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 service and related advertising campaign from a spa resort in Northern Ireland that showcased the dubious combination of bikinis and balaclavas. The tastelessness and insensitivity of the use of that particular headwear in that context, in that location, is astonishing to Dara.
Both incidents beg the questions – how short are our memories? What prompts these wilful acts of collective forgetting? Of disingenuous thoughtlessness and ‘accidental’ provocation?
But before chewing on any of that, Dara takes his time describing a great day he recently enjoyed, the flow state he found himself in, and why he was laughing so hard at the songs of Cat Stevens. And there’s also a moment to agree with aspects of an article proclaiming the death of ‘wild swimming’.
Emer O’Neill interview on RTE Radio 1: https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/clips/22200176/
Eva Wiseman article on wild swimming: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/jan/22/rip-wild-swimming-natures-cure-all-has-thrown-in-the-towel-sewage