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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

1:53:01

Honing the Eye, the Hand, and the Mind: Interview...

The ClearOut ·

2022/09/07

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 followed his love of drawing and illustration to do further training in Cornwall in England. He talks about his

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1:08:15

Running Like Clockwork, or The Challenge of Slowing Down

The ClearOut ·

2022/08/31

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. He wonders about our inner clockworks and how they can be altered to help us feel calmer and more in

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1:17:24

The Face We Meet the World With, or The Pressure of...

The ClearOut ·

2022/08/24

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 world.He also talks about the contradictions of self and how confronting it can be to accept that no

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1:35:21

When the Vibe is Gone, or Peace and Love and Dollar...

The ClearOut ·

2022/08/17

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 went wrong, Dara recalls the circumstances that informed the first Woodstock festival and why it was

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1:16:47

Power Women On Screen, or What Does a Feminist Look...

The ClearOut ·

2022/08/10

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 feminism and feminist representation in the movies, and Dara questions the language that is typically

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1:13:07

Turning Travel Into Art: Interview with Sean Whitehill

The ClearOut ·

2022/08/03

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 - no matter how individual we think we are, can we ever disconnect from the social animal within?Also

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1:20:03

Imprintable Human Clay, or The Challenge of Never...

The ClearOut ·

2022/07/27

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-old head.He talks about the Pixar movie Turning Red and how its menstruation-based story raised some

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1:18:24

Wiggly Bits, Jiggly Bits, and The Dangers of...

The ClearOut ·

2022/07/20

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 and women?Also on the table are ideas of resilience, self-care, and what we allow to affect us. Dara

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1:25:29

Two Twisted Love Stories and Dismantling Man-made...

The ClearOut ·

2022/07/13

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 could show. Rewatching it for the podcast he found it less surprising but still quite compelling.After a

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1:09:31

The Pebble Girl Part 2: Interview with Author,...

The ClearOut ·

2022/07/08

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 safe. Her refuge lay in her imagination, her relationship with nature, and her love of art.In her

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1:13:34

The Pebble Girl: Interview with Author, Artist, and...

The ClearOut ·

2022/06/29

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 safe. Her refuge lay in her imagination, her relationship with nature, and her love of art.In her brilliant

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1:06:36

Why Idealism Matters and the Proximity Principle of...

The ClearOut ·

2022/06/22

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, Dara reminds himself what he's trying to achieve by putting out the show once a week. He has to conclude

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1:21:09

The Art of Disarming Oneself, or How to Live with...

The ClearOut ·

2022/06/15

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 artificial idea of minimal threat. He believes we cannot fight effectively if we are too wedded to a rigid

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1:19:33

Barbaric Yawps and Righteous Howls - Cries from the...

The ClearOut ·

2022/06/08

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 WhitmanDaddy by Sylvia PlathRed Roses, Barefoot and 45 Mercy Street (a fragment) by Anne SextonHowl by Allen GinsbergA little bit of background and reaction will accompany

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1:27:12

Blazing Baby Blues and a Killer's Grin - Saying...

The ClearOut ·

2022/06/01

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 finally understands what it was that Liotta meant to him as a young man. To get there, he discusses in some

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1:24:57

The 1st Birthday Episode! - Receiving Transmissions...

The ClearOut ·

2022/05/25

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 least tuning our 'life balance radio' to try and catch the positive signals that are out there.He argues

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1:24:24

Dispensable White Men, or Who's Coming to Replace Me?

The ClearOut ·

2022/05/18

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 interesting quotes from the composer Arthur Sullivan and the French cleric Jean Baptiste Henri Lacordaire, Dara

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1:10:45

Stepping into the Breach, or The Quandary of Heroes

The ClearOut ·

2022/05/11

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 disappointed by the end of a playdate, Dara recalls similar feelings of 'micro-grief' when he was a child, and

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1:41:23

Conscience and the Stand Against Puritanism, or The...

The ClearOut ·

2022/05/05

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 performance of gatekeeping order and standards in a teaching context. Aren't we all in on the joke of

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1:16:09

Life Above and Below the Surface, or Listening to the...

The ClearOut ·

2022/04/27

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 perspective-shifting as a tool of detachment and re-setting. Rising out of ourselves and above our predicaments

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228 results

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