The ClearOut

In this episode, Dara is reckoning with great creative men, two real and one fictional. The world has recently lost the bodily forms of Irish poet Pat Ingoldsby and Hollywood actor Gene Hackman, but their work remains indelibly with us. Ingoldsby was a beloved figure in Ireland whose sparkling and deceptively profound poetry arguably never received the credit it was due, although its accessibility...

In this episode, Dara is looking at the value of letting others know what's important to you. How else are the people in your life meant to know what you care about? He argues that this can not only help to strengthen the relationships that matter most, but also mitigate against disappointment and unmet expectations. However, it is useful to keep those expectations fair and realistic. Resilience i...

In this broadly care-centred episode, Dara moves from inside to out. He wonders about the sense some people have of the world owing you something and decides a more worthwhile and potentially fruitful query is to ask what you might owe yourself. He reckons care, forgiveness and love are a good place to start. But they can be particularly difficult to effectively embed in one's internal landscape....

In this episode, Dara is totting up the wins in his life. There aren't many, considering his age, but maybe more than enough. A cat on a wet shack roof is not one of them. Nor is revisiting 'Bridget Jones's Diary', which he did in stealth mode. But the wins he does list are pretty cool, and some are just about the most important things in his life. Reflecting on the ways in which he could be consi...

In this episode, Dara reflects on abandoning his recording session last week and admits to a loss of faith in the podcast. He reminds himself of a couple of the motivations behind starting the show 4 years ago and cites Bob Rafelson's brilliant New Hollywood film of 1972 - The King of Marvin Gardens - as being one of his sources of inspiration. Currently back in therapy for the first time in over...

In this episode, once he has sorted one Deirdre from another, Dara is reflecting on the idea of privilege after attending the Holocaust Memorial Day event recently held in Dublin. He reckons it has something to do with gratitude and being permitted entry to a special group at a special time, even if it is just as a visitor. The film Emilia Perez is on Dara's mind after it received a huge number of...

In this episode, Dara has an in-depth conversation with Eilish Fisher, the author of the brilliant 'Fia and the Last Snow Deer', a novel for older children. Written in blank verse, Fisher says it's the story she wrote for her ten-year-old self. A gripping adventure that sets the young Fia on a dangerous quest to save her small tribe from endless darkness and hunger, the closer she gets to success,...

In this episode, Dara recounts a series of unexpected events, incidents and coincidences that all occurred in a relatively compressed period of time. Something was obviously in the ether. Amongst other things, he talks about a key moment in the journey of What Does He Need? - the long-running community arts work exploring masculinity with which he has been very involved. An exhibition of a key str...

In this episode, Dara is reflecting on the year that was and acknowledging the tendency many have to do New Year's accounting. For him it is not only the start of a new year, but also his birthday - another prompt to do a stocktake. 2024 wasn't kind, and as he looks down the road of 2025 he wonders what tools are going to serve him best. Last year felt like a negation of many of Dara's principles...

To kick off the new year, Dara starts with a 'listy' episode, recalling his top 10 movies of 2024. He follows this with a list of his top old or previously seen movies, including 1954's Rear Window and 1982's Fast Times at Ridgemont High. His favourite TV experiences involved a stunning central performance by the Irish actor Andrew Scott, and an actress who featured in two of his top movies of the...

It's the 2024 Christmas Special! Pulling it out of the bag at the eleventh hour, Dara presents a very short, but somehow shaggy interview with his daughter Maeve, who gives a shout-out to Harry Styles, of all people. This is followed by this year's new Christmas story, 'Arrivals'. It follows a father who tries to honour his faith in his missing son by being at a certain place on a certain day ever...

In this episode, Dara is speaking from a position of powerlessness thanks to the after-effects of Storm Darragh, which ripped through many parts of Ireland last week with an unforgiving ferocity. Dara wishes there was more unforgiving ferocity for FIFA, the football organisation that continues to embrace sportswashing with disturbing immorality. In other areas of concern, he celebrates Arundhati J...

In this episode, Dara is warming up for the festive season by acknowledging how stress-inducing it can all get and how it really isn't for everybody. In his own household a new permutation is longed for by some, which doesn't entirely suit him. He's also concerned for his daughter, who has reached the age where the magic of Christmas and Santa Claus is no longer as real to her as it once was. He i...

In this episode, Dara looks at the idea of psychological defeat and the metaphorical hills we are determined to die on. Fundamentally an issue of faith in one's own psyche and worldview, what happens when our confidence in that vision begins to crumble? Can faith be restored? A recent interview with Isabella Rossellini raised the spectre of women who no longer need men. Dara feels like he has been...

In this episode, Dara is spurred to reflect on Francis Ford Coppola's latest film, 'Megalopolis'. In the great master's wild and not-so-wonderful saga, one brilliant man carries the burden of saving society from itself, but must contend with a rival who epitomises more mundane aspirations. Is the film about Coppola himself, or is it his thesis statement of whose visions are worth following? Whatev...

In this episode, Dara shares final thoughts on the US presidential election and speculates that the Democrats still haven't shaken the patronising habit of belittling those who disagree with them. He argues that if you take this attitude in the world of martial arts, you are setting yourself up to fail - the assumption of superiority is a dangerous flex of ego that can result in complacency and ab...

In this episode, Dara reacts to the re-election of Donald Trump to the US presidency. Did the Democrats and Kamala Harris once again fail to take seriously Trump and the Republican voter base? Whatever the cause, politicians of the liberal centre or centre-left have not been convincing enough to get themselves back into power. Four more years of Trump is a worrying prospect for the larger wellness...

In this episode, Dara considers violence against women and the recent clear-eyed responses to it by Hollywood regulars Anna Kendrick and Saoirse Ronan, as seen in Kendrick's impressive directorial debut 'Woman of the Hour', and as heard in Ronan's bulletproof interjection on the Graham Norton show. After reviewing Kendrick's chilling movie and contextualising Ronan's comments, he recalls a key mom...

In this episode, Dara talks about the characters we respond to in the art we consume. Having been very stirred by 'Joker: Folie a Deux', he stays in the world of movies and finds himself thinking about Jungian archetypes and the shadow self we can see reflected at us from the big screen. Speaking about that film, which has heavily promoted Lady Gaga as the joint draw of the story along with Joaqui...

In this episode, Dara is still reeling after watching Coralie Fargeat's astonishing film 'The Substance', a scarifyingly vicious body-horror satire on the pressure that results from the extreme demands of celebrity and the beauty expectations inflicted on women. The film is centred around a TV fitness personality whose middle-age renders her undesirable in the eyes of the network. In a ferocious p...

In this episode, Dara considers the elements that contribute to our resentment buckets and shoulder chips. He believes time and the ease of others are two key ingredients in the mix. He confesses to giving voice to some very uncharitable resentfulness around the time he became a father. He also speaks carefully around a significant source of resentment in his marriage. Prickliness can accompany re...

In this episode, Dara shares his gripes about the utterly mediocre buddy movie Wolfs, starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt as two fixers reluctantly obliged to work together through a night of yuk-filled capers (SPOILER: THERE ARE NO YUKS!). The film is an ode to laziness, self-satisfaction, complacency and vanity, and has the gall to pay tribute in its final shot to a truly great buddy movie of...

In this episode, Dara reflects on a weekend spent with an old friend and his resultant fatigue, both psychological and intellectual. It prompts an interrogation of his belief and value systems and whether they are more or less valid than those of his friend's. He argues that it is healthy, and perhaps even necessary, to have someone you regard challenge you with love. Dara shares his response to a...

This episode is all about the presence of absence. How are your comfort levels with empty space and dead air? Do you struggle when the void isn't filled with something to stimulate? And more importantly, with what do you fill empty spaces and awkward silences? Dara reflects on his own tendency to default to anxiety and negative beliefs when uncertain spaces make themselves felt. He wonders how dif...

In this episode, Dara is looking for a pulse. After he and his daughter watched Adam Sandler's 2004 romcom, 50 First Dates, Dara was reminded why he wasn't a fan of the comedian's factory line movies - there were too many moments and gags that were completely devoid of life. He found something similar in the character played by Nicole Kidman in this year's A Family Affair, a film in which Zac Efro...