In this episode, Dara is apologising for going missing last week, but he has a good excuse - he was in hospital! Struck down with a level of pain he had never previously experienced, he had to abandon his journey to get help and have an ambulance come to the rescue. It turned out it was just a little old kidney stone! The disruption to his normally rude good health gives reason for pause. What is it to be well? And what does care look like?

Dara shares some principles from his martial arts practice that inform ideas of connectedness and care provision, including self-care. He talks about being grounded, embracing gravity, and holding space, something that he argues is most effective when the ego is set to one side. Ultimately though, the argument is one for connection, which is the antidote to the social fracture and isolation that seem to be the keynotes of our current moment.

Two recent splashy sci-fi films speak to this form of loneliness - Project Hail Mary, an entertaining Spielberg facsimile, and Disclosure Day, an actual Spielberg film but one that pointedly lacks his magic touch. Dara reviews the films on their own terms but also in relation to the idea of connection and how that is a cornerstone of the Spielberg ideology - contact can be made, and we will be all the better for it!

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