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PODCAST

The ClearOut

Welcome to the turbulence!Join Dara Clear, a domesticated Irishman who is trying to work out the best ways to cope with what life throws at him.Husband, father, actor, writer, teacher, karate instructor and sea swimmer, Dara wants to take the wuss out of wellness.Mixing storytelling, philosophy, humour, psychology, and emotional honesty as a recipe for increased wellness, positivity, and resilience.Become a Patreon! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

health & fitness mental health

All Episodes

1:15:02

Laughing at the Wrong Things, or Why Cat Stevens is...

The ClearOut ·

2023/01/26

In this episode, Dara looks at a couple of recent news stories in Ireland that have raised some confronting questions about where we're at as a society.The first was an ill-conceived joke at one of his gigs by the stand-up comedian Tommy Tiernan that left Emer O'Neill, a woman of colour, feeling intensely uncomfortable. When she went public with her experience, the racist backlash she received was staggering in both quantity and nastiness.The other was a bizarre serviceand related advertising

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1:13:00

The Attraction of Certain Instruments, or Oh, What a...

The ClearOut ·

2023/01/19

After hearing his wife listening to a selection of different piano pieces in preparation for a class, Dara realised he wanted to talk about motifs. He discusses motifs in the work of film score composers before warming to the idea of motifs in one's life - what themes and fascinations have recurred over a lifetime? What has been circled back to? What has been underscored and reiterated? A friend points out to Dara ideas and inclinations he has been talking about for 20 years and it provokes a

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1:09:37

Notes From a Funeral, or The Power of the Collective...

The ClearOut ·

2023/01/12

In this episode Dara shares his experience of a recent family funeral that seemed to succeed in channelling a profound communal expression of love and grief. Because of his role in the service, he had to wait to express his own feelings.He reflects on the idea from Frank Capra's It's A Wonderful LIfe that one person can have an impact on many different lives and the hole that might be left had they not been around. Talking about the Feast of the Epiphany, the three kings of biblical fame are looked

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1:24:58

Goldfish Memory and the Things We Get Used To

The ClearOut ·

2023/01/05

If last week was the wrap-up of the year, this week is assessing the landscape of the year to come. Dara acknowledges the generic themes he has embraced for the moment that's in it and tries to contextualise his own attitude to the beginning of another year. Part of that attitude is informed by his birthday falling in January, something that has helped him cultivate a lifelong affinity for the month and what it can represent.Before he gets into any of that though, he quickly goes through some

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1:12:11

A Year of Watching - Reviewing 2022 from The Beatles...

The ClearOut ·

2022/12/29

An attempt to wrap up the year that was becomes a review of stand out movies and TV taken in over the last twelve months. Somewhat symmetrically, Dara realises he began and ended the year watching the work of Peter Jackson - he took in Jackson's Beatles documentary in January and is finishing the year by revisiting The Lord of the Rings trilogy. There have been plenty of other memorable productions along the way.Dara stays away from public life - politics, tragedies, the world cup etc. - and remains

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1:24:01

The 2022 Christmas Special!

The ClearOut ·

2022/12/22

Dara ain't gonna lie - this was a monster effort to produce! A little recital with his wife, an unexpected but most welcome interview with his daughter, and a new story for the season that's in it, all pulled together on the day of the episode. And done while sick.So it's a bit rough in patches, but the sincerity of effort comes through. If you're looking for polish, go to the household aisle!Dara's daughter surprises him with a willingness to chat at length and reveals her surprising position on

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1:15:53

The Zero Sum Game of Loving Christmas

The ClearOut ·

2022/12/15

In this Christmas shopping list of an episode, Dara has a look at the festive season through the lens of Christmases past. He also considers the pressure people are put under to partake of all things yule.He reads two seasonal poems, one from Robert Louis Stevenson and one from Robert Frost, both of which evoke something bucolic and poignant.He also includes a Christmas story he wrote last year that tries to capture the innocence and wonder of a small child immersed in a very bust adult Christmas

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1:18:47

Calling All Pamphleteers! What's the Big Idea?

The ClearOut ·

2022/12/08

In this episode Dara has a flea in his ear about what he sees as the shortage of social and political ideas to cater for a world that is outrunning itself.Before getting into that he takes a moment to breathe with you, the listener. He follows that with an apology of sorts for last week's half-baked episode. He also shares the reaction of his wife and daughter to meeting the new addition to Hashtag Blessed - Pepper the dog.The main course though is the worrying absence of a social and political

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1:18:27

From Puppy Love to a Big Pash via the Front: A...

The ClearOut ·

2022/12/01

In this pinball machine of an episode, Dara bounces all over the place and is none the wiser at the end of it whether things held together.He starts with strange bodies in 1983's Terms of Endearment before sharing some information about positive brain chemicals that he gleaned from social media. From there he reveals a surprise he has planned for his wife and daughter, who are returning home after 5 weeks away - he's expecting a big reaction...A sharp left turn takes Dara to the WWI poet Wilfred

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1:20:21

The Trickiness of Tone, or Do You Ever Put a Knob of...

The ClearOut ·

2022/11/24

In this episode Dara discusses the importance of tone. Considering tone as the ultimate mood setter, he looks at it in the context of movies, public ceremonies and vocations. He also considers tone in the auditory sense, recognising it as a vibration, and recalls how thrilled he was as a child to hear and feel the rumble of the engine of the car ferry that he travelled on several times on journeys to London.Discussing a funeral he recently attended, Dara observes how well the officiating priest did

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1:07:15

Speaking From the Heart: Three Righteous Preacher Men

The ClearOut ·

2022/11/17

In this episode Dara finds himself concerned about the upcoming FIFA world cup in Qatar. What blind eyes were turned and what palms greased to award the tournament to such an unlikely host nation? Footballers heading to the competition want to express their reservations about human rights abuses and the exploitation of workers, but FIFA wants them to 'stick to football'. In explaining why that infuriates him so much, Dara stresses the need for voices of protest to be heard. Staying in that area, he

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1:04:55

Heading Fear Off at the Pass, or Oh No, Not Another...

The ClearOut ·

2022/11/10

A mental health-focused episode partly inspired by Blindboy Boatclub's ongoing commitment to sharing his own mental health and wellness journey.A free rolling, some might say freefalling, edition of the tell has Dara reflecting on his university days and the persona he leaned into then. The context is identity and authenticity and what face we show the world.Dara discusses his recent tendency to catastrophise his concerns when he is in bad form. He looks at that through a self-defence lens to help

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1:29:40

The Helpless Gobshite Episode! A Defence of Men

The ClearOut ·

2022/11/03

In this free-roaming episode, Dara attempts to thread the needle from poor mental health to perceived male incompetence and on to a celebration of non-toxic men.The launch pad is an account of some very recent mental health challenges that Dara had to face. As part of his recovery he listened to some psychology and counselling podcasts which, though very helpful and informative, perpetuated a certain idea of infantilised masculinity that Dara felt didn't reflect his experience of men. He talks about

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1:25:22

How Fitching! The Fetishisation of White Beauty and...

The ClearOut ·

2022/10/26

After semi-bingeing on Netflix documentaries set in the USA, Dara has some chewy meat to digest in the areas of race, beauty, identity, representation, status and opportunity. The retail clothing companies Abercrombie & Fitch and And1 promoted expressions of whiteness and blackness respectively in their bids to dominate their chosen markets. They each enjoyed enormous success before pushback, politics and hubris sent their shares plummeting. Two Netflix documentaries look closely, but not

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1:41:33

The Insanity of Being Unable to Tolerate a Different...

The ClearOut ·

2022/10/19

In this episode, Dara wades into the murky waters of the discourse around transgender identity and language, and who is or isn't a woman. The focal point for the discussion is the recent Twitter row that erupted in the wake of Graham Norton's framing of cancel culture, the support he got from Billy Bragg, and the anger it inspired in JK Rowling.Looking at the history of the apparent controversy, Dara concludes that Rowling was extremely unlucky to find herself in the crosshairs of a woke-think

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1:27:21

Going Down in Flames - The Fall and Fall of Marilyn...

The ClearOut ·

2022/10/12

In this episode Dara assesses the recently-released Marilyn Monroe biopic, 'Blonde'. Written and directed by Andew Dominik, and based on the 2000 Joyce Carol Oates book of the same name, the film has been widely panned by critics and Marilyn fans, but Dara found a lot to recommend in the performance as Marilyn of Ana de Armas. He argues that de Armas imbues her characterisation with such sympathy and emotional honesty that she effectively insulates herself from many of the less subtle aspects of the

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1:28:46

The Hateful Power of Hipsters, or Today's Letter is 'H'!

The ClearOut ·

2022/10/05

In this tonally-light episode, Dara weaves a thread through 4 apparently unconnected words to create (what he hopes is) meaningful content. As they like to say on Sesame Street, "today's letter is 'H'. What begins with 'H'?"Well, 'hipster' begins with 'H' and Dara has a look at why hipsters bug him so much, a feeling he has had since he was very young. He reckons the answer has something to do with both sincerity and insecurity.There are other 'H' words considered for different reasons, but the

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1:12:10

Fractured Faith and Religion as Instrument of Terror

The ClearOut ·

2022/09/28

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 colours to the mast in terms of his own attitudes to faith, belief, tolerance and sex. He draws a

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1:28:07

Looking Adversity in the Eye, or The Things That Make...

The ClearOut ·

2022/09/21

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 argues that we have more resources than we may appreciate. He also looks at how woke ideology is analogous to

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1:27:21

The Death of a Queen and the Power of Totems

The ClearOut ·

2022/09/14

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 inform them.He wonders about the implications of the Queen's death for the United Kingdom and especially

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228 results

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