The ClearOut

Dara kicks off this episode celebrating the extraordinary story of Tina Turner and how she overcame the worst adversity to reinvent herself as an iconic figure of 80s and 90s popular music. Having recently seen the astonishing stage musical based on her life, he has renewed enthusiasm for Tina's inspirational girl power narrative. After that, it is all about men and Dara's experience, both histori...

In this week's show, Dara talks about his experience of fatherhood and his ever-evolving relationship with his daughter. He continues to fall at the same hurdle on a regular basis - will he, or can he change? He shares a personal father moment that made him cry and wonders why it can be so difficult to cry for oneself. After laying out some movie role models for his daughter, Dara turns his attent...

This episode has something for everyone. Dara kicks off with an acknowledgement of the show's 4th birthday before breaking down his fandom of Tottenham Hotspur in the wake of their recent Europa League triumph - the trophy monkey is finally off the collective backs of long-suffering Spurs fans. Thanks be to the Gods of Football! The brilliant The Poetry's Dead Podcast just featured a poem of Dara'...

In this week's episode, Dara reviews Ryan Coogler's rip roaring 'Sinners', a movie that defies easy categorisation but is infused with the director's characteristic heart, immersive world-building, and brilliant lead performances. Of particular delight was a thread of Irishness that leant the movie an unexpected and resonant depth. There's also an Irish connection to the movie that Dara recommends...

In this episode Dara is thinking about challenging moments and situations and the places we put them to help us cope better. After a very unpleasant accident that sent him to hospital, Dara laughs at the way men can fail to offer care, depending on their assessment of the urgency involved - everything can be laughed at until it can't. He draws a connection between his eye emergency and a prison vi...

In this episode Dara tries to thread the needle between domestic and personal crises and those of a much larger, humanitarian nature. Taking in current events in Gaza as well as historic instances of grievous abuse by Catholic institutions in Ireland, the question of truth seems to be of primary importance when a larger power treats others with such callous impunity and indifference to the consequ...

A hiatus imposed on Dara by life's steamroller has reminded him how non-performative the podcast continues to be. He reflects on the circumstances that rendered him incapable of recording over the last few weeks and reiterates his conviction that being judiciously transparent is of more use to his listeners, and to him, than jazz hands and soft shoe shuffles. Recalling Bruce Willis's boxer in Pulp...

In this episode, Dara goes hard at Shakespeare! Following an urge to wrap his mouth around some Elizabethan verse, he stumbled across a perfect collection of Shakespearean monologues to quench his appetite. So, with thanks to Rachel, whose curation it was, and apologies to enemies of The Bard, the greasepaint was applied, the voice warmed up, and the curtain raised! Drawing from the histories and...

In this episode, Dara quietly reflects on 200 episodes of this thing that he does and tries, for the umpteenth time, to define what the podcast is all about. After all this time on the microphone, it's funny and fitting that he still isn't really sure. Is it a glitch or a feature? All he knows is that he has continually tried to be honest and authentic, and appropriately transparent, about where h...

In this episode, Dara shares his response to the compelling drama series 'Adolescence' that recently launched on Netflix. Covering the harrowing events around a 13-year-old schoolboy murdering a female schoolmate, the show is an extraordinary dramatic and technical achievement that has found itself at the heart of the dark side of the zeitgeist - namely, the changed social landscape that shapes th...

In this episode, Dara is recalling an early cinema experience that only succeeded at the second attempt - but it was ET , so it was totally worth the wait. At that time, all his objects of desire were heroic archetypes and it would be another few years before an actress on the big screen stopped his breath. The year ET came out, 1982, also saw the release of Robert Towne's Personal Best, which pla...

In this episode, Dara is trying to get his head around the obnoxious appearance of Conor McGregor at the White House over St. Patrick's Weekend. Trump's presidency seems to function as a magnet for a particular type of male performance, greenlighting as it does a validated version of masculinity that revels in belittling others, trash talking enemies, and leering, swaggering braggadocio. It is def...

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...