The ClearOut

In this episode, Dara doesn't think he's going to talk about Mahsa Amini, the Kurdish woman who was killed in police custody in Iran in recent weeks, but that's what he does end up doing. He questions the strength of a faith that feels it has to police itself so viciously. He argues that when religious teaching becomes dogma, it weaponises itself and betrays an inherent insecurity. Dara nails his...

In this episode Dara talks about the importance of cultivating resilience and positivity, especially in a world that appears to be falling apart at the seams. He discusses the idea of understanding the potential of our response to be a stabilising element in the reality in which we find ourselves. Looking at the aspects of life that we may find confronting or triggering or overwhelming, Dara argue...

In this week's episode Dara reflects on the passing of Queen Elizabeth II last week and examines his own feelings about the extraordinarily long reign of the deceased monarch. He looks at the fractious history between Ireland and Britain and pays particular attention to the different identities on either side of the Irish Sea and how very different levels of historical experience and education inf...

In this choc-a-bloc inteview, Dara enjoys being taken to art school by the accomplished illustrator and sculptor, Alan Clarke. Alan and Dara were in primary school together a million years ago and this is their first time to sit down for a proper chat since then. Alan discusses growing up in an artistic household before commencing a degree in architecture upon leaving school. From there he followe...

What if we were all made by a toymaker and that toymaker set our internal tempo? Would that explain why some of us are so anxious while others remain calm? Is it possible that we all have a base setting that dictates how we interact with the world? Dara argues that the Digital Age, with its inundation of technology and devices and information platforms, has accelerated our propensity for anxiety....

In this episode Dara looks at two English sportsmen - the boxer Anthony Joshua and the cricketer Ben Stokes - and their recent public displays of personal crisis and compromised mental health. He lauds them for their candour and for their ability to face the public with their vulnerability showing. Dara discusses the pressure that many of us feel to present a functional and successful face to the...

In this episode, Dara finds himself stirred up after watching Trainwreck, the Netflix documentary series about the ill-fated Woodstock festival of 1999, an event that went off the rails for a variety of reasons, not least among them the driving motives of the organisers, one of whom was Michael Lang, who was behind the original festival 30 years earlier. Before revisiting the key factors of what w...

After watching Paul Mazursky's An Unmarried Woman, a film hailed upon its release in 1978 as a groundbreaking feminist text, and celebrated for the central performance of Jill Clayburgh as a cheated-on spouse, Dara wonders about the legacy of strong female characters on screen and asks who of today's actresses best represents ideas of female power and strength. It is essentially a question about f...

Dara presents an interview with his friend Sean Whitehill. Sean is a dedicated traveller and artist, among other things. He talks about what travelling means to him and what some of his favourite places are. Sean turns his travel experiences into beautifully hand-drawn and hand-coloured mandalas which capture the travel moments and memories that have meant the most to him. They ask the question -...

Dara is thinking about imprints, specifically the ones left on us in our formative years. He argues that our sense of wellness is very much connected to how successfully we negotiate or accommodate those imprints in our adult selves. He shares some scenarios from his own childhood to try to illustrate his point, including watching The Muppet Show in a bar while a fight broke out above his 8-year-o...

In this episode, Dara discusses some hot potatoes that are being passed from hand to hand in Hashtag Blessed. Beyonce's new album art raises some concern, as does Marilyn Monroe's appearance on the screen on Dara and his daughter's scheduled movie night. Are these icons of female beauty and performance actually problematic? Is there a radically different experience in how they are perceived by men...

In this episode, Dara takes a deep dive into two very different on-screen depictions of what the French call 'amour fou', or 'mad love'. 1986's Betty Blue (37.2 Le Matin) and Hitchcock's 1958 classic 'Vertigo' are the two texts in question. Dara recalls the impact of Betty Blue on his 18-year-old self and how it's sexual frankness was a mind-altering experience in terms of what he felt movies coul...

Dara presents the second of two parts of an in-depth interview with author, artist, and abuse survivor, Aisling Creegan. Aisling grew up in the 1970s as the youngest child of a large Dublin family, but hers was a harrowing childhood that played out in a chaotic and violent household. Alcoholism, one ailing parent, and the other with severe mental health problems meant the young Aisling was never s...

Dara presents the first of two parts of an in-depth interview with author, artist, and abuse survivor, Aisling Creegan. Aisling grew up in the 1970s as the youngest child of a large Dublin family, but hers was a harrowing childhood that played out in a chaotic and violent household. Alcoholism, one ailing parent, and the other with severe mental health problems meant the young Aisling was never sa...

Dara begins this week's episode by looking at the Irish discomfort with self-approval and putting it in the context of small-island, village mentality. He argues that it is a product of a damaged national psyche that leaves many Irish people with a pathological self-deprecation born of superstition and distrust of success. Reflecting on the too-seldom declared mission statement of the podcast, Dar...

In this week's episode Dara reflects on a week in recovery from Covid and realises he enjoyed dropping down to his slowest gear. It prompts him to think about the benefits of living with one's defences down. He argues that it makes us more receptive and more capable of seeing positive things in the world. From a self-defence point of view, he argues for the cultivation of calm and embracing the ar...

Compromised by a cold-induced fogginess of brain which precludes his normal freestyling approach, Dara decides to recite some American poetry from the Confessional School, and cautiously takes on Allen Ginsberg's Howl as the closing piece of this verse-drenched episode. You will hear the following poems: Song of Myself, 52 by Walt Whitman Daddy by Sylvia Plath Red Roses, Barefoot and 45 Mercy Stre...

Dara kicks off this episode with a revelation from his daughter, follows it with a plant the size of three Manhattan islands, and then discusses a black actress getting hate online after appearing in a new Star Wars tv series. All that out of the way, the remainder of the episode is essentially a love letter to the late Ray Liotta, one of Dara's favourite actors. By the time he finishes, Dara fina...

In this episode Dara is very pleased to be celebrating a year of The ClearOut. He revisits the last twelve months and talks about some of the other ways he was spending his time. After last week's serious and rather confronting subject matter, Dara turns his attention to things joyous and joyful. He wonders how joy is transmitted and whether we shouldn't be actively seeking it out, or at the very...

In this episode Dara thought he was going to keep it light and stay firmly in the positive psychology territory of inspirational quotes and personal motivation, but he ended up being led by the recent mass shooting in Buffalo to look at the ideologies of hate and division that are currently enjoying a disturbing level of popularity amongst certain demographics. After looking at a couple of interes...

In this episode Dara is thrust back to his childhood by a concert of John Williams music, and specifically the music of the Star Wars films. That event, and his recent watching of Matt Reeves's The Batman, gets him thinking about fictional heroes and what role they fulfil in our lives, and why in his late forties he is still happy to consume these heroic tales. Spurred by his daughter being disapp...

Episode 50 is here and we're going long! It is an absolute whopper of big ideas and small confessions. Dara informs on himself and his lifelong relationship to sugar and how a recent flashpoint with his daughter raised for him ideas relating to addiction and puritanism and the absurdity of righteousness. He looks at the imposition of rules and regulations on children and questions the value of the...

In this mental health-focused episode, Dara reflects on a recent spell of bad form and speaks openly about some of the personal trickiness he has faced over the last couple of years. He talks about his marriage and his skirmishes with depression and presents an argument for being okay with a range of emotions and perceptions that are conventionally considered to be negative. He argues for perspect...

In this episode Dara is prompted by a recent homophobic hate crime in Ireland to examine tolerance in a social context. He wonders whether the moral good of tolerance is as effective as the moral good of intolerance. He asks if the dogmatisation of the good can succumb to conspiracies of silence, and looks back at Ireland when it was in the grip of Catholic authoritarianism. He shares his own beli...

In this episode Dara has a good look at the bestselling 1997 New Age text, The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz, the Mexican spiritualist and New Age thinker. The four agreements in question relate to how we speak or use language; how we receive the actions of others; the limitations of what we can know about anybody else; and the commitment to always trying to use the best of ourselves. Easier...