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 the chaos and uncontainability of life?
Dara shares a story about a prison conversation with one of his brothers and begins to understand it in a new light. He wonders if he might be a puritan, and the embodiment of pious self-seriousness.
He discusses at length Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and what it has to say about moral panic and the hypocrisy of those who pass down judgement on others, all the while suppressing their own venality and human impulses. Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds is also considered in the context of persecution and collaboration and the cost to one’s conscience.
Dip-Dabs, Sherbet Fountains, Mark Twain and Sigmund Freud also feature – where else would you get it!