404 episodes
Into Your Head Neal O Carroll
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- Comedy
When dry-witted Irish sage, acquired taste underachieving amateur humourist, socially awkward practically unheard-of legally blind cat obsessive and husband Neal O'Carroll ingests a litre of generic energy drinks, a transformation occurs.
There emerges a taurine-tongued purveyor of madcap monologues, fantastical tales, comical tirades, nonsensical yet impressively argued opinions, ludicrious lectures, copious Two Cats walk into a Bar stories and lately, an enthusiastic cheerleader for a bespoke new pronunciation of the word dog.
Every segment is begun with no idea how the first sentence will end, never mind what the subject, if any, will be. Partly inspired by classic radio comedy Just a Minute, Into Your Head is a one-of-a-kind stream of conciousness comedy podcast by Neal from Ireland, and a creative method honed over 18 years and 800 episodes.
Writing in the third party for some reason, O'Carroll insists the first five hundred episodes are apalling drivel. It is only in later years that the drivel has matured into whatever you want to call this.
Starting in the early 2000s, his ludicrous process was used to write hundreds of rambling nonsense humour columns under the brands Newsburp* and later Neal's Belch. These included the "Two cats walk into a bar" stories which would become a mainstay of the podcast. Next came a dialogue-heavy yet completely unplanned webcomic Matchstick Cats and, in 2006, the first cringeworthy attempts at a podcast. Then came eighteen years of podcasting, unless you don't count the seven year interlude between 2016 and 2023. Which I suppose is reasonable. Anyway, good morning.
*No connection to fellow Irish comedy podcast Newsburp, which later acquired that domain.
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An Itch no McBreakfast can Scratch
Neal illustrates the Mandela Effect phenomenum using Status Quo’s discography, reevaluates Popeye, changes your mind about socks and discusses what we know about helicoptors, how elevators should work, a clever trick for locating a cordless phone with ham, why holes in food are useful, why the sausage thing last time was a bit much, defining the face’s perimeter, the trouble with peeling, why boiled sweets and gum are superfoods, a new way to think about litter, an itch no McDonalds breakfast can scratch and more. Then concludes with some helpful orientation for the recent influx of new listeners, assuming they use the same bus route. CORRECTIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS: The song I mentioned with incorrect tune and incorrect lyric “There’s something going on (repeat ad nauseum)” in fact goes “…stop Children, what’s that sound? Everybody look, what’s going down?” I knew it must be something along those lines. NEW – Snackable shareable highlights: IntoYourHead.ie/Clips Message the show: Visit IntoYourHead.ie/Contact About Into Your Head: IntoYourHead.ie/About License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International – It is mandatory to reproduce this attribution for each episode: “Neal O’Carroll via IntoYourHead.ie – Many episodes findable forever on Archive dot org.”
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Getting the Fliuch out of Here
Neal discusses popping your Bs, the trouble with playing a zombie, how to purchase free tap water in pubs, BB Max and other nemeses, apple seed myths, the globalisation of bin day, a tip for listeners who don’t enjoy this voice, a card game nation, an entrepreneur’s guide to counting money, why Nickelodeon goes over children’s heads, the trouble with Jack and the Beanstalk, hospitality versus hostelry, Coolio’s big mistake, water on draught, how to store a tonne of bricks, the limitations of the word giraffe, getting the fliuch out of here, Ireland’s new Tasioghiflghiush (prime minister), how to manage your president and more.
NEW – Snackable shareable highlights: IntoYourHead.ie/Clips Message the show: Visit IntoYourHead.ie/Contact About Into Your Head: IntoYourHead.ie/About
License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International – It is mandatory to reproduce this attribution for each episode: “Neal O’Carroll via IntoYourHead.ie – Many episodes findable forever on Archive dot org.” -
The IRA and Everest
Neal takes an objective look at Hansel and Gretel and discusses the trouble with heroin, basement-attic philosophy, the IRA on Everest, the argument against thought experiments, broken leg mysteries, the rainy day myth, advice for News Junkies, Einstein’s dog equation, dog narratives versus dog stories, how a trained actor drinks piss, declaring garden weed to the authorities, pisswaffles, the stroopwaffel era of this podcast (circa 2007), reforming how we name our children, pre-registering your death, registering drugs found in your garden, fairy tale time shiftability, things Einstein presumably explained and more.
CLARIFICATIONS: Rev Ian Paisley, deceased DUP leader, was not one of the joint recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize.
About Into Your Head: IntoYourHead.ie/A Message the show: Visit IntoYourHead.ie/C Neal’s webcomic: MatchstickCats.com
License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International – It is mandatory to reproduce this attribution for each episode: “Neal O’Carroll via IntoYourHead.ie – Many episodes findable forever on Archive dot org.” -
How to Win BIG in the Confession Box
Neal discusses Bivouacs, shoes in radio dramas, traversing North Korea, how to talk to your child about podcasting, the phrase teaching your grandmother how to suck eggs, urinal troughs on trains, inventing the commuter picnic, cartoons about puppets, attitudes to scarecrows, curing the listener’s pencil sickness, major life lesson from Man Versus Food, how a bishop moves in Chess, Worzel Gummage (ITV), alternate universe binary code, winning in the confessional, Muppet Babies format confusion, a Mary Poppins of the drugs world, typewriter versus typerwriter, myths about oats, the fates of Murder She Wrote’s Jessica Fletcher and Family Guy‘s Mayor Adam West, paracetamol versus cocaine versus audiobooks, Harbour Hotel (RTE Radio 1) and what replaced it, honey monster capsules. what an AI barman experiences and more.
About Into Your Head: IntoYourHead.ie/A Message the show: Visit IntoYourHead.ie/C Neal’s webcomic: MatchstickCats.com
License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International – It is mandatory to reproduce this attribution for each episode: “Neal O’Carroll via IntoYourHead.ie – Many episodes findable forever on Archive dot org.” -
The LIttlest Hobo and the Leprosy Bell
Neal discusses things to consider when falling to Earth, the impenetrable mechanics of swatting a fly, victim-blaming a fly, nondescriptness, a dog’s attempts to line it’s stomach, why the Littlest Hobo should learn better posture, why dinosaurs could have been pets, assessing the moon’s flammability, a fly relates to Billy Joel’s No Man’s Land, how air crash investigators measure customer satisfaction, the difference between a lighthouse and the sun, the role of rear view mirrors in space travel and more.
About Into Your Head: IntoYourHead.ie/A Message the show: Visit IntoYourHead.ie/C Neal’s webcomic: MatchstickCats.com
License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International – It is mandatory to reproduce this attribution for each episode: “Neal O’Carroll via IntoYourHead.ie – Many episodes findable forever on Archive dot org.” -
And the Elevator Seal Maintenance Dog you Rode in on.
Neal discusses explaining Pink Floyd to a cat, understanding the Middle East, how parrots work, cars that are very wide and very short, how to dress a performing seal, Chevies, levees, levies, Daewoo, the building layout in Cheers, imagining what it’s like to have undiagnosed haemorrhoids, advice for U.S. homeowners, Led Zeppelin’s creative process, using local language on the podcast, a non-unionised dog, a unionised dog, proof my brain exists, a fraudulent dog, determining what the listener wants and more.
About Into Your Head: IntoYourHead.ie/A Message the show: Visit IntoYourHead.ie/C Neal’s webcomic: MatchstickCats.com
License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International – It is mandatory to reproduce this attribution for each episode: “Neal O’Carroll via IntoYourHead.ie – Many episodes findable forever on Archive dot org.”