Episode 17 and I'm joined by Molly Keane:

00:25 — Intro / meet Molly / Sligo, photography, trail running, sourdough donut discourse

03:22 — Note 1: Barry / Something overheard on the Crete flight home between a creepy guy and his seat partner

12:44 — Note 2: Molly / Oldest note: a shopping list that reveals a decision she made about herself → Dirty Girl Fridays → pineapple pizza → candied pineapple toasty on the Tour de Mont Blanc

27:05 — Note 3: Molly / A dream from April 2022 involving someone unlikely being fearless → recurring childhood nightmare → Tenet, Inception, and why Molly is a serial rewatcher of Little Miss Sunshine

36:40 — Note 4: Molly / A New Year's Eve note that asks one big question and leaves it completely blank → Paris Marathon, strength training, running podcast recs

44:45 — The Mongolian massage: a forty-five minute education, a gas station inflatable man, a lit rollie, and €50 Barry didn't see coming

51:37 — Mongolian throat singing, Tilly the dog's review of it, and Barry's DART claim that didn't survive five seconds of scrutiny

Molly is a photographer, trail runner, and all-round outdoor enthusiast based in Sligo. But that's only a small portion of our convo. We'd met exactly once before this. You can find Molly at @mollykeane_photo on Instagram and @molly_wanders on TikTok, where she documents everything about the northwest of Ireland with her rescue dog, Tilly, and her wonderful fiance Garth.

We cover...A note I took on the flight home from Crete that I probably shouldn't publish but absolutely am. Molly's oldest note — a shopping list from 2021 that brings us onto Monty Python. A dream she wrote down in April 2022, which opens up into a proper conversation about recurring nightmares, Christopher Nolan, and Little Miss Sunshine. And a single question jotted down on New Year's Eve with absolutely zero follow-up — which then leads to the most honest conversation about marathon training, patience, and why runners hate hearing about strength training. That bit was written by AI. So sue me. It's really late.

And then at the end, because we went about twenty minutes over and I couldn't stop myself, I told Molly about the time I booked a Mongolian massage in Berlin through ClassPass. Forty-five minutes of massage history. A scarecrow. A gas station inflatable man. A lit rollie. A calcium deficit diagnosis. And a €50 surcharge on what I thought was a free session. I don't have many regrets in life, but.

The podcast's instagram: https://www.instagram.com/secretphonenotes/

My website + contact: https://barrytaylor.co/

Cheers!

This week Barry is joined by Danny, an Ecuadorian musician-turned-entrepreneur based in Guayaquil, Ecuador for a roulette through his notes apps. Daniel spent eight years as a musician in Germany, fronting Ponte Pilas. Now he's back in Ecuador running Pulso Verde, a sustainability startup that communicates climate action through comedy and sketches - their self-declared moonshot: to become the SNL of sustainability. They get into the challenge of building a green business in a country where sustainability is, in Daniel's words, still in nappies, and what it actually looks like when individual impact becomes measurable. Also: a 2014 note about an album cover involving two blocks of ice, a one-line note on human conviction that doubles as a perfect summary of climate inaction and gastritis pizza relapses, the Ecuadorian expression "el mundo de los sin zapatos" (the world of the shoeless), the Philip Seymour Hoffman hair-pulling story from the set of The Master, Jake Gyllenhaal's eyebrows in Nightcrawler, and Barry's 35 before 35 list. (I'm sorry, AI summarised this. I am too too tired).

00:23 — Introduction

04:57 — Note 1: Barry / Camino hiking shopping list → peach loops, sweaty Camembert, and morale management on long trails

11:06 — Note 2: Daniel / oldest note (2014, Bremen) → "You and I, we're gonna live some more" → Ponte Pilas origin, music background, parents who wanted to be musicians

~18:00 — Note 3: Daniel / "El mundo de los sin zapatos" → creativity and discipline → the Berlin park "temple" → Bismillah album, Peter Kat Recording Company

31:31 — Note 4: Daniel / "The condemnation is that we know what to do and we don't do it" → sustainability parallels → gastritis and the pizza relapse

36:09 — Pulso Verde deep dive: the SNL of sustainability, the talk show, team of 13, no greenwashing

41:01 — The man who brought his reusable cup / what measurable impact actually feels like

43:37 — The Studio (Seth Rogen) / Hollywood making fun of Hollywood / the actors who said no and are now calling back

45:10 — Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Thomas Anderson, and the hair-pulling story / Jesse Plemons / Jake Gyllenhaal's eyebrows in Nightcrawler

50:20 — Barry's 35 before 35 list / acting class as the litmus test of fear / sign-off / "el mundo de los sin zapatos"

Practicing your Spanish? Listen here:

Pulso Verde: https://www.instagram.com/pulso__verde/?hl=en

Pulshow: https://www.instagram.com/pulshowww/?hl=en

More episodes etc:

Secret Phone Notes: https://www.instagram.com/secretphonenotes/?hl=en

This week Barry is joined by Sara Louise — Sydney-based brand strategist, singer, musician, and author — for a roulette through her notes app. In the last thirteen months, Sara has recorded an album at Abbey Road Studios, written and released her debut single "Buen Hombre", and self-published May the Road Rise, a book tracing her Irish family roots back to the Cork flying columns and the War of Independence. Her grandmother was a member of Cumann na mBan, awarded IRA medals, and was involved in printing illegal propaganda with Erskine Childers in a cottage outside Kilnamatra, Macroom. Also: working in Tokyo and why KFC is Japan's Christmas tradition, singing "My Way" in Spanish at a Bolivian celebration of life, Barry's overheard Bray prom conversation that doubled as a commentary on Ireland's cocaine statistics, and what it means to carry your grandmother's DNA a hundred years after she left Cork.

Links:

• https://www.saralouise.me/
• https://barrytaylor.co/
• https://www.instagram.com/secretphonenotes/
• Email: barrytaylor1993@gmail.com

00:00 — Intro / meet Sara

04:57 — GUEST RANDOM NOTE

08:18 — Japan: KFC Christmas and NYE traditions: Shinto New Year, Yoroshiku Negaishimasu

14:14 — RANDOM HOST NOTE:

Ireland's cocaine stats → Jameson whiskey → the Boston deathbed story

22:51 — GUEST RANDOM NOTE

singing at a Bolivian funeral → Irish songs and grief → dream of singing in Irish

37:54 — GUEST RANDOM NOTE

Coke for Vinnie → Sri Lankan food in the Hunter Valley → what is jaggery

46:17 — Irish family history: the flying columns, 8th Battalion, Cork ambush sites

52:20 — Cumann na mBan → grandma's IRA medals

56:41 — Erskine Childers, illegal propaganda, TB, and leaving Cork in 1925

1:00:09 — Wrap-up: May the Road Rise book, the album