The ClearOut

In this episode, Dara is reckoning with the allocation of care, the management of power, and the role of ego in personal agency. When life gets too out of control, what choice do we have but to yield? And does yielding result in a self we don't care for? Is that cowardice, complicity, or merely compliance? Why do we have such a strong impulse to want to impose our will on events that are so be...

In this episode, Dara is continuing the theme from last week - namely, male culpability in the Cornell 7 case and in male-perpetrated sexual assault in general. Behaviours and attitudes generally do not self-generate. They are handed down, observed, learned, and replicated. And when such behaviours and attitudes, even if problematic, are tacitly approved, they gain a legitimacy that becomes intern...

In this episode, Dara has a look at the Cornell 7 rape case that has found itself at the centre of the discourse. A shared female opinion that he has come across online suggests that men need to be directed in how they should respond to this case and to rape and sexual assault in general. The assumption seems to be that men are disinclined to express disapproval of rape unless sufficiently prompte...

In this episode, and not for the first time, Dara is reckoning with old wounds. Life has a great knack for shocking you out of your complacency, but what do you do when you are reminded of stuff you thought you had long since put to bed? Some things just refuse to stay down, and maybe the harder you push the more likely they are to push back. Dara argues that we can never outrun ourselves, no matt...

In this episode, Dara is decompressing after a week of shifting boxes and furniture. A new home and a new phase await. What is living going to be like under a different roof, between different walls, looking out at different views? And how do you recalibrate after such literal and energetic upheaval? There's a good chance the answer lies in being grounded, centred, and the attempt at some approxim...

In this episode, Dara is recording for the last time at Hashtag Hilltop - he and his family are about to move for the umpteenth time in recent years. He finds himself reflecting on homes of the past and the countless and never reliable memories from all of them. It strikes him how important the idea of a shared space is. Isn't the ability to share space a profoundly important matter for all humani...

In this episode, in honour of the late Gloria Steinem, Dara attempts to mansplain feminism - so women, I hope you are listening! No, rather than that foolhardy exercise, he reads in their entirety two blazing feminist articles from the 1970s. Miami by Nora Ephron documents the dynamics within the National Women's Political Caucus at the 1972 Democratic National Convention and prominently features...

In this episode, Dara is joining the dots between some recent topical news stories. He talks about a female icon of American entertainment - blonde, beautiful, independent, diminutive and unknowable; who else could it be other than Miss Piggy! And what does that embodiment of female power have in common with the late Dolly Parton? Quite a lot actually, but of particular interest is the nature of t...

In this episode, Dara is going full listicle and revisiting the albums that made up the soundtrack of his youth, from Michael Jackson's Thriller in 1982 to movie-inspired choices of the late 80s that carried him to university. Reflecting on how much the way we consume music has changed, Dara recalls vividly the experience of being immersed in entire albums at a time, almost like reading a book. Al...

In this episode, Dara takes the time to pay respects to the recently departed Glen Hansard, whose untimely death shocked and rocked so many, both here in Ireland and further afield. Hansard's band The Frames really were part of the soundscape of 90s Ireland as it emerged out of the dark years of the 80s into a newly discovered energy and confidence that ushered in what felt like limitless frontier...

In this episode, Dara is going full Greek as he embraces the epic telling and retelling of Homer's The Odyssey, now Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. Notably, the film is being promoted not with a tagline, but with a declaration of the mode of its making - shot entirely on 70mm IMAX cameras! But is that the film's only selling point? Surely not. In an epic, spoiler-filled episode, Dara tries to rec...

In this episode, Dara is apologising for going missing last week, but he has a good excuse - he was in hospital! Struck down with a level of pain he had never previously experienced, he had to abandon his journey to get help and have an ambulance come to the rescue. It turned out it was just a little old kidney stone! The disruption to his normally rude good health gives reason for pause. What is...

In this episode, Dara is scratching his head at yet another mammoth failure of the England football team. He has genuine sympathy for the players who have once again come unstuck at a crucial moment in a top tournament. And to add insult to injury, the destroyer of English dreams came in the form of their old nemesis Argentina, who turned in a schizophrenic performance of pure cynicism and fearles...

In this episode, Dara is feeling as angry as many others about the controversy around Bessborough House, the former mother and baby home that has one of the darkest legacies of any of the institutions that had Catholic Ireland in a stranglehold for much of the twentieth century. He tries to understand the indescribable moral failure of the Irish government to do the right thing and the importance...

In this episode, Dara is reckoning with his Instagram addiction. Why does the algorithm keep sending him such juicy morsels? Why is it so enjoyable, yet so insubstantial? And who are these women who convince so many men that a great parasocial relationship is about to begin? And what was that one comment that prompted the substance of this episode? Dara considers the nature of 'real' men and women...

In this episode, Dara is considering the concept of scaffolding and how it might be applied as a wellness metaphor. Utilised in the world of developmental psychology to describe evolving stages of cognitive growth and early learning, the basic idea relates to baby steps and layered instruction to help someone become more independent. Borrowing also from the world of construction, why can't scaffol...

It's end-to-end movies this week as Dara recalls his most vivid memories of the film scenes that shocked, scandalised and horrified him from as young as six up to his mid-twenties. It started on TV with the 1980 adaptation of James Clavell's Shogun. In that memorable mini-series, the beautiful Richard Chamberlain was subjected to an unimaginable indignity that made young Dara blush to his socks. S...

In this episode, Dara is trying to make sense of his relationship to repetition. What compels him to adhere so faithfully to his exercise routines? What is he trying to achieve? Or prove? And do those habits cross over to other areas of his life? He argues it is connected to his liking for order and rightness. He also acknowledges it has something to do with small 'c' conservatism and his own flav...

In this episode, Dara is considering the merits of low bars. How can you talk about heatwaves when it's only 18 degrees? Very easily actually, when you live in Ireland! How can you celebrate being the fourth worst team in the league? With the greatest of ease when your team has underachieved so badly for two straight years. But it's a fine line between understanding the usefulness of lowered expec...

In this episode, Dara is weighing up winning and losing. His football team is driving him to the brink of all-consuming rage, so much so that he sought out escapism in a TV show dedicated to gory bloodletting, heartrending betrayals, and gratuitous equal opportunity nudity. One climactic moment was so compelling that the vicarious exultation caused Dara to leap from his chair, fists thrust emphati...

In this episode, Dara is wondering why he feels so exhausted. Is it because he has switched from standby mode to being fully turned off? Do we struggle to fully relax because we so seldom do it? And does this connect to more than just the usual life concerns that trouble most of us? Is it possible it may be connected to the remorseless self-branding, self-commodification, and self-selling of the t...

In this episode, Dara is wondering how 250 episodes have come along so quickly. It hasn't been an effortless process by any means, but somehow the show (or 'the tell') has kept trundling along, quietly going about its business. And what business is that, exactly? Amongst other things, it has been an offer of quiet and reflective positivity in the wake of the Covid pandemic and an alternative to mu...

In this episode Dara is reckoning with the elusive nature of grace. According to the major religions, and Judaism specifically, it is 'a free gift of love' from the Almighty. But if not given by God, from where else might it come? Is it something that we can bestow on ourselves? What conditions need to be in place for that to happen? Is it possible it might come from the award-winning TV show The...

In this episode, Dara keeps it in low gear as he attempts to conserve energy and resist the temptation to force anything. Most of all, he is determined to be uninteresting and anything but entertaining. He knows his credo and he's sticking to it! A conversation with a friend has him thinking about happiness. Happy states and happy places. The dream of the perfect getaway seems to never lose its ap...

In this episode, Dara is responding to three films he recently watched that all touched on themes of the expression of the individual, sovereign identity, iterations of 20th century masculinity, and the concept of success and failure implicit in those performances. Starting with two documentaries, one covering the life and career of Broadway performer and choreographer Maurice Hines, once of the d...