ACost recommends podcast's we love. Hi, Sabina Brannan here, host of Superbrain, the podcast for Everyone with a Brain. I have a passion for people and a fascination for the human brain. That's why I became a psychologist and neuroscientist. On Mondays, I pick the brains of inspiring guests about thriving and surviving in life. And on Thursdays I share insights and hacks to help you to understand and unleash your inner superbrain to join me each week. Simply search for Superbrain on Apple Akehurst or wherever you get your podcasts.

Ecorse powers the world's best podcasts, including the two journeys I'm Grandmama's and the one you're listening to right now.

Crews, Owners Boulevard, you Duty-bound Brenden's Welcome to the Blind Bye podcast. I'd like to give a special welcome in particular to our brand new listeners. There's lots and lots of brand new listeners because of last week's podcast where I interviewed WWE wrestler Samisen. I'm pleased to announce that since last week's interview with Samme, he has now become the intercontinental champion in WWE, a phrase which I. I haven't thought about the Intercontinental Championship. Since Fokin, Brett, the Hitman Hart are Shawn Michaels, that's how long I've thought about the Intercontinental Championship, but Samisen won it last night.

Fair play to him one week after we had a fantastic interview on this podcast and fair play.

The Falcons Tamiment, like Sammie's, got millions of followers online and he obviously really enjoyed the chat that we had last week.

I'm guessing Sammy basically was plug in the fuck out of this podcast all week to his millions of followers, which for me is fucking fantastic because. It's like you have all these all these people in America and Canada, all around the world who enjoy Samme, they are now getting the opportunity to listen to this podcast. So that's fantastic.

It was a lovely gesture to Sammy and to me and told me to Sammy obviously never gets much of an opportunity to speak about the issues we spoke about. I'm guessing when Sammy gets interviews, a lot of the interviews are just about wrestling and he doesn't get the opportunity to express himself, which is a shame because as you can tell from last week's podcast.

Unbelievably articulate, insightful person with some really on the ball and opinions about compassion and politics and someone who needs to be heard more, but a good week was had by me and I'd say me and Sammy are going to hook up again.

We had a bit I'd say we're going to do something again in the near future. Don't know what it is, but I'd say we're going to do something again. So congratulations, Sammy, on your intercontinental championship. So for this week's podcast, I'm going to answer one or two questions. That you sent me, but I want to answer questions around a specific theme. And the team that I'm thinking is. So, as you know, I use I do live streaming on a website called Twitch.

I do a three times a week and it's me fully alive, either chatting or making songs. And because it's live, everyone who's watching can interact, live in the comments. And because of this, there's a real the community on Twitch is really supportive and wholesome. So if I'm making songs and the people in the comments are aware that I'm making songs life and I'm trying to I'm trying to enjoy creativity, I'm trying to get into a creative place, there's real effort put in from the people commenting to create a kind of a happy environment.

So you never really get. Negative or disparaging comments at all, it's one of the things I fucking love about Twitch because and the rest of the Internet people are really mean, people go out of the way to to say hurtful things. But on Twitch, a community of support exists. And that's why Twitch is such a nice thing to use.

But anyway, last Wednesday I was writing songs and someone wrote a comment and the comment was blind by in choir form tonight. And when I saw the comments, I got kind of pissed off because it's like you don't write, you don't like negative comments in the Twitter stream.

And I'm trying to create music. I'm trying to create music. I'm trying to achieve a sense of law. So if you tell me I'm in choir farm, then I'm going I'm going to read that I might take it on board. And that kid's the boss. So this person wrote Blind Boys in Choir Farm. And I go, What do you mean, I'm in Choir Farm. And a few other people said, What do you mean he's in choir farm?

And it made me realize that the word quiere, which is an Irish word or what we use in Ireland, quiere that it has completely different meanings depending on where you are in Ireland. So the person who said Blind Boys in Choir Farm, what that person meant is that I was I was actually in good farm. I was being entertaining. I was in the zone. But I read it as a limerick person. And when I read the word queer, I hear that I'm off, that I'm off.

Ah. Thus I'm being odd that I'm giving off bad vibes in Limerick. The word choir means thus. I don't know if if you met some if you said they were in Choir Farm in Limerick Aaryn cark, it means that the person was in a bad mood. But anywhere else, if you say the word choir, it's like.

That was Claire good. Ah, that point was quite nice, it's used as a phrase. To mean a good thing, and I always thought the word queer. They grown up in Limerick Square to me, I just assumed that choir is an Irish way of pronouncing the word queer, but the word queer then has different meanings, the word queer. Like, I would have grown up with the word queer, meaning strange or odd, but then the word queer has a different meaning because it was initially like a disparaging.

A disparaging word against against gay people, but then the gay community in the LGBT community embraced the word queer to mean a kind of an in between, you know, that's societal norms of gender or sex that are kind of binary. It's like queer is is the in between. It's a fluidity. It's it's consistently moving in flux. But if you're from the north of the country. Are specifically, if you're from the east, the southeast of the country, where is it means very.

So that's quite good, this book was Claire Good. That film was Cuero bad, that dog is queerer angry, so square in the east of the country is like I think you'd call it an adjective, it adds flavor, it adds flavor to something in it. It adds emphasis. To a word to mean very large, it it inflates something. And the reason for this is very fuckin interesting.

So where I come from in Limerick, where it's literally just a version of queer, it's a version of queer is it means odd, means strange. So if you say to me you're in a queer mode, that's a that's an insult. You're telling me that I'm in a farm, that something about me is saward. But the reason in the east of the country, the choir means a different thing. That square doesn't come from English or Irish. Right, the choir in Wexford.

Comes from an extinct language, a language that doesn't exist anymore, so I'm going to give you about a thousand years of history now in the shortest amount of words possible to try and explain why there was a misunderstanding about the word quiere on Twitch.

We all know Ireland was invaded by Britain. So how did that happen? In the nine hundreds, there were Vikings. The Vikings were from like Norway, Denmark, they were they lived in a shit place with no grass and a lot of lakes and rocks. So the Vikings were like, this is shit and it's freezing. We hate it here. There's nothing here. So we need to do is build brilliant boats and just go everywhere. We need to continually expand and take shit.

And that's what the Vikings did. They were doing it for ages. But about nine hundred one group of Vikings made it to France and they got to France and were like, fuck me, this is class. Wow, look at that. Look at all these lovely fields. Look at this.

This is so much better than Norway and Denmark. And because the Vikings were such hard bastards. You know, they just went to the French and said, we're taking this area, this is ours, and if you don't like it, we're going to fuck off Paris, we're going to fuck your shit up. So the French were like grand, stay there. Here's a section of France and this is yours. And they called this Normandy because the Vikings that settled in France around 900, the French called them Normans, which meant Northmen men from the north.

So now you have these Vikings that live in France called Normans that they would have been speaking. I don't know what the Vikings speak Norse. I don't know what the fuck the Vikings spoke. They spoke whatever language is spoken in Denmark and Norway no more than a thousand years ago. But when they got to France and became Normans, they spoke a bit of their Danish Old Norse, but then also started speaking an early type of French, which would have been influenced by the Romans.

It would have been influenced by Latin, because 500 years previous to that, France would have had a lot of friends would have been in the fuckin the Roman Empire. So therefore it would have been speaking Latin. Right. So then Normans then start speaking half French, half Norse. So then Almond's then become kind of French and they're there in Normandy, but then they get achey again and they're like, fuck, man, you know, we're here in France.

It's called crack. I like this lovely grass. But you know what? My grandfather was a Viking and my grandfather came from this shitty place where it was just rocks and rivers and very little grass. So I have this achiness in me and I need to go on and take some shit. I need to leave France and I need to find somewhere else and take it because that Viking anxiety exists within me because I'm an army, I'm an artist. So ten sixty six.

The Normans are like, let's go over there. What's that? Britain. Is it Fogelman.

Let's go over there. So the Normans head from Normandy over to Britain and ten sixty six now Britain and then sixty six was a weird place. It was a strange place OK. It was controlled by the Anglo-Saxon inten 66. Controlled isn't the right word. It wasn't like it was populated by these lads called the Anglo-Saxon. Britain used to be a Roman colony, it used to be part of the Roman Empire and then put the Roman Empire collapsed. OK, why the fact that the Roman Empire collapsed?

OK, let's pack the almonds then almonds are in Normandy, in France, 10, 66, looking over at England going yum yum, yum, yum. I want some of that. Let's pack them for a second and go back. Maybe six hundred years to about 400. So Britain was part of the Roman Empire and the Roman Empire collapsed in this really slow and gradual way. How do I explain this? Imagine the EU just stopped tomorrow, the entire European Union just stopped tomorrow, but there's no telephones, there's no Internet, there's no communication structure.

So if the EU ended tomorrow, how long would it take for that information to truly reach Ireland and not just the information, but for the flow of money, the flow of funding, the collapse of laws? Imagine, imagine there was no Internet or phones.

And in Ireland, you're just trickling over about 100 years hearing that there's no more EU and not knowing whether to believe it or not. And it's just all of a sudden this money is disappearing and it's gone.

It's like Rome and Britain. Slowly had its pants pulled down. It's like seeing someone come up and just slowly, slowly pull the pants down over about 100 years or more, and then slowly it just looks down and it's like I have no pants anymore and my pants are gone. That's what happened.

The Roman Empire collapsed. I think it was a combination of corruption. I think what happened is. I could be wrong by saying it was Caesar, I could be wrong with saying it was Caesar. I could be wrong in saying that I'm not going to fucking check it up, some emperor basically kind of established themselves as a dictator. The whole thing with the Roman Empire is that it was supposed to be the cornerstone of democracy, but one of them became a dictator.

And then what happened? They started counterfeiting their own money. They had gold coins to pay all the soldiers, but then counterfeiting the gold. What led became a big thing and the money lost its fucking value. And then all the soldiers, all the like, the generals, the lamanno, whatever the fuck the politicians were just like the painters and laid. The money is not real anymore. The pain is inlaid. This money has no value. And the civilization romance of civilization just just dissipated.

It just collapsed. It just collapsed because it had money. You know, the people lost faith in the Empire. Soldiers are like, well, I'm not soldiering anymore. If I'm not getting paid, no one's getting paid. And then all these different tribes and communities just start to hack. In a way, it is hacking away at it and invading.

And the Roman Empire just collapsed, but there was no phones are not. And there was no phones. There was no Internet. So it's slowly the information slowly trickled out. So Rome and Britain, around 300, 400, everything just started falling apart. The information from from Rome stopped coming. The funding from Rome stopped coming. So you had this strange society that was existing as Rome and Britain, essentially, but they weren't really aware that it's like the game is up.

So as it slowly collapsed and information slowly collapsed.

From Germany comes these lads called the Saxons and the Saxons were like Germanic tribes, they were like very superstitious and they weren't technologically advanced like the Romans, and they weren't as advanced as the Romans. Let's be honest. I think they were naked. I think I think they were mostly naked. They didn't have clothes, half of them.

So the Saxons slowly start to, I won't even say invade Roman Britain because they didn't meet mate much, much fighting. They just kind of trickled in. And these German tribes became Anglo-Saxon. Right. And they were they were they were a queer bunch.

They use the Lemrick phrase queer. They were a queer bunch.

So the Anglo-Saxon because they weren't technologically advanced and they were very superstitious when they would visit like cities like London that were built by the Romans and they would see these magnificent Roman buildings with huge, big buildings, with columns and Roman architecture, the Anglo-Saxon, because they had such a poverty of technology and information when they saw London or any Roman city are places like Bat.

They couldn't understand that these things were built by humans, like it's like those mad documentaries, those ancient alien documentaries, the ones on the History Channel, like when the History Channel stopped being about history and it started sniffing solvents to the sleeve of a school jumper in the mid 2000s when the History Channel went like that. And you've got this scientist with a haircut like a cat's iris and a face like a plate of bacon and cabbage, and he's completely unable to fathom.

That's like the Egyptians built the pyramids, so they go must have been aliens. All right, Norway. Are you telling me 4000 fuckin years ago that these clowns in Egypt built a pyramid? Not believe in it? It was aliens, right. If the Anglo-Saxon were around today, they'd be making history, History Channel documentaries, except about London. So the Anglo-Saxon eyes were like that London covid airman that wasn't built by humans.

Nonono because a human couldn't possibly build these huge columns because we don't know how to do it. So there's no way a human did that. No, that was Giants big. The Giants did that. So the fuckin Anglo-Saxon refused to live in cities. They would leave the cities to rot and be abandoned and then they'd leave out in the woods, terrified that there was a bond, that if they go into the city, there was a lot of giants that had come back Fokin age.

It's a shower of fuckin ages. So let's go back now to ten sixty six and the Naaman lads who were over in Normandy and France, the Normans in 66. Like I said they're, they're like my grandparents were Vikings. We need to go somewhere. We need we need to go further. They have a look over at England and the Normans are quite advanced, the Normans are technologically the advanced because they have all that shit from the fucking Viking boats and stuff like that.

There are a technologically superior civilization to the Anglo-Saxon who are in Britain so that armies look over and go the fucking shower DOPs over there. Watchem They think the cities were built by giants and they won't go in their fucking daubs history channel dobs.

They're mad here. So the Normans like, fuck that, we're heading to England. So they do in 10 66 and the Normans invade England and then they take it over completely and now England.

Britain becomes Norman fucking Britain, which is a French conolly, but essentially a Viking Conly.

Then they go on another 100 years. But when the Normans are in fucking England and Britain, so the language they were speaking when they went to France, they had a bit of Old Norse. Then they get to France and they start speaking a bit of French, but then they get to England and they start to adopt elements of the dramatic languages. So in England, they were speaking Anglo-Saxon, which was a mixture of the German shit that the Saxons were speaking, and then like early English, which would have had its roots then in Latin because it was a far more Roman colony.

So the norm and start to speak old English, I suppose you'd call it old English, which was a mixture of Latin, French, German, I suppose a bit of nars. And one of the mad as things actually that exists linguistically from that period is that when you think of food, OK, so the Normans who took over the Anglo-Saxon in Britain and then 66. Right. The Anglo Saxons were speaking this real early type of English, which was a mixture of kind of Latin and German, and then the Normans were speaking their fuckin half French, half Norse, but the Normans rolled.

So if you look at food.

Beef, it's once it's on a place, it's called beef, but once it's in a field, it's called a cow or a bull. Once it's on a place, it's called poultry. Once it's in the field, it's called the chicken, so why in the English language is it poultry on a plate, chicken in the field? Beef on a plate, cow in the field, because that shows you the language, divisions, divisions. Poultry comes from, Paula, a French word, chicken is I think it comes from an Anglo-Saxon, so basically the ruling Normans who were French Vikings were eating chicken, but the Anglo-Saxon who were underneath them were working in the fields, raising the chickens and not eating them.

And that still exists today. And how we discuss food because we speak English. So the Normans, anyway, they take over England and they become Naaman British, they become fucking British subjects. And the language they spoke would be called middle English. OK, so the Anglo-Saxon is the History Channel lads who thought that London was full of giants. They spoke old English. Right, which was a mixture of German that they brought. Ah, what would have been German Germanic languages, a mixture of languages from that area which they brought to England when they met Roman Britons who spoke a kind of a version of Latin that was old English.

Then with the Normans come in, they start bringing in old French and a bit of narz and that becomes known as middle English.

So by 11 60, the Normans that were in Britain were speaking middle English. That's what it would be referred to. There's a book called The Canterbury Tales by a fellow called Chaucer, and it's like this long, epic poem and that's an example of middle English.

If you read it for the laugh Canterbury Tales, give it a read.

You can kind of understand some of it is English, a few words, and that's English from nearly a thousand years ago.

So the Naaman settled in England for 100 years. And then those lads are like, well, my great great grandfather was a Viking. My great great grandfather came from Denmark and Norway. And, you know, there was nothing there. There was a couple of lakes, a few stones. There was Faulknerian. So I get I'm anxious. I'm anxious now. I know we were in France. We had good crack there. They're still over in France, but now we're here in Britain.

There's plenty here. In Britain, there's loads. But I don't know. My great great grandfather was a Viking and they had not. So I want more.

So then they looked over to Ireland and the Romans never came over to Ireland. You see, the Romans never came to Ireland. Now, this is the real heartache version of why the Romans, like you're wondering, why the fuck did the Romans colonized Britain and then go Norfolk Island? We're not going over there. Why? One theory, which, if there's any historians listening, will probably box the head off me because it's so basic. What's the Latin name for Ireland?

I Barnea. What does he say when you hear the word Heyburn, what what words come up hibernates? What's hibernation when I fuckin. An animal goes to sleep for the winter. I barnea basically mean the land of eternal winter when the Romans got to Britain. They just assume that Ireland was too called. And they didn't bother to holes and they caught it Hibernia. They're like, there's the land of eternal winter and I fucking get over there. That's one version.

I'm sure it's far more complex than that. But they did call Ireland I. Barnea, but the Normans are like my great grandfathers from fucking Nariman. Ida granduncle from Iceland, who could give a fuck about cold weather heading over to Ireland, so they did so in 11, 60, R11 70, then Armin's start heading over to Ireland and they leave from Wales. And the first place they reach where is this Wexford? So the Normans, the Brits, you know, the old English, the Brits, I suppose this is the first time the Brits came to Ireland, started Koronis is around 11, 60, the Normans, they first reach Wexford.

And as they expand now these Normans. Over the next kind of three, 400 years, they started to adopt kind of Irish Gaelic culture and shit, you know, they say that they became more Irish than the Irish. So, yes, they colonized, but they kind of they adapted quite well. Anyone whose name is like Fitzgibbon or Fitzgerald, these names that we think are Irish, they actually have French in origin because it comes from that French Naaman thing.

FETs means Sun comes from Phee. So Fitzgerald, Fitzgibbon, anything would have fits. It tends to be an old nut. It's, it's an anger I barnow a name. But anyway, the Normans come over 11, 60 and they start to farm a pretty strong colony in Wexford specifically, which is on the south east southeast of Ireland.

And the colony that they establish is so strong, that's a unique dialect and culture emerges called Yolla and YALLAH was like a mix of of Norman, French, middle English and Irish. And YALLAH exist there kind of undisturbed as this language up until the 19th century, which is the 19th century that the 18th is it 200 years ago, this language and culture existed in Wexford. That wasn't English, it wasn't Irish, it was Cholula and this YALLAH language, which is like a preserved ancient language, the colony, the Naaman colony around Wexpro was so strong that this this antique language like preserved itself.

That's old English, bit of French and some Irish in their YALLAH. Stays preserved. Up until the 19th century, but there's one word we have left, there is one word that still exists from. These Normans and Wexford and that word is called Square Square is the only word that exists that we still use from the YALLAH language, which is now dead. And that's why when I was on Twitch the other night and someone said to me, blind by your own farm, I didn't understand that I took it up the wrong way because I'm here in 2020 in my cyberpunk dungeon, broadcasting on the Internet, in the fucking pandemic, cyberpunk dystopian future.

And some content which is speaking Naaman at me. Someone was speaking Naaman at me on Twitch, and even in 20/20, it led to a disagreement and a misunderstanding. I understand that the word quiere to just be an English version of the word queer, but they can't speak in Naaman at me on Twitch. So. I think that's what I want. I want this podcast to be inspired to take the theme of the workwear. I'm going to answer some questions that I consider to be fair, questions arise where, as I understand, is not the norm and what it means, very peculiar, as I understand that Limerick questions that are about odd things, weird things.

Or at this point, you may notice a slight difference in sound, because I'm recording the second part of the podcast away from my studio, but my microphone fucked up. So I have to use this particular microphone, which isn't as it's not monophonic. This microphone goes from left to right. So apologies if you notice any slight sound difference in this microphone. It also means that it's more difficult for me to edit. So I'm just going to have to go.

I'm going to have to go in. It's going to have to go in without a swimming cap and get my hair away. All right. But it's time for the ocarina because we don't have an ocarina. But what we do have is a microphone that's in stereo. So I'll give you a special treat this week for the ocarina pass instead of there being an ocarina.

I'm going to create the sound of a motorbike by going from left to right, but a very sad, despondent motorbike.

So right now you might hear an advert for some bullshit that you do or do not need. OK, and so you don't get startled by the advert. I'm going to do a little pause. So here's the despondent motorbike pause. Aready. No, that's too distant. That doesn't sound like but does that sound right, that doesn't sound like a fucking motorbike. That sounds like a. At a dinosaur on the roof of a taxi, a dinosaur on the roof of a taxi, there's just a cast recommends podcast's we love.

I used to be an abandoned air host of Superbrain, the podcast for everyone with a brain. I have a passion for people and a fascination for the human brain. That's why I became a psychologist and neuroscientist. On Mondays, I pick the brains of inspiring guests about thriving and surviving in life. And on Thursdays I share insights and hacks to help you to understand and unleash your inner superbrain to join me each week. Simply search for Superbrain on Apple cast or wherever you get your podcasts.

Akehurst powers the world's best podcasts, including the two journeys.

I'm Grandmama's and the one you're listening to right now with this episode of the podcast is brought to you by now TV, which is without question my favorite streaming service. Right. There's the Now TV Sky Cinema Past and the now TV entertainment press. Basically the entertainment pass gives you a lot of TV shows. This guy, Cinema Pass will give you a lot of films and movies. I'm for August and September. They've got some lovely new additions. What I'm personally enjoying at the moment on the now TV Entertainment Pass Pain 15.

It's an American comedy set in the year 2000. It's about the two Maskin asking a they're comedians right in their 30s, but it's about their teenage years in school in the year 2000, and they play themselves as teenagers surrounded by actual teenagers. It's. Here's the thing for me, in the year 2000, I was a teenager and I used to watch comedies like that 70s Show, and I used to feel nostalgia for a time I never existed. And now it's the year 2020.

And I'm watching a comedic nostalgia show about the year 2000 when I was a teenager. And the nostalgia that I feel just reminds me that I'm dying, you know? I mean, it's a different type of nostalgia. It's there's a wholesomeness there and there's a memory.

But there's also the tragedy of you're getting old. And for that feeling alone, the uniqueness of that feeling. I recommend watching 15. Like someone on Twitter said, they tried to watch it and their wife had to turn it off because the nostalgia was so extreme. So get a look at pain, 15 for that reason alone that nothing else would give you that feeling, assuming you're over the age of 25. So that's pain 15 and it's on the No TV entertainment pass.

Also, what's on it right now as well, Watchmen season one, which is absolutely cracking. And then undisguised cinema pass for August and September.

You've got classics like Goodfellas and then if you want some just and light entertainment, Jumanji, the next level, Terminator, Dark Face.

So just such for now TV led for no TV and Look Up the Sky Cinema past and the entertainment has received some some distressing news.

So that's the distressed dinosaur on the roof of a taxi born bonus, nice. You are welcome.

I assume I mean, what do we know about dinosaur vocalizations? I've heard this. T-Rex is most likely hung out like giant geese because they would have had the vocal cords that would be quite similar to birds.

So anyway, support from this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page Patriot dot com forward slash the Blind by podcast. This podcast is fully independent, as you can tell. You can tell this isn't a professional operation, it's quite obvious, and so the podcast is supported by you, the listener. I get the odd advertiser, but if I don't like him, I tend to fuck off and they can tell me what to do.

So if you like this podcast, if you listen to it regularly, you're enjoying it. It's bringing you some fun. Then I just consider giving me the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month. That's all I'm asking for. If you're listening to this podcast. And just pay me for the work that I'm doing. That's it, coffee or a pint once a month. Patrick Entercom slash the plan by pickiest. If you can't afford that, don't worry.

You don't have to pay. Someone else would pay for you. But if you can afford that, if you can afford to give me a pint or a cup of coffee once a month, please do in exchange for the work that I do. And also because it gives me editorial freedom and control. I just did a despondent dinosaur on the top, on the roof and taxi, you know what I mean? I'm not getting away with that. If I if I'm run by sponsors, they're going to ring me up and go blind, buy.

What the fuck was that? But I can say to them, it's whatever the fuck I wanted to be a corporate buy. OK, so moving on to some of that, have anything else to plug, watch me on Twitch. Twitch that TV forward, slash the blame by podcast three nights a week. I have some good live fun. And like the podcast, follow the podcast. Most importantly, share it with a friend. If you're a new listener, especially if you're a brand new young listener or a Canadian horse or listener or even an Australian listener because of the samisen shit.

And you're like in this podcast, go back and listen to some earlier episodes and tell a friend I can do some er smash it now because it is my dad, a friend that a friend that a friend tell a friend about the podcast.

OK, let's move on to some quieter questions, some questions that are require. So I have a question here from from Reggie Snow, Reggie Snow is an Irish hip hop artist who is a bit of a legend, one of the most successful Irish hip hop artists in the world. He's one of the few Irish hip hop artists who is probably bigger in the UK and America than he is in Ireland.

Reggie Snow is a bit of a legend.

So Reggie Snow, I went up on the Instagram and I said, give me some questions. Reggie Snow, come in. And Reggie says, Can you talk about soda, the painting elephant? Yes, I can, Reggie. Yes, I can. I want to talk about so so did the painting elephant is one of these there several elephants that have gone viral over the years, even before the Internet, who became famous in the media because these elephants paint paintings and they're not like trained how to paint.

They literally they're shown how to like, here's a paintbrush. But the elephants appear to be engaging in actual creativity.

It's not mimicry. Like an aesthetic choice, now there are animals in the wild who make things that are pretty. One example is the bowerbird. The bowerbird is where they from. I think they're from the writer, from Papua New Guinea or South America. But the bowerbird is a particularly bland looking bird.

But what they do is the male bowerbird builds this elaborate little home with twigs and decorated with flowers in order to attract mates.

OK, so look at a B or W e r. This part is incredibly tiny little bird and it builds little huts and decorates them decorated with flowers. Appears to have some aesthetic aesthetics going on in their bower. But is the bowerbird being creative? Is the is the bowerbird thinking about art? Not really. The bowerbird bowerbird has evolved a way to create these. Bower's was not the answer. All I can think about is now is fucking Dane Bowers man, that singer from another level.

What happened to him? He got Cassella, remember mephedrone. Remember that drug. I think he got caught selling mephedrone at a UFC event or something. I better Google that now. Two seconds. This is unedited shit, Dan Powers. Mephedrone, just in case I'm up for Leidel, I'm Dan Bowers was arrested over mephedrone post.

In 2006. OK, he was arrested for selling mephedrone, Dan Bower's from another level, was arrested for selling mephedrone are investigated. I don't know whether it actually happened. I'm just saying the police were interested. Dane Powers is not to be confused with the bowerbird, which is a tropical bird that builds nests, aesthetically beautiful nests to impress their mates. They just happened to share a name with Dane Powers, who was in a mid 2000s boy band called Another Level, totally unrelated.

And I don't know if Dane Powers was guilty. I'm just saying he was arrested for selling mephedrone, mephedrone, man.

I was this weird fuckin designer party drug around 2010, around then anyone I know who fucking took mephedrone, man, never any pleasant stories. I remember one letter. No, he did electric picnic. Yeah, he did Mafa Dromard Electric Picnic.

And he said. All it did is it kept me awake and I was in my tent trying to sleep, and I've never in my life wanted to sleep more and I couldn't. So stay away from mephedrone. So the bower bird is this bird. That's it creates powers. It creates I can't save ours. And I think the dangerous it creates a little house. It creates a little house to impress a mate. But it is not engaging in an art or creativity.

It has an interest, an inherited level of aesthetics, another level of aesthetics that it achieved over over many years of evolution. Elephants, however, appear to be making aesthetic choices in their art, and so did the elephant. And another elephant that can paint was called Ruby. There's a boat.

There's about 20 elephants in captivity, lads who have canvases and they pick up some paint and they paint patterns on canvases. And elephants in the wild have been observed, creating patterns on the ground with sticks and Robie, the elephant who I believe was from the 1970s.

She was in a zoo and her keepers noticed that one day she was just like arranging steaks on the ground or creating designs in the ground with a trunk and a stick. So someone said, fuck, man, give her paints and the dead. And Ruby started creating all these beautiful paintings that I think sort of still knocking about and still and still I sort of criminal thing in a sort of crime. So, no, not through it. So I'm sort of the elephant creates paintings and they appear to have aesthetic fucking choices.

As in soda is having a good old think about what her paintings look like and whether they're beautiful and she's an elephant.

But what has me intrigued about this is, you know, I'm often thinking, OK, does sort of the elephant create paintings or does she create art? I would argue that what she's creating is art because Zuda appears to be making aesthetic choices. Now, the reason I have such confidence in the fact that this elephant is creating art and not just. Kind of pretty designs like the bowerbird is. Elephants are where all right, elephants are very unique elephants, it has been posited that elephants may even have religion, one of the main researchers into this.

Now, here we go. His name was Ronald Kegl.

He was a psychopharmacologist at the University of California. He worked in the psychiatry department. So this is he was a professor logit professor working in the university psychiatry department, all medically legit. But his research was strange. Ranucci Siegel is most famous for he thought a monkey had to smoke crack. He thought a monkey how to smoke crack cocaine. OK, so that's what we're dealing with here. But Siegler's other passion was he believed that elephants practiced religion. He believed he he observed what he saw as elephants engaging in moon worship.

Right. Elephants appear to be. Like incredibly aware of the moon, Siegel observed the fuckin elephants that they when the moon is full or when the moon is waxing, I don't know what a waxing moon means. I guess it's when the moon is kind of half. When the moon is disappearing, elephants pick branches up and they use their trunks and they wave like collectively wave their branches at the moon. If it's disappearing, I don't know why they do it.

Maybe they want the moon to come back, but they're definitely aware of looking up the sky, seeing this circular moon and going the moon is fucking off and they wave branches at it.

And then when the moon is full, elephants engage in what Siegel observed as ritual bathing. They bear together when the moon is full. So they seem to have this.

It's more than just an awareness of the moon, but they seem to have to apply some type of behavioral meaning.

In relation to the moon's behavior and elephants are incredibly intelligent and that that, again, it supports the case for why I believe so that the elephant creates art. Right. Firstly, what do I think the purpose of art is right on a purely existential level.

I think in order for humans create art because we are aware. That we're alive, it's like one of the tragedies of being a human and having the intelligence that we have is the trade off for knowing that we exist like animals.

Animals don't like know that they exist the way that we do.

They're not able to hold in the abstract idea of consciousness of themselves like a cat.

A cat can't really think about themselves and hold these abstract thoughts of I am a cat, this is who I am, this is my being. At least there's nothing about their behavior that suggests we know this, but we think that elephants can. Elephants have a very developed cerebral cortex.

Right. Are our neocortex sorry, which humans also have a few ape species have it and dolphins do too. And they say that elephants have an awareness of self. They can hold the idea of a sense of identity. They're also aware of that. You know, I'm going to get onto that in a minute.

But elephants are aware of dead elephants, too. They arrange themselves in a kind of a societal structure that's quite similar to how humans arrange ourselves. But the thing about art is art is kind of what we do.

To try to achieve a sense of meaning, we create art to battle the tragedy of being aware of I am alive, therefore I will die. What the fuck is that about? What the fuck is that about? I'm alive. I exist in this world and so do other people, and we're all going to die. Fuck is that. And what happens afterwards? And creating art, whether it be music, dance, painting, whatever, is an expression of the search for meaning, you know, it's it's a language.

It's not just the language of of of words. It's a different type of language.

It's art is. Using whatever medium to try and. Achieve a sense of meaning about our lives and what they are and the appreciation of art, whether it be music or painting, the appreciation of it again is a way to understand ourselves, to understand humanity and to understand our identity. And I believe sort of the elephant is doing this when she paints. The thing about elephant society is it's quite similar to it's similar to humans. Right? Elephants. Can grieve for each other, you know, an elephant society can can fall apart if if certain family members die like there's one.

There's one story right about. These poachers, and they were they were chasing a family of elephants, right, and one of the elephants died.

Her name was Tina and when she was dying, her knees gave way. But to other family members stayed. They walked by her side and as one of the elephants was in the African savanna as Tina was dying. Right. The other two elephants just kept trying to lift her up. And then when she died, they were picking up bits of grass and putting the grass into her mouth with their trunks, trying to bring her body back to life. And then they, like, stayed beside her body for ages trying to lift her up, and then finally when they accepted that she was dead, the two elephants began to dig a grave and they buried her and the throat leaves over her body.

And then they stayed by her grave for a night thought, that's nice. Mere animal behavior that that's animals who are aware of loss and identity and a sense of an afterlife, if these elephants watch this elephant die, tried to resuscitate it, then accept the elephant has died and ritualistically bury it by putting leaves in the body. That suggests a real awareness of self and an awareness of life and death. And these are, to me, the conditions that I see.

Why shouldn't they create art to to work through those feelings? If they have the sophistication to bury a body and put leaves on us, then they need to have.

Mechanisms to understand the complexity of those emotions, and that's what art does. You know what I mean?

There's been other reports about elephants in the wild. So sometimes elephants like steal crops. OK, so elephants together, we're like go to war.

Humans have planted crops and then go in and all the crops. Right.

But it's been observed that elephants do it in accordance with the moon and sometimes they don't do it in a full moon. Now some are saying, OK, the elephants are smart. So they're going to rob crops when the moon is in fall because you're less likely to see them. But if you tie that in with the with the fact that elephants have been seen to worship the moon, maybe they're scared that the moon is shaming them. If the moon is their God, is that too to take?

Elephants have been observed to display. Altruism. No, altruism is another really complex behavioral thing that we associate with humans, altruism, like I tell you, who's not altruistic cats. I'm shitting on cats a lot now, even though I love them. Cats just kill for the crack. If you put a bird in front of a cat, the cat's going to fucking kill it. Even if it's not hungry cats. Just. They go on killer instinct, elephants show mercy and help other elephants and even other fucking animals.

There was a situation in I think it was an Indian elephant right where they were in India. Elephants are used as beasts of burden to pull trees down, pull logs. Right. And there's this story of this lad was using an elephant to pull down these trees and to drag drag logs out around the GAF. And when so this elephant is dragon log's, OK, and. He was placed in the logs, in these holes and following instruction from his human instructor to do this, but then the elephant got to one hole and the elephant refused to drop the log in and the human instructor was gone, dropping the fucking log, dropping the log.

This is your job, dropping the larger elephant. And the elephant was like, I'm not dropping in the log. And then when the human went over to the hole that the log was to be dropped into. There was a dog, a wounded dog hiding in the hole, and the elephant was basically gone.

I'm not putting the log in because I'll hurt the poor dog. And then the human was able to figure this out and was like, fucking hell, got the saw dog out of it and then the elephant put the log in. So right there is evidence of the elephant made a choice based on compassion to not hurt a dog and only an animal that has the complexity of awareness of self and death and pain and abstract concepts that you're talking about. There is abstract thinking.

Here is another animal in pain. And my actions, my actions will impact this animal and hurt this. And now I'm going to make a choice about my actions.

That's human level thinking. But an elephant is doing it. Elephants have been known to protect humans if a human is injured, you know, elephants would self medicate in the wild. Elephants are aware of certain plants, have medicinal properties. And like there's one tree, I think it's a they can induce labor by eating the back of this tree. You know, these are very complex thought processes. And again, you take it back to sort of the elephant, which is what the original question was about.

I believe she's creating art. I believe that elephants are not just making pretty paintings, they're creating art. And they're doing it to try and achieve a sense of meaning elephants are also capable of.

I know this sounds silly, but they understand pointing. All right, as in. If I'm a human soil, so if I point over as a tree in the distance and I paint over my hand and you look and you're able to understand my pointing, that's language, right?

Language is simply a sign that communicates meaning from one human to another. We always use language in terms of humans.

I point to a tree and then you understand my action and you are able to that use complex abstract thought to join the pointing and action of my hand and go, Ah, blind boys talking about that tree. Elephants can do that to elephants. Understand painting, which is really, really complex. That's several layers of meaning there to arrive at an answer, you know, and an awareness of abstract things outside of themselves.

That's what makes humans so class is we're capable of abstraction. We don't just communicate in the moment we can we don't just communicate about and be, you know, and be being things that are immediately in front of us, humans can bring up, see and see isn't even present.

See is a concept or an idea or a place that we aren't at right now until humans can have a chat about C, C, an abstract thing, because language allows us to understand the complex meaning. And if an elephant understands painting, then they're certainly on track to that type of abstract thought. No, for thinking about our fuckin pirates, mad, smart now, because they can talk, no, not necessarily pirates and birds. Crows can do that.

If you cut across the tongue down the center when it's a baby, that crow can learn to talk. That's mimicry.

If you teach a baby crow with a cat tongue to say, fuck off, fuck the Queen of the Rye, you know, that's cruel.

Isn't literally saying fuck the queen are up there. That Croll is mimicking what it's hard and doesn't actually understand the meaning of what it's saying. Elephants have a very complex use of tools also. OK, which is similar to humans now, monkeys use tools as well. Monkeys are quite clever, we're told, but the way that elephants, elephants appear to be be able to understand steps like.

Elephants. If an elephant is in an area right, and there's a drought and like elephants have trunks and these trunks are very dexterous, so I wonder actually is the dexterously dexterity of an elephant's trunk and its similarity to human hands, does that is that somehow does that drive their intelligence or is that why they evolved this intelligence for elephants anyway?

An elephant could be an in out in the jungle and it's dry and they want some water. So what an elephant would do is that they'll dig a hole, right? Then they can go to a source of water. They suck the water up with their trunk.

Then they go to the hole that they've dug, spit the water into it, but then they'll, like, get loads of leaves and they cover the fucking hole with the water to stop the water fucking evaporate. So when the dry season comes and the lake is gone, the elephant remembers that it's dog these fucking holes that it's spat a lot of water into and that it covered over with leaves. So it doesn't evaporate like that. That's pretty complex shit, you know.

Elephants have been observed actively break in electric fences in in a way that makes them they understand that certain fences are electric. So Asian elephants, if they come across an electric fence, they'll break the fence with a rock or a log from a distance. To cut the electricity off, you know what I mean? They understand this fence is dangerous, I'm going to fuck that shit up and then it allows a safe passage.

Elephants. Also, they've been seen to. To engage in playing right now, dolphins do this as well, I think manatees have a good bit of cracker play to see otters play when they're fucking around with stones on their bellies.

I'm not sure about that. Dolphins, dolphins play a game with dolphins again, have these. They've got brains similar to elephants. But dolphins are a different story dolphins will like.

Get a better water grass and they appear to play a game like soccer with the grass, but what elephants do is.

Elephants like spit water into the air and do all this shit as a way to entertain other elephants, so they perform to for the enjoyment of other elephants, which is pretty mad. Not just for themselves, like rats, rats apparently laugh, apparently rats have a great sense of humor and they laugh, but I don't know if rats try and make each other laugh. But I suppose the big thing about elephants for me, I touched on it earlier. It's their clear, their clear understanding of death.

All right, animals don't like there's only three. Species of animals that's been seen to have complex death and burial rituals. Humans, Neanderthals and elephants. Right. Like it's been witnessed several times over and over, like old elector's elephant burial grounds, older elephants, when they feel they're going to die, walk these long distances.

And go to a place, what other dead elephants and just lay down and die there, you know, and. There's been several situations where they've seen. Very complex funeral rituals around elephants, in particular elephant societies, matriarchal, it tends to be led by older matriarch Pocan mother elephants. Right. And they've people have witnessed an entire herd of elephants when the matriarch dies. It's like the help or to her death, and they are torch her body, but they torch her body in.

This really tender robbing, I'm kind of carefree away, and they let out a unique kind of grumbling, rumbling sound. When they're present around the death of an animal like this, this morning, rumble are sometimes they make crying noises and like I said again, that they they do. They bury the dead elephant and the rest of them throw leaves and sticks on the body of the dead elephant. They're fully aware that this their friend, their mother, whoever the fuck is after passing on and the level of of awareness of life, identity itself, their relationship with all the elephants, that's unbelievably complex.

You know, their stories from Africa of think a woman, a woman fell asleep under a fucking tree. And she woke up the next day to find an elephant petting her, and then she was freaked out because it's like elephants are big concern. So she was freaked out because the elephant was partner and then all these other elephant showed up and they started throwing leaves on her because the elephant thought that she was dead.

Elephants are very tender around the bones of other elephants, even if they're not related to them, they they've been witnessed showing a very definite sense of respect and understanding for other elephants, bones. They know what they are. They know this is a this isn't just an object. These aren't just bones. These bones that I found were once something that looked like me.

And these bones remind me of where I'm going to go and these bones remind me that. I'm my life is finished, you know, that's some complex shit that's that's very, very complex shit for an animal. We understand that because we're fucking humans. But all of this.

All of this supports the idea that, yes, elephants are creating when elephants paint, they create art. It's not just pretty designs to create art. Now, elephants in music. So elephants definitely understand music because that's how the circus performer and elephants work, which is something I deeply disagree with, I think. I fucking don't like circuses anyway. I don't like animals in circuses, but.

Elephants understand musical cues, and that's how they perform in circuses because they understand music, because music is a language, music is just another language. Language doesn't mean words. Language is any series of signs that communicates meaning from one creature to another. Humans are able to do it. Elephants are able to do is there's one elephant in a zoo in America and she can play the harmonica, which doesn't I mean, look, the trunk the elephant trunk is a melodic, is capable of creating noises and pitches.

But this elephant can play the harmonica and apparently has. And awareness anesthetic, the how she does play the harmonica, so there's that's an elephant who plays music, but they're much more visual and how they create art. So there you go. That's I was asked the question about sort of the elephant and the creation of art. And it's something I do think about a lot. I think about elephant art a lot. I just I think about I think about elephant art because it helps me to understand art and meaning myself.

What I do find interesting, too, is elephant art is is abstract.

Elephants don't paint things. They don't paint like trees. And at that they paint colors and patterns that are abstract. And it reminds me of the art of the earliest humans earliest cave paintings, like even some something like and not even cave paintings newgrange in Ireland, which is about 6000 years old.

And you look at the art that the early Irish people created, it was all abstract patterns.

Now, some people say that that art of a newgrange was influenced by a type of magic mushroom that grew from courgette around that area and that the people who lived in Ireland at the time would take these mushrooms.

And the abstract patterns that they created were like what you see when you take these mushrooms. But I find it interesting that. You see abstract art, abstract art, in its most simplest form is it's a weight, it's. You're trying to paint feelin's, you're trying to paint feelings and complex emotions, things, things that can't be described by words, you're trying to probe at things that are inside yourself and then get them out of your body via art for.

For you to understand and then for other people to appreciate and understand as well, so I think there's a strong case to be made. The elephants, yes, can create art. They're not just it's not aesthetic because there's many animals that can make masks and create things that look aesthetic but create an art, a different story. Creating art means that you if you create art, you suffer right now. Suffering. When I say suffering, I mean.

The suffering, the sufferings of existence, right, to exist is to suffer, I say there's a lot to be alive and to be aware that the price of being alive is that you and everybody else is going to die, which is that's that's a big one.

I don't think cats go around the place worrying about cats, worry about shitting on cats again. And I love them.

Dogs, I don't think dogs. Worry about death.

I think they worry about dying, they like animals at self preserve, obviously they want to preserve their life, they don't want to die, but I don't think they worry existentially about the act of death and the cessation of their identity and existence. But I think elephants do and.

Humans do as well, and art comes from that art is a way to soothe and understand the suffering of knowing that you exist and your existence is finished.

You know, so this has been a quiet podcast, this has been this has certainly been a fucking quiet podcast, I started off with the etymology of the word. I didn't expect I was going to record this half in a hotel room with this choir. Mike, this was this was straightened up. I had a choice. Either I don't record the fucking podcast or I do what I can to make it happen, and that's what I did. And as a result, we now have something queer.

The whole thing is queer. And that works for me as an overall theme of awareness theme. This was a queer podcast, probably not the best one to put out, considering I've got a shit ton of new fucking listeners who joined for that for the chat with Samisen last week. But here you go, lads.

This is the nature of this podcast. This is the nature of it. Also, in keeping with the theme of awareness, I said I'd answer a few questions. I'm just going to answer that one question cause I. I lost a lot of time tonight trying to figure out the fuckin audio equipment that was being a prick to me because, I mean, I'm in a hotel here, I'm in a hotel and all social distancing. Don't be worrying. Don't be worrying.

Am I'm in a hotel because I need for some work and my equipment wasn't working, so I just went, right, let's bring out this Mike, which isn't the best one, but fuck it, we'll put it off. We do it and I get to say goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. Like that each year like a cold out. OK, so I'll talk to you next week. I might be back. What a heartache. I'm certainly going to start investigating, doing more interviews.

Via distance, all right, because the I got no complaints from you last week about the audio quality of the samisen, no complaints. So if you're happy with that, I'm going to start fucking interview and you know, why not? God bless. I'll talk to you next week, Yade. The parking space, the final frontier. Our mission to discover new Freddo Treasure Space Series with Cadbury white buttons and a surprise based toy in every chest I treasure every adventure You Cadbury Freddo Treasure Space Series with only seventy seven calories per pack.

Pick one up and store.