The ClearOut

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...

In this episode Dara reflects on a recent conversation he had about where and in what way the self should feature in the pursuit of happiness. One argument emphasises total immersion in self as a mode of psychic excavation and rebuilding, whereas an alternative, more Eastern approach, is a wilful eradication of self as the pathway to radical acceptance of what is. Neither is easily achieved, but t...

In this episode, Dara lets the topic be led by the Will Smith slapping incident at last Sunday's Academy Awards ceremony. He unpacks some of the possible lines of analysis in the current climate of identity politics and culture wars. He also looks at his own history of being slapped and breaks down the gendered implications of the open-hand slap, particularly when it is called a 'bi**h-slap', look...

In this week's episode, Dara is set off by a tweet from a female account that first explicitly requests pictures of beautiful men - 'rides' is the term of desire used - and then disclaims accusations of objectification. Is objectification of men by women better, or less loaded, than objectification of women by men? Dara isn't sure... He reflects on the nature of attraction and thinks back to how h...

In this episode Dara presents his thesis that all sports fans are embroiled in a philosophical engagement with the team or sportsperson that they love. Namely, the relationship of our desire and emotional investment to a higher aspiration - the symbiotic realisation of sporting perfection. Dara argues that this desire is in essence a Platonic impulse to contemplate not only the ideal sporting mome...

It's the dawn of a new era for The Clearout as Dara hosts his first interview on the podcast. Musician and actor Gavin McCaffrey first made money in the arts as a child performer as one of Ireland's legendary Billie Barry kids, gracing stage and screen in professional appearances. Many years later he and Dara shared a dressing room together when they were cast in Shay Healy's The Wiremen, a colour...

In this topical episode, once he's dealt with a Hollywood actor's less than enthusiastic response to Jane Campion's The Power of the Dog, Dara gets straight into the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He discusses Putin and looks at his possible motivations for such aggression, and also considers the larger geopolitical implications of the conflict. He tries to contextualise how people in the west have...

In this deceptively positive episode, Dara is emerging from a fortnight of disruptions and disturbances that have laid him low. Over the course of the show, he examines not only the necessary compromises and recalibrations that must accompany a successful recovery, but also the contradictions that can occur in normally reliable wellness strategies. He discusses the cartography of our inner world a...

This week's episode is all about getting rid of the bad stuff in your life, and it starts with having a good old vomit! Having had that unpleasant experience recently, Dara decides to hang this episode's theme around the body's singularity of purpose when expelling something evil from the gut. He foregrounds the discussion with a scattergun look at poison and how it speaks to a primal dread in us....

In this episode, Dara looks at defiance as a central attitude and strategy of wellness. Understanding defiance as an expression of personal conviction allows it to be utilised in the service of personal autonomy. It can inform and be informed by one's certitude, but that certitude is best deployed with an understanding of imperfection and flexibility. Also discussed is the idea of ownership and au...

In this episode, Dara starts off by looking at our need for light and also our desire for novelty. These ideas are both connected to how we are visual creatures and how the internet has capitalised immeasurably on this aspect of human behaviour. Celine Sciamma's brilliant film Portrait of a Lady on Fire, a film very much concerned with the power of seeing, is discussed in this context, but also pr...

In this episode Dara delves into the places we carry and store our pain. He looks at how unaddressed wounds can wield a disproportionate amount of power over us and how that relates to our fear of uncomfortable places. He wonders if how different generations have evolved with access to different vocabulary and frames of reference for emotional and psychological wellbeing has shaped their resilienc...

I want to write this week's information in the first person because I want to unequivocally own all the ideas and opinions expressed in the episode. As a response to the murder of a young Irish woman in Ireland last week, I discuss at considerable length the topic of male violence against women as an expression of broken masculinity, and I offer a defence of my experience of masculinity. I also lo...

In this week's episode, Dara is very much focused on zones and spaces - not physical ones, but experiential ones. He argues that we are always entering and taking our leave of different states of mind and emotion and how we behave in different spaces depends on where we are at in ourselves at any given time. He looks at how the human brain recognises different zones of behaviour and interaction an...