Niall “Bressie” Breslin is bringing his multi-award winning ‘Where Is My Mind’ podcast on the road coming to Lime Tree Theatre on Thursday April 18.
The live show is a cocktail of music, spoken word, monologues and interesting guests that explores how we can better care for our heads and hearts in the modern world’s head-melty chaos. The show has captivated fans with its humour, heart, relatability, and creativity. Special guests announced for this tour include Dermot Whelan, Ryan Hennessy (Picture This), Danny O’Reilly (The Coronas), Katherine Thomas, Instagram sensations Tadhg and Derry Fleming, Trisha Transformation, Lynn Ruane and Chasing Abbey.
Limerick Post got to chat with Bressie as he prepares for his upcoming tour.
Niall is a regular visitor to the city. Ross Nagle (Allstar Ink) is his tattoo artist of choice …. “The only one I’ll let go near me”
Limerick also holds fond memories from his early days with his band The Blizzards. “The first gig we’ve ever sold out was in Dolans Limerick”
Last summer he was part of a group kayaking down the Shannon river for charity and was very happy to pull ashore at the Curragower Bar after seven days on the water.
“Lough Derg was quite the eye opener. I’ve never been happier to see Limerick.”
How did you get into podcasting?
“I was doing my masters at the time and mindfulness. I kind of felt it was such great information and I wanted to try and make it accessible for people.
And at the time people were getting more and more overwhelmed by the world and I’m trying to teach them that yes, the world is overwhelming and chaotic, but there’s things we can do to support ourselves through it.
“So I just wanted to bring my study to a podcast. That was the starting point. And then it just took off and through the pandemic especially when people were feeling acutely overwhelmed.”
As well as the big issues on the news every day, war, climate change, housing and homelessness there are the day to day issues that can overwhelm everyone too?
“A lot of my messaging to people now is that we keep telling people to be more resilient. And we are the very definition of what resilience actually is.
“We’ve had nothing but a perma-crisis. We’ve had austerity. We’ve had a cost of living crisis, global pandemics, wars and then people tell you that you shouldn’t be stressed or overwhelmed. Of course you should be, it’s been absolutely chaotic.
“Then the wellness industry kind of skates in and tells everybody just to drink magnesium and everything will be grand.
“Maybe we should be telling them that the way we’re feeling is quite normal, uncomfortable, but normal and maybe we should connect on that and talk about it.
“That’s the evolution of my thinking on mental health.
“I used to put all the emphasis on the individual, but now I’m actually starting to realise we have to put more emphasis on government creating policies where we don’t feel like we’re in a crisis all the time.”
“You see a lad living in Dublin, living with people he doesn’t know. He has a zero hour contract. He doesn’t know what he’s gonna get paid from one end of the month to the next. He spends 80% of his salary on rent. You know, maybe his problem isn’t him. It’s that he has no autonomy and no security.
Is there a future in politics for our podcaster?
“No! You can mark my words. I will never be a politician. I like working with them. I think it’s important we work collectively. I don’t throw stones at them. But I do feel my voice and building up the charity is better. It feels more authentic for me.”
One particular standout guest on the podcast is Adam Clayton who has been very supportive of Bressie’s award-winning mental health charity ‘A Lust for Life’. Through their school’s programme they are teaching young people to be effective guardians of their own minds, “driving human health education”, and have, to date, reached over 45,000 students nationwide.
“Adam’s very generous. You know, a lot of those big big names are terrified to say anything because it often gets turned into a clickbait headline. They’re very media protected so they don’t say anything. But when I had him on, he just didn’t hold back.
“He is a proper gentleman. I find people like him incredibly interesting and so did the audience I think.
The ambition with A Lust for Life charity is to get mental health education into the general curriculum across the country.
“That will take work, my PhD research gets to the point where this is evidence based and proven and it works. So that’s my focus.
“We’ve got the best psychologists and education experts in the country.
“My actual goal is to have a complete education solution from first class to leaving school. I very much value our teachers and the education system.
“We just need to kind of find a way to make this work for everybody, not just the students, the teachers, the union, government, everybody, and that’s the challenge that we’re facing.
“Like when I spoke to Dan Murphy (Hermitage Green) on the recent podcast. We all know the issues in Limerick. We can’t keep theorising on the problem. We got to actually start bringing solutions to the table.
“For me, the first step is prevention and early intervention properly resourced.
“Let’s actually give them the tools and get them the best support that they need. And I think we need to actually start bringing solutions to the table which is the focus of A Lust For Life really.”
Podcasting for the listener is a solitary experience so are there challenges in taking the ‘Where is my mind’ podcast to a venue and communicating with hundreds as a collective?
“The first job when you step on the stage is to entertain people.
“To talk about this and make it entertaining, humorous, irreverent, the way I do that is there’s a lot of music in the show,
“A lot of my story, though difficult, is funny and irreverent and a very accessible show. Anyone who has gone to the live show leaves saying that is not what I expected. There’s far more laughs than anything in the show.”
Bressie’s Where is My Mind podcast tour comes to Lime Tree Theatre on Thursday April 18.
