Can you kinda walk us back a little bit to, like, what your life used to look like, what happened, and then how that completely changed you as a human?

Well, yeah, no doubt.

It definitely was a monumental shift.

And first of all, Karolina, thanks for having me on, and I'm so honored to be part of your community and your universe and all that good stuff like that.

So yeah, 2001.

So as we sit here today, as we record our conversation, I'm only a few days away from celebrating the 25th anniversary of that day.

So back in 2001, this is a time period where we didn't have social media, we didn't have the internet as we knew it, but I was hustling and grinding like the best of them.

So I'm curious, you know, not only did you start to have this spiritual awakening, I would really say, about like what matters most in life, how did you start to share that with others? How did that spawn like a shift in your career and what you were kinda sharing out with the world?

You know, yourself and others involved, be it in the heritage group in Kilkee or Kilrush District in historical society, how important is our heritage and heritage within the West of the county and preservation of that?

I think it's critically important.

Tourism is a big part of our county and particularly around the West Clare and Loophead Peninsula.

And our history group is very active throughout the winter.

We've talks in both Kilrush and Kilkee every month.

And we are supporting heritage projects, so like the restoration of Curran Schoolhouse, some graveyards.

And we're part of various different festivals that happen around the area.

We're not expecting anything like that this weekend.

So Michael, for those listening who might not know, what exactly is sheaf trolling?

um it was a competition that was it's 300 years old it was heavier sheaves dim times of course and uh you know went down to lighter sheaves uh now it is world records because of eight pounds and that's the world record so we were attempting the world record here today in clementine but it just didn't work out because of the of the wind and the weather and things like that.

It's very competitive now at the moment because there's a lot of serious tours out

What do you think, from a competitor's point of view, what's the key to the success? Is it more about the technique or the strength of the competitor?

You have to have good training done, a good bit of work, competitions.

You know, if we're going to go to 60 feet, like just 22 years since I broke the world record, in our season, killing what we have, especially when it's a long time ago.

And we're trying to hit it again today.

I won the competition here today at 61.

Is it similar with

prawns? To a degree, yes.

But what it also creates is that we no longer can produce enough product for exporting.

where you might send it to Japan.

If you don't have the tonnage every year, they lose interest in your market, go elsewhere.

So it's a blow that way.

And the only good thing for us is that the recruitment survey done in February, March, showed a really strong intake of tiger prawns.

The boats that are going out, can they just go and catch more?

So you're looking back at a time when you were an executive in pharmaceutical?

Pharmaceuticals.

Yeah.

And just like making sense because in the pharmaceutical industry, we're helping and we're treating patients of all different types.

backgrounds, lived experiences, races.

They pray to different people.

They love different people, the whole shebang.

Michael, you want to start that one?

But why bother externalizing ideas in the first place?

Oh, that's a great question.

And we, and we see this archaeologically, that once you start sharing information, that you don't have to keep everything in your brain.People started to live closer together, interact, communicate with each other.

It's not just so I can tell you a great story, it's to convey information, and you can convey information.

Two brains working together are exponentially better than two brains working side by side, but with very little interaction.

The question is, where is it taking us?

We can't escape the fact that AI is the greatest example in the history of humankind.

People think that things like ChatGPT have been around forever.