It's the 2025 Christmas special! Dara presents his new seasonal story, hot off the press! In 'Early Service', an exhausted daughter sits down with her philandering father for their annual Christmas night out. Can they survive their oppositional tendencies? Will something magical help them transcend their differences? Why does the holiday mean such different things to each of them?
Latest Episodes
In this episode it is Dara's great pleasure to sit down and have a long overdue chat with his great friend and former college buddy, Aengus Devine. Aengus is a gifted musician, singer and songwriter, and has sustained a long career as a professional musician. At the end of their long and winding conversation, Aengus plays his lovely new Christmas single 'God Save Christmas'.
In this episode, Dara is wondering if the spirit of the season is upon you, or if you're still waiting for that festive feeling to announce itself. The price of beef isn't helping much. Nor is the price of Christmas trees, for that matter! And why does his daughter have so much to do?
In this episode, Dara has thoughts on December coming round so quickly and the accompanying temptation to collapse in a heap. Does the festive season differ in any significant way from the rest of the year? Christmas really did used to be something special and genuinely indulgent - but does that still land when the rest of the year seems to involve frequent indulgence too?
In this episode, Dara considers the power of defying expectations. Partly prompted by a conversation with his dementia-affected father, his thoughts are also informed by a New York psychologist who worked with first responders to World Trade Center attacks. Role-reversal can be both destabilising and disarming, but it rarely goes unnoticed, and it often provokes both consternation and resentment.
In this episode, Dara confesses to having had a very teary twenty-four hours. But what could have caused him to weep like a baby?
After watching Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein, Dara finds himself wondering about the director's world view, and specifically his perspective on beautiful, sincere women and their superficially unattractive love interests. The Mexican director has an established sympathy with those considered ugly and monstrous by society - could a Freudian reading be applicable?
A week under the weather had Dara running for the comfort of old Hollywood classics. In this episode, he reports his findings.
Influenced by the spooky season, he reached for a couple of Hitchcock staples of the older variety - 1940's Rebecca and 1941's Suspicion. Two very different but no less complicated love stories, one featuring espionage and seduction, the other - gulp! - murder!
In this episode Dara argues that at a certain moment in autumn, the whole season starts to feel like a Sunday night, and not in a good way! The shortening days, the lengthening nights, it all combines to create a sense of nature closing in to usher us into a dark resting place. And isn't that what Mondays can feel like?
In this episode, Dara is wondering who the enemy is. Finding himself symbolically shaking his fist at the clouds, he tries to work out who exactly he was angry with, and why. His wife used Jedi mind powers to flip the script which only stoked his fire further. The two choices available to him were obvious, and one was certainly not going to end well...
About the Podcast
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, humor, psychology, and emotional honesty as a recipe for increased wellness, positivity, and resilience.
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