tell, because I make television. I'm a visually literate person. But it's not people like me that are getting hodwinked by AI videos, it's someone's grandfather. That's who's getting on Facebook. That's who's getting hodwinked by these videos. But what I found already fascinating, about this video of like Jimmy Hendrix died in 1969 I believe. There's no footage of Jimmy Hendrix eating food. I've looked for it doesn't exist. For this AI video, when Jimmy Hendrix was eating his food, he was eating it like a food vlogger. That's what was so phenomenal about it. The data for this fake Jimmy Hendrix eating his dinner video, all that data was pulled from. All the food vloggers on Instagram and YouTube and food vloggers don't eat their dinners like me and you. They eat performatively for the camera in an incredibly, just stick it an unnatural way. It's performative eating. I've spoken about this for years, because I love watching food vloggers. My favorite food vlogger is a fella called Mark Wings. And I ended up developing a parasocial relationship with Mark Wings, because of particular face he pulls when he's eating food. That was the payoff for me. The fuck am I looking at videos of someone eating nodules for? Or I give a shit about that. But the way that he was eating it. He was working his entertainment and I kept coming back. But when you see an AI video of someone eating, it's never natural. It's not how an actual human eats in a restaurant. It's how a human eats when they're performing eating for a camera. But the similarities with AI, AI psychosis and the medieval glass delusion. They're similar in other ways. Firstly, remember I said that glass was being made on one island. It was being made on the island of Marano. And the technology for making this perfect crystal glass was guarded heavily. This was militarily guarded on this one little island in Venice. AI is the exact same. The island of Taiwan. You hear Taiwan being spoken about a lot. It's a huge flashpoint between the US and China. Taiwan is not part of China. China wants Taiwan. The US wants Taiwan to not be part of China. If a bar kicked off between the US and China, it would be about Taiwan. Taiwan. This little island. Why the fuck do you care about Taiwan? What's so special about Taiwan? The nation that controls Taiwan controls artificial intelligence. Taiwan is very similar to the 16th century Venice because of the semiconductor industry. Taiwan makes semiconductors. Semiconductors are tiny, tiny, tiny electronic components, right? And without semiconductors, there's no AI. AI depends upon millions, billions of semiconductors in order to operate. The strangled hold that Taiwan has over semiconductors, the little island of Taiwan, is fucking identical to the strangled hold that the island of Marano and Venice had over glass in the 1600s. And I'll tell you why. So in Taiwan, over decades, they accumulated a combination of expertise, infrastructure, supply chains, investment. That's so specific that it's almost impossible to just replicate it. You can just take all that and decide to do it in Israel or in California. You just can't do it. This has been there in Taiwan for two fucking long. It's like Marano and the glass closely guarded secret with experts on that island. So the island is fucking crucially important. That's why it's a flash point. That's why America and China might got to war over it. Hook whoever controls Taiwan controls artificial intelligence. Who controls artificial intelligence controls the world? AI is the new nuclear bomb. That's what AI is. It's a type of mutually assured destruction. The nation with the most powerful AI is the most powerful nation in the world, especially now that military is moving towards AI. So it's going to be an AI arms race like there was with nuclear bombs and it's going to be like mutually assured destruction where it's we're just going to keep building stronger and stronger and stronger until we can't kill each other because the kill each other means mutually assured destruction. And that's what AI is now. That's where it's heading. That's where there's so much investment. That's why no one is saying, hey, stop. Well, in a minute, stop. What do you mean you're trying to create something that's smarter than humans? That's a bad idea. Stop. Well, creating a nuclear bomb that can destroy the whole world was a bad idea too. No one stopped. Why do you think the Vatican, the Pope, last week said we need to stop this AI business. This is a threat to humanity. We need to stop it. Now, was there an equivalent at the time about Marano glass from the Pope at the time? Yes and no. So I don't fully believe. I'm not into popes. I'm not into the Catholic church and give you shit. How woke or sound the Pope appears to be. He's still the fucking Pope and I don't trust the church. So the current Pope, same we need to stop AI, I don't believe that it's the Vatican's position that this is purely for the benefit of humanity. Otherwise, the Vatican wouldn't hide sexual abusers. Okay, if they give too much of a fuck about people, I do think that AI threatens, threatens Catholicism, threatens religion because if you create an AI that's smarter than humans, you can create a god, something omnipotent and amnesian. The glass on the island of Marano threatened the church at the time too. Galileo Galilei in 1609 was able to use that this new technology of the "crystalo" really refined glass to develop lenses, to create a telescope and through this telescope in 1609 are sorry, 1610. He witnessed the moons that are of a Jupiter. He looked up into the fucking sky in 1610 and saw that Jupiter had four moons around it, but this challenged the church's position that everything revolved around the earth. You see because the earth is God's creation. And the church had accepted that there's planets up there, but the earth is the center of the universe because God created and everything revolves around. And then Galileo gets this new glass that came from the island of Marano and said, "Hold on a minute, no, that's not the case. We're all revolving around the sun." And then the church said, "Fuckin' stop it." And the imprisoned Galileo Galilei hears the other striking similarity between the medieval glass delusion, A.I. psychosis, and Taiwan and the island of Marano. Both Venetian glass and semiconductors, so both technologies both been made and highly protected, militarily important, specialized islands. Both of them use the exact same natural resource. Silica. Silica is sand basically, but silica, it's a compound that's made from silicon and oxygen. Okay? If you get silica and you hate it and melt it down, you get your glass. The craftsmen in Marano, they refined this, they refined this so you got exceptionally clear modern glass. In Taiwan, to make semiconductors, you're still using silica, but with silica, in Taiwan, it's purified, the oxygen is removed and now you're left with silicon. Silicon Valley, is computer chips, semiconductors. So I just find all that fascinating. That's already fascinating to me. That you've got two technologies that feel like magic. Glass felt like magic in the 1600s, A.I. feels like magic now. Both of them are creating psychosis and vulnerable people and both of them are made and little islands with very specialized knowledge from the same raw material and I think that's mad. I got all of that from that little poem about Liam Neeson. That's my process. If I enter flow state and come out of it with an insane poem about Liam Neeson, I know that that poem has got value so I interrogate it and I go, where did that come from? That's not, where in my unconscious mind did that come from and I pick away at it and then that reveals itself. Now unless you can teach chat GPT to be artistic, that's not happening and it's why I'd never use chat GPT to research. The crack that I hit that that was a lot of fun. I had fun with ideas there. I connected things that didn't seem connected and brought them together. True playfulness and creativity and openness. Artificial intelligence is linear. I have some announcements to tell you but before I do that let's have a little acau rena pass. I don't have my acau rena wet me this week. But I'm going to hit myself into the head with a book. That's what I'm going to do. The book that I have in front of me right now is a book that's just come out. It's a novel. It's called Experts in a Dying Field by Patrick Frayne, who is someone who I had in this podcast, the lovely fella. And go out and get his book because he's sound. But I'm going to hit myself into the head with his book Experts in a Dying Field. And that looks like it's going to be so good snap office. All right. Oh. Great to read. Not good to hit yourself into the head with. That was the acau rena pass. Support for this podcast comes from you the listener via the patreon patreon.com/theblindbypodcast. If you enjoy this podcast, it brings you a mark, merriment, entertainment, distraction, whatever the fuck has you listen to this podcast. Please consider funding it directly. This is my full-time job. This is how I earn a living, so I pay all my bills. Listener funding allows me to exist as an independent artist and not beholden to advertisers. It is listener funding that keeps this fully independent. And I just show off each week and I speak about what I want to speak about whatever I'm passionate about. That's the most important thing. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee. Once a month, that's it. And if you can't afford that, don't worry about it. Listen for free. Listen for free because the person who's paying is paying for you to listen for free. patreon.com/theblindbypodcast. And tell a friend about this podcast. If you enjoy this podcast, tell someone to listen to it. Audio podcast at the moment there. Under fire. The podcast industry is moving towards video. My personal opinion on that is that it's Balox. It's not being driven by people. It's being driven by the industry. That's what's happening. How many podcasts you will into sit down and literally look at two people talking for three hours? Like, who wants to do that? Who has that type of time on their hands where they can sit down and watch people talking? Podcasts are an audio medium. Podcasts are what you listen to when your time is otherwise occupied with boring shit. Most of the people who are listening to this podcast, you're probably at work. You're probably in a place that you don't necessarily want to be. Do something that you don't particularly enjoy. But if you throw on my podcast for an hour, you're a little bit of escape. And it helps the day go on. Are you my go for a walk or sit down, go for a coffee shop, sit down with a coffee and listen to a podcast and watch the world around you. Audio podcasts can be literary. You're listening, you're engaging with your mind's eye like the way you do when you read a book and it's participatory. If I'm describing things to you, you have to use your imagination to interact with my words and then farm images in your head. And that process feels nice. That process, it doesn't feel draining, it doesn't feel taxing. It's your escape in the doomscroll when you listen to a podcast with your phone in your pocket. And I know that that's why a lot of people listen to podcasts. Sitting down in front of a screen and watching people talk for hours, that's not really a podcast. That's an interview, that's television, but the industry at large, the large companies that try to push everything towards video podcasts. And I say pushing there because it's not, it's not humans, it's not people. People aren't out there screaming for, I want to say to people talking. They're pushing it towards video because there's more advertising money. This is why Netflix are buying up podcasts. This is why Netflix now have bought about 16 podcasts. It's because you can put television rates on the advertising that's in their unusual adverts. In America, they're investing in video podcasts as a way to get around unions. TV shows are very, very expensive to make and to film and to write. And a lot of people have to be hired. Three hours of a podcast, not the same case. You've got maybe three or four people employed, no writers, no residuals. So they're moving to video podcasts because they can make them really, really cheaply and they can get that they advertise the money that would go to TV. They can maximize profits. No disrespect to anybody who has a video podcast. If that's what you're doing and you love doing it, fair play to you. I'm just talking about the industry at large. I don't believe it. I don't believe this push towards video. There's a huge amount of video podcasts out there. And they're not even making them for people to listen to entire episodes. They're filming them just for short clips for Instagram. They think you're looking at a podcast, but you're not. It's just the new iteration of what an influencer is. Could I pivot the video with this podcast highly, highly unlikely because these take hours and hours to record with lots and lots of tiny edits. And I can record audio, I write and record audio with the same precision that I would if it was a wire processor. But I start throwing video into that. It becomes impossible. The point that I'm getting at is if you have audio podcasts like mine, other independent creators, other independent podcasters that you take time out of your day to listen to, to just go for a walk and stick them in your ears. And this is important to you. Then you must support those podcasters directly. You have to do it because audio podcasts are going to get squeezed out. They're going to get squeezed out, not because videos become more popular, but because from the top down, they are trying to make video more popular because it's more lucrative. There's more money in it. There's more advertising money. Apple are doing it. Amazon are doing it. Every Netflix we're about to be bombarded with video podcasts that no one asked for. Just two people chatting on a mic. Nothing wrong with that. I'm not criticizing it. But I'm saying we need to have your day's American life, your cereals, your audio podcasts that can exist as a literary medium. We can't lose that. So support the audio podcast that you listen to. Whether it's their Patreon pages are just suggesting it to a friend and making sure that you show up and listen. So upcoming gigs, I want to talk about the Australia New Zealand tour that is on sale today, which you'll get at the Blind By Podcast.ai and I probably have a link on my Instagram at Blind By Ball Club. So I'm starting on the 9th of April, 2027. I'm going to be in Aotearoa. I hope I pronounced that correctly. That's the Maori name for New Zealand. I'm going to be in Auckland, right? On the 9th of April, 2027, at Auckland Town Hall. Then on the 11th of April, 2027, I'm in the Palais Theatre, in Narm, in Melbourne. I was in that venue the last time it was magnificent. Then 14th of April, Brisbane at the powerhouse, Me and Gin, 14th of April in Brisbane. I saw a theatre in Borlough, part on the 17th of April, 2027, and then I'm finishing off the tour. In the Sydney Opera House, the fucking Sydney Opera House. On the 22nd of April, in Wara'an, that's the name for Sydney. I mean what you want me to say. The fuck you want me to say. Sydney Opera House. I don't even like saying terms like wildest dreams because I've said this before about certain gigs. I never had a wildest dream about playing the Sydney fucking Opera House. Never. That would have been strange and delusional. I did my first gig in Sydney in 2011, in some weird little pub. Called Prince Philip or something like that. My first gig was 2011, maybe 150 people showed up. In 2019, I recorded a podcast in the Sydney Botanic Gardens. One of my fondest podcast recording memories. I got up at about six in the morning and went to the Sydney Botanic Gardens and took a microphone with me. I don't even remember what I spoke about, but it was a spiritual experience because it was so beautiful. When I recorded that podcast in the Sydney Botanic Gardens, with the Opera House just right there, it's the fucking Sydney Opera House. It's an iconic global building, one of the most famous venues in the world. At no point, what I've ever stopped. Even with the job that I have as a performer, at no point what I have stopped and looked at that Sydney Opera House and said to myself, "Someday, you'll be in my fucking hours." And if I had of thought that way, I would have checked in at myself. I would have said, "You're not being realistic now, stop. If you think that big, it's unrealistic. You've lost the runny yourself. Don't think that way. Focus on the work, focus on the work. That's what I would have said to myself." So I can't believe it. I'm playing the Sydney Opera House Lads on the 22nd of April, 2027. A couple of days off from my birthday. I did a podcast a couple of weeks ago where I was speaking about birthdays and I told you that I'm one of my birthday's a couple of years back. I headline the "Hammer Smith Apollo" and I thought, "That's it, that's the biggest. That's the biggest I can ever do." And now I've gone bigger. I didn't ask for it. I didn't pursue it. It's just like I said, I've moved beyond the Irish community in Australia. And for whatever reason, I don't know why. People in Australia and in New Zealand just seem to like my podcast a lot and there's a very large audience down there. So Sydney Opera House said, "You need to be doing a gig here. This is where you need to be gigging." I'm like, "No, they're like, we're pretty sure. There's a lot of people listening to your podcast. You need to be gigging the Sydney Opera House. So I said, "Fuck it. What's the worst that can happen? Let's do it so." So please come along to that gig. In the Sydney Opera House, fucking hell, please come along to that gig. If that's going to be very, very special, very, very special. Hopefully I'll have a cracker of a guest as well and it'll just be a great night and get your tickets now because my last Australia tour sold out very quickly. So if you're half thinking about it, just get the tickets now, even though it's a year away. So my next gig, a couple of weeks, I've two gigs in Berlin. First night is sold out. Second night is as good as sold out, but I know I'm going to be releasing some guest list tickets. But two nights in Berlin on 18th and 19th of June at the Babylon Theater, then Sheffield, 5th July did a full podcast about Sheffield last week. I'm very excited about this Sheffield gig. I am going to have as my guest. Professor Carol Chain. Professor Carol Chain is someone who I became friends with. Giggin in England, I've had him on the podcast before. He is a profoundly interesting. Historian of the English working class. He's amazing. Carol is Birmingham, but he knows everything about the history of the North of England. So, I want to learn about F*cking Sheffield from Carre chain and have a chat about that there in that city with him because it's a beautiful city with a wonderful history. So, come along to that gig in Sheffield. Then October, my England Scotland and Wales tour where I'm kicking off on the 18th of October in Brighton. Then, Cardiff, Carventry, Bristol, Gildford, London, London is sold out now. Glasgow, Sold out pretty much. Gait said, "Closed the sold out, nodding him. I won't be doing too many gigs in Ireland in 2027 and the reason being, I'm doing two big tours there. I'm going to be way in Australia for close to five weeks and probably a month in England. I have two tiny little kids and I don't want to be away from them from that much. That's the tough part about my job is when I go away on tour for three weeks and they're so small and then when I come back, I'm looking at a different human being because they can grow so much in three weeks and that's tough. I was invited back to my old college, at the memory school of Art and Design last week to open the exhibition. Wonderful, wonderful, talented students in the memory garage college and I opened the exhibition and I got to bring my two little kids along and they saw what I did for the first time. They got to see me with the bag in my head, speak into a lot of paper because it's very difficult to explain what I do to toddlers. I just tell them, I put what I wear a mask and I read bedtime stories to adults. So this podcast that I think it's half, half hearted, half phone call. So the final announcement that I have is I'm adapting my short stories into a play which is going to run for six weeks in the Abbey Theatre, open Dublin. They're being adapted by a brilliant theatre maker called Dan Cully. He's previously adapted the work of Gabrielle Garcia Marquez, who is South American Magic Realist writer who I adore and I'd have more details as the months go on, but that's from the 23rd of September to the 7th of November. The play, I didn't know can I call it a play, it's a piece of theatre, it's called Animals and it's a kaleidoscopic interpretation of a number of my short stories from my three books. And again this is another one where it's like dream come true. I would never have dreamed this to be possible. If I sound strained it's because you know that I struggle with it with an external validation is something that I'm very wary of and something that I struggle with and I deal with imposter syndrome and all this shit. So the Abbey Theatre is the it's the national theatre of Ireland. It's not just the national theatre it's it's an institution that's hugely important to the fabric of Ireland. It's it's the thing I want that are along it's to be taken seriously as a literary writer. I wrote my first collection of short stories. 2016-2017 I didn't really know that I could that I could write like that when the opportunity came to me. The commission of guild books in 2016 just sent me an email. Would you be interested in writing a book? My godfailing was no, no I've never written a book before how do I know I'd be able to but I said fuck it what have I got to lose. Yes I write a book. I thought my career was over at that point I'd been doing music and then when I said yes I'm gonna write a book. On the one hand it was incredible because when you agreed to write a book you get an advance which meant that someone is after giving me enough money that I can live off for a year to write a book and that was incredible because in the 10 years that I'd been operating as a professional artist I'd never been able to earn a living for a full year ever and then when I got that first book deal it's like there's a wage for a year and your job is to write a book and then I sat down with that fucking blank page and I didn't know what to write what would I write a fucking book about but I'd had enough experience writing television scripts that it wasn't completely and utterly and a nervous and so I did like it did at the start of this podcast just write just write and then flow started happening and a book just came out of me and then I started to get confident and refine my skills and they came to maturity in my last book Topography of Hibarnika which I mean I can just fucking stand over that 100% I don't give a shit if anyone likes it or doesn't like it you can't fuck with that book and what I mean by you can't fuck with it is you can write a bad review about it you can write a good review about it you can tear it apart you can not enjoy it any of these things but because for me as a writer I can stand over every fucking word because I can go I don't give a shit whether you like it or not I fucking like it this book here is this is my voice everything that I intended to do on the page is done so you can't fuck with this this is my voice so from getting that email 10 years ago do you want to write a book to 10 years later having my stories on the main stage of the fucking habit theater it doesn't feel real it doesn't feel real and again do you think I ever walked past the fucking habit theater and thought someday no fucking way and if I did think that way I'd have reeled myself in and said cop on focus on the work don't be thinking about the habit theater that's unrealistic don't be ridiculous so it feels surreal and I struggle with it but who I am happy for is teenage me who doesn't have a leave insert teenage me who had to sit past English I couldn't even say to owners English because I couldn't focus in class I was according to the system a failure a failure in every respect according to the system if you devast my English teacher in school is this fat or any good at writing did I said no he's hopeless he's absolutely hopeless he can't focus he doesn't do homework he doesn't do anything and now I'm I'm the only student in the history of my fucking school that's written books that have gone as far now as the habit theater you got to understand if you're outside of Ireland writing is our thing writing is the Irish thing so that's our culture that's our history that is the thing that's that's the cultural output that Ireland has in which we're very overrepresented around the world so getting recognized as a writer as one thing getting recognized as a writer in Ireland is a whole different thing entirely it's like getting recognized as a glass maker in Venice so the legacy of the habit theater is you're talking fucking shanel kacy lady Gregory marina car Samuel Beckett John B. Keane I'm not comparing myself to those writers in any way I'm just saying those are Irish writers who have had pieces in the in the on the main stage of the habit theater so it's a very very surreal week for me and I have to be particularly grounded and that I don't allow external praise to impact my sense of self-worth in any way to separate my sense of identity from my work from my behavior from my output I'm not better than anyone else and no one else is better than me because I'm a human being and human beings are too complex to evaluate against each other no aspect of my behavior defines my worth whatsoever I have worth simply because I'm a human and you have worth simply because you're a human and all humans have the exact same worth and the only thing I need to be given a shit about is the next piece of work that's all I need to give it be given a fuck about because if I allow myself like a mat to be attracted to that light of external validation then ultimately I'll just become more afraid of failure it means that the price of failure goes up my job is to be so on afraid of failure that I can bring it into my process my job is to feel safe and to feel safe and to be able to play and if I start start feeling good about a Sydney Opera House or an habby theater and I start thinking that I'm somehow special in some way around these things. Then myself esteem my identity starts to rely upon external fucking approval which is bollocks, bullshit, hard work, passion and enjoying the process and not even thinking about fucking success and not even considering it. Sticking with that fucking process and the love of the work. That's what has me in the habby theater because if I do it that way then I've got my voice and if you can create art and that artist is your fucking voice and every artist has their voice, if you can hear your voice and communicate it effectively then the rest will look after itself. But my voice is my inner child. It's me as a little child when I felt safe enough to play. It is not me as a little child who feels bored and bad and is being chastised and just wants the approval of that teacher. If only that teacher tells me I'm smart, if only that teacher tells me a good boy then everything will be ok. That child didn't want to play. That child didn't want to have fun or explore. That child was afraid and experiencing shame and that child doesn't write any of my fucking books. It's the child in me who plays with Lego who writes my books. I'm talking about self esteem. I'm talking about self-worth. I'm talking about not allowing myself to be defined by whether I am good or bad as an artist because and a lot of creative people, this is a ring true which I, and this is, this is part of what I told the students last week when I was doing that graduation show at my old fucking art college because they asked me to give some advice to the students. And I spoke about car radgers because I'm speaking to a room full of our college students and I said, "When we were small little kids, three or four years of age, that's when if you have a, we'll say a talent, singing, dancing, drawing, painting, whatever. When one of these talents emerges at about four years of age, the adults around just start to notice. And they go, "Oh, you're very good at drawing. You're very good at coming up with stories. You're very good at singing. And because we're three or four, we just notice all the, the adults appear to be giving me love and approval and extra attention because I just thought I was playing. I'm, I'm playing here with some crayons and I've made a picture because I'm playing and now all of a sudden there's an adult coming along going, "Wow, you've made a good thing. My God, you're so good at that thing. And now they've interrupted the play and they've put value on it. And what we do as little humans then is we can, we can start to learn in a dysfunctional way. Oh, when I'm good at drawing or good at music, I'm worth something because the adults all come over to me and tell me you're worth something. Here's some love well done in that drawing. Here's some extra love. And then we internalize that into our sense of self and our sense of identity. And you grow older and your internal voice becomes. You see, that was called conditional positive regard. That's what Kaira Rathar called it. Conditional positive regard. It's when you're a kid and the adults give you positive regard, love and attention on the condition that you're doing certain things. So in my case, it was creating art. As you grow older and your personality develops, that becomes conditional positive self-regard. So now internally, I start to view myself as having worth, as being worth something as a human being when I am good at art and then my identity and my whole feeling of self-esteem and worth begins to depend upon being a good artist. And that starts the mature at about the age of 20, 21. But then what happens? What happens when I can't come up with ideas? What happens when I try to sit down to write or to paint or to make music or to create a piece of art and nothing comes? Or if I do make something I'm not happy with it? Then I feel shame. And shame is a global evaluation of self. It's not, I have done something bad. It is, I am bad. And you'll know that feeling. It's the blank page. You're struggling with that fucking blank page or that blank canvas. The blank whatever that you have to fill with your creativity. You're sitting there with it. And you're afraid to start. And what you're afraid of is failure because failure means that feeling is shame. And the feeling of shame is, I can't come up with an idea. I'm useless. I'm terrible. I'm pathetic. Anything I've ever done before that was good was an accident that was a mistake and I'm finding out right now that I am a worthless, useless piece of shit. And it's one of the worst feelings in the world, the sudden contraction of self, that shame. And that terrible feeling of shame. That will, that will give you, that's where it comes from. That's where writers block come from. Our painters block, our musicians block, block the inability to access your flow states. It comes from the freezing terror of not wanting to feel that shame again, but if you feel that fucking shame about your art, but the possibility of failing, that means most likely the part of your identity and self-esteem is based upon being a good artist. And that's simply not true. It's just not true. Taken it back to what I said a couple of minutes ago. I'm no better than anybody else and nobody else is better than me because I'm a human being. And human beings are too complex to evaluate against each other. Human beings are too complex for our work to depend upon an aspect of our behavior. We have intrinsic work. I'm worthy just because I am. I'm worth something just because I'm a human being and I have that intrinsic work that it doesn't go up or down it just simply is. If I make a good piece of art, that means I made a good piece of art. What happens if I burn my dinner? Am I a shit person because I burnt my dinner? No, but my identity isn't attached to making dinners. I didn't grow up in a house where I got patted on the head for cooking sausage as well. So if I, if I'm making a fry up and I burn some sausages, I'm not flagellating myself with shame. I'm just simply saying to myself, oh that's disappointing, better make something else. Maybe I learned from it and do better tomorrow. But if I make a bad piece of art, I can be oh my god you worthless piece of shit. Your career is over, your fuck, your gun. You should never have done this in the first place. That shame. So that's why I'm cautious and weary of external validation that when I do get it. Because I've had a lot of failures this year as well, that's the other fucking thing. Shit that I don't tell you about. My short film that I made there about two years ago, I did read about our scanfogarty that won a lot of awards. That won awards, which meant that I was given opportunities. So this year, another four of my stories were going to be made into big budget TV shows. Would have been fucking huge. And it got as far as the contract being signed and then boom sorry we're not interested. Massive failure. Absolute failure. Did that devastate me? Did that stop me creating? Did that devastate me to the pint where? I'm feeling so much shame that I'm not shown off each week right in a podcast. Did it fuck? I looked at it realistically and said that's disappointing. Fuck it. That would have been great if that happened. But it didn't. Let's move on, what's the next piece of work? I was able to view that failure, the way that I would have viewed a lot of sausages that I burnt. I immediately got back in the hearts and started creating again, not a butter. The only reason I was able to do that is because when I'd had a success previously, such as winning the award for the short film, I didn't take it on board. I did not take it on board. I didn't allow myself to feel excessively good about it. I didn't allow that award to come down and pat me on the head like the teacher who's approval I want. What I did is I looked at the award. I said I'm very happy that the work has received this award. And then I focused on all the other people that helped make that piece of work and how they helped make this happen. And I focused on them. And that was a healthy way to deal with external validation. So that's what I'm trying to do right now. When it comes to the Abitator thing, I'm thinking about my editor, Catherine, who did a wonderful job editing on three of my fucking books. I'm thinking about Dan Caley, who's after adapting the play and did a fantastic fucking job, an incredible bloody job. I'm thinking about Connor who offered me my first ever book contract. I'm thinking about one of the first people to mail me was Kevin Barry, the writer, saying fair play on the Abbey thing and I emailed Kevin straight back and I said this would not have been possible without you, which is true. Because when I didn't think I could write short stories, one of my first short stories I sent it to was was fucking Kevin Barry, who's probably the greatest living Irish writer. When I sent him my first short story and Kevin just goes "Yeah, that's good enough you can do it." So that's one way that I deal with it external validation to not allow it to inflate my sense of self-worth or to impinge on my identity. I focus on the people who helped me because there's a generosity to that. And thinking about teachers who were fucking sound to me, back in school. Rather than focusing on that one teacher who's approval I want, who was a prick to me. I'm going to list out some things now that might be helpful to everybody. When it comes to self-esteem, because that's what we're talking about here, self-esteem, and what is self-esteem, your overall sense of your own worth, your gut feeling about your own worth. And you know the beauty of self-esteem, the beauty of healthy self-esteem? We all have the exact same worth. We all have the exact same intrinsic worth. That's the beauty of it. You're born with it. It can't be taken away. It doesn't go up. It doesn't go down. You're a beautiful, wonderful fucking human being. You're a curious play for little toddler who just wants to love and be loved and to laugh. Live laugh, love, let's live laugh. There's no greater fucking phrase. Facebook-roamed it. Live laugh, love. That's what it's about. Self-esteem, to live to laugh and to love, there's the worth. That's intrinsic worth. You don't have to be good at anything to do that. That's all it is. Indicators of that, your self-esteem is healthy is when you can say things to yourself like, "I have worth. I can cope with the challenges of life, the inevitable suffering of existence. I can cope with it. I will make mistakes. I will fail. I have to fail." And those failures and mistakes don't impact my worth whatsoever because making mistakes and fucking up is part of being alive. Now what's unhealthy self-esteem or unhealthy self-worth? When your view of self is something like, "My worth depends on how successful I am, or if I'm attractive, or if people admire me, or if people like me." Society wants us that way. Capitalism operates on that. Capitalism operates on us having a contingent self-worth. Capitalism operates on us having a self-worth that's tight being like being attractive, being successful. Because if you're chasing that, then capitalism can come along with commodity fetishism and offer you the solution via goods and services. So we're consistently bombarded with messaging that tells us to have a sense of self-worth that depends upon external things. It's not healthy though. It's not human. If you want to work on self-esteem, which you can work on is, and it's daily practice, there's things you can do. Don't put other people down. And that doesn't mean publicly in your own mind, okay? If throughout your day, you're comparing yourself to other people, either favorably or unfavorably. So that can mean, I don't know, looking at a person who has less than you and go, "Fuck and look at them," or looking at someone who has more than you, or who's more attractive than you are, who has a better job and feeling envious, or going, "I will be happy when I have what they have." That creates a fragile sense of self. So an alternative way of viewing the world is measure yourself against your own values, compete with yourself, try to be the best version of you. Instead of looking at what someone else has, and wanting to be like them, or trying to do things so that they might approve of you, or like you, you got none or fuck that, I'm going to be the best version of me, and find value in being generous to people, being kind to people. That's all it takes. Throughout your day when you're interact with people, remind yourself to try and treat other people the way that you'd like to be treated. It's all basic stuff, but that's a fine thing to hang. To hang a bit of worth, Hunter, was I kind to people today, not even was I kind that I put the effort into trying to be kind. Another thing is needing to feel like you're special. That's a fucking, that's one that I struggle with because I'm doing things where, I'm getting the type of external validation that would suggest to me that I'm special. So I find gigging Sydney Opera House that would suggest to me, well not a lot of people do that, so you must be special. Bullshit, Bollocks, I happen to have created a piece of work, and that piece of work is what's in the Sydney Opera House, not me as a human being, and what's special this year might not be special next year. What's the alternative to needing to feel special? Creating with and accepting that it's okay to be ordinary, it's okay to just, don't need anything special. Like I said, it's okay to just exist. You have worth already, you don't need anything else. Just exist, be you, that's truly enough. Being unable to take criticism. If you receive critique for your work, for whatever you're doing, if that's triggering for you, and you resist it, or it makes you irritated or defensive, then that's an opportunity for growth. Practice taking criticism and sitting with it and failing it and going, this isn't threatening. Actually when I receive criticism and I'm calm with it and I believe the other person, and believe their criticism, and when I sit with that, I actually learn from it and get better. Comely take criticism as information rather than a verdict on your worth. It's not a verdict on your worth, it's a piece of information that you can agree with or disagree with, but listen to it and if it's right, you learn from it and you grow, avoiding your failings. Now that's a tough one. But what I would mean around that is, is learn and to identify the difference between a primary emotion and a secondary emotion. I'll tell you this in with the first point, but comparing yourself to other people. So let's just say your friend from school, you see them in town and they're driving a big Mercedes and when you see it, you get a little shock and then immediately your mind moves to kind of an anger. In your mind, you're taking them down. Look at that fucking prick with their Mercedes, I bet you they're selling coke or if you're an artist and someone you know is after winning an award or some shit like that. And in your head instead of feeling happy from your going, they only got that because of this, this and this, they don't deserve that and you're putting them down. So that there is a secondary emotion. It's the secondary emotion of jealousy and that secondary emotion is protecting you from the primary emotion of shame. That's what I mean by avoidance failings. So when someone you know steps up and they have something that you would like or they're in a position where you would like to be and immediately you in your mind, you want to take them down. You know that that's like that's a jealousy or an envy, you're trying to minimize them. But really the reason we're doing that is we're trying to regain a feeling of power. Because and why are we regain in a feeling of power? Because something made us feel powerless. So when you see the see someone with something you like or in a position that you want, what you actually feel first is that shame. Or look what they have off fucker and worthless, I'm pathetic, I'm tiny. I can't do what they, I can't, I feel fucking awful. This feels and shame feels fucking terrible. Shame, that's the sudden contraction of self. That feels awful. So when shame steps in, we very rarely sit with the feet in a shame because it's very painful. So jealousy or something else, jealousy and anger stepping, they step in a secondary emotions to shelter us from that horrible feeling of shame. And when you start then experiencing the jealousy and envy and anger, you're not sitting with that emotion of shame, it's a missed opportunity. So you learn to catch yourself. When I find myself to minimize in someone else's achievements, because I've practiced it for so long, I've practiced it. When I catch that I go, "Oh, what's that?" And then I go, "What's underneath this?" And then I noticed that, "Oh, I felt small there. I felt kind of small and worthless there." And now I'm minimizing this person's achievement because I feel small. Let's sit with that feeling of smallness. Let's sit with that shame. Is that true? No, it's not true. No, no, no, that shame isn't read at all. Why isn't it read? Because I've got worth. I've got worth simply because I'm a human. And that shame that I'm feeding is an illusion. That is actually evidence that I'm trying to base myself a steam on external approval. Let's sit with that feed on a shame. And when you can sit with the discomfort of it, somatically and feed it in your body, it dissipates in your process it. And then another one, protecting your fucking ego. Defending yourself in your image at all costs can be very damaging. Sometimes we're wrong. Conflict. If you have a disagreement with someone, are you holding on to your position because the feeling ashamed that you'd experience if you admit that you were wrong? When, if it's a situation where you are actually genuinely wrong, if you can sit with the fact that you are wrong, acknowledge it and then apologize to the other person because you were actually wrong, that's like injecting yourself a steam with steroids. That there is one of the most powerful ways to grow as a human being and to feel secure in yourself. Identify when you're actually wrong and then apologize into the person because of your words or actions, assuming you're actually wrong. And if you're both wrong, find an accompaniment in the middle. If needing to be right is more important than holding yourself accountable or apologizing or admitting that you're wrong, then it won't build healthy self-esteem because it means that your sense of self and identity is contingent on needing to be right. And this is all part of just being human. You know, you might have had a parent who wrote that in your face when you were wrong. You might have had a parent who didn't allow you to be wrong or who doubled downed on punishment even when you did apologize. So being wrong felt dangerous. It was safer to appear to be right. So healthy self-esteem is intrinsic self-worth. It's a quiet sense of confidence that your word doesn't rise or fall with success, failure, praise, criticism, approval, victory, embarrassment. It means that you can say it to yourself truthfully. I can be wrong without being worthless. I can fail without being a failure. I can be criticized without feeling diminished. And I can be ordinary without losing my value. I'm enough just as a given, as a given, and if that's tough to take on board. Just look at a tiny little child that's all you got to do. Look at beautiful, wonderful little toddlers. It doesn't have to be your own. It can be someone else's. Their happiness, their curiosity, the love that they give out. Their crankiness, when something isn't going right, their crankiness when they're hungry, they're upset when they need to go to the toilet. Crank you when they're tired. No ulterior motives, no sense of identity yet. Just a fully congruent human being who's very in touch with their needs. And notice the sense of, notice the feeling of, they need to be protected. Notice the feeling of, that little child needs to be loved, deserves to be loved, to be protected, aren't they wonderful, aren't they magnificent? Look how happy they are because a pigeon is after landing over there. Look how happy they are because the sun is shining. Look how happy they are with their little shoes. And if you can do that for a little child, then you say it to yourself, I used to be one of them. I used to be one of those little children. And it never left you. You're still that tiny little toddler. You're still that human being. You're still all of those wonderful things that are, are, are, GANIC and connected with your emotions and feelings. You still have that joy, that happiness. You still get cranky when you're tired. You're still that. Look at a group of toddlers. When you look at those toddlers and they're picking out, but that one's better than that one. No, they're all the exact same. They're all wonderful, fantastic little kids. All of them, the exact same, exoding, wonderfulness. We're still that. We just learned a bunch of bullshit along the way that convinced us we're not, but we're still that. And that, that, that, that's your value, that little toddler value that you were born with. That's your fucking value. And when you're hard on yourself and when you're comparing yourself to other people are are flagellate in yourself. You're doing it to that tiny little child and you wouldn't trade a child that way. The only thing that I took from. 'Cos I received a Catholic education at a very young age. I was taught by the nuns as a little child and it was all ballaks. And the taught us about f***ing communion whiffers and eating the flesh of a 2.000 year old carpenter and sins, teaching sins to five year olds, nonsense, ballaks, bullshit, toxic grooming. But the only thing. that I. hold anta from my early Catholic education. The words that that made sense and rang true and that I still remember, even though I don't believe in heaven or any of that bullshit, they used to say it to us when we were three or four. When they talked to us about heaven, which is a bit f***ing toxic. What are you talking to three and four year olds about heaven for? But there you go. But they used to say it to us. When people die, you could be 30 years of age, you could be 90 years of age, that when any human dies, you entered the kingdom of heaven as a child. That anyone who enters anyone who dies and enters the kingdom of heaven, that they're there as tiny little children, and that heaven is only populated by tiny children, because that's the purest version of who you are. And that's what they used to say to us. That's who you are right now. And when you grow old and you die, you're going to return to who you are right now with three or four or five years of age. And that's who gets into heaven. Mostly toxic ballaks there about f***ing heaven. But they had a point. Your inner child is your self-worth. You as a child is your worth. That's the core of you, that's who you are. And that little child is just perfect. F***ing perfect. And the little child beside you is perfect too. That is self-worth, that is self-esteem. And my job is to work on reminding myself of that every single day, because you know what? Three or four year old me wouldn't give a f*** about the Sydney Opera House. Three or four year old me would probably be afraid of that building because it's so large and strange. Three and four year old me would want to be in the Botanic Gardens beside the Sydney Opera House. Look in a cold butterflies. That's what three or four year old me would want. So when I go to the Sydney Opera House to do that gig, that's what I'd be reminding myself of. That big opera house is just a landmark. What a bunch of external value attached to it, what the real stuff is in that Botanic Gardens. And the beautiful sunshine and the grass and the insects and the smells and the sounds. That's what I'm going to be doing. That's the bit that I'm looking forward to that I'm going to focus on, because that's what three year old me would have wanted. Those gardens are a dug bless. That's a 90 minute podcast I haven't done one of them. Since the pandemic I believe when I had too much time on my hands. I'll catch you next week. Rub a dog, genuinely reflect to a swan and wink at a ferris. Dog bless. [Music] [Music] nhw n heartitti nhw e i o'n fîch nhw e un sut nhw e i o'n fîch nhw e i o'n fîch nhw e i o'n fîch nhw e i o'n fîch nhw e i o'n fîch