A Working-Class Poet Who Can Perform for Thousands But Struggles to Say How He Feels. Emmett O'Brien on Grief, Masculinity & Finding a Voice.

Emmett O'Brien is a poet, actor and storyteller from Cabra who's built a reputation for putting into words what so many people feel but never quite know how to say. He started writing at 13, after a 14-year-old friend was killed in a hit-and-run and a counsellor suggested he find a way to express it. What began as rap became spoken word, and it's carried him from ten people in a basement to stages across the world.

Ryan sits down with Emmett for an honest, wide-ranging conversation about creativity, class, masculinity and mental health.

What we get into:

• Growing up in Cabra and why he was the "outlandish" kid
• Starting to write at 13 to deal with the death of his friend
• How rap became spoken word, and the artists who shaped him
• The working-class accent as identity, and being paid to write but not to speak
• Why he can perform for thousands but can't talk about his own feelings
• The one-man play about hitting rock bottom that nobody knew was about him
• Grief, his ma's passing, and the moment his emotions finally opened up
• Masculinity, the manosphere, and what a man actually is
• Why it's good men capable of violence, who choose not to use it, who matter
• Imposter syndrome, Damien Dempsey, Kelly Harrington and self-doubt
• Calculated luck, the 10,000 hours, and why sacrifice is the whole game
• Surrounding yourself with genuine people, not yes-men

Ryan Curtis is a former Irish MMA fighter who was paralysed from the neck down and told he would never walk again. Made in Chaos exists to platform guests who've turned adversity into hard-earned wisdom worth sharing.

Follow: @madeinchaospod | @chaoscurtis

If anything in this episode resonates with you, support is available in Ireland. Samaritans are free and available 24/7 on 116 123, and Text About It can be reached by texting 50808.

🖊️ Sponsored by The Ink Factory, Temple Bar, Ireland's highest rated tattoo studio. theinkfactory.ie | @theinkfactory

He Built One of Ireland's Best-Known Estate Agencies, Lost Almost Everything in the Crash, and Came Back. Ray Cooke on Housing, Money & Sacrifice.

Whether you're trying to buy your first home, stuck renting, investing, or you're just convinced the whole system is broken, you have an opinion on the housing market. Ray Cooke has watched it all from the inside. He built one of Ireland's most recognisable estate agency brands, survived the 2008 crash when he couldn't afford to feed himself, and has seen firsthand how policy, interest rates and supply shape thousands of lives.

Ryan sits down with Ray for an honest, no-spin conversation that goes well beyond house prices.

What we get into:

• Growing up in Rathcoole, dyslexia, and why hard work became his "superpower"
• Working in the pub at 11 and the money habit that shaped everything
• Setting up his business in 2005, then watching the 2008 crash nearly destroy it
• Viewing one house 82 times before it sold, and living on beans on toast
• The bank manager who ripped up his business plan three times and saved him
• Why 2008 won't happen again, and how lending has completely changed
• The truth about estate agents, ghost bidding and why they get so much abuse
• Whether the housing crisis is really the agents' fault, or the government's
• His honest, blunt take on sacrifice, saving and getting on the ladder
• What he'd change first if he woke up as housing minister
• How to build wealth starting with 20 grand
• The biggest money mistake ordinary people make without realising

Ryan Curtis is a former Irish MMA fighter who was paralysed from the neck down and told he would never walk again. Made in Chaos exists to platform guests who've turned adversity into hard-earned wisdom worth sharing.

Follow: @madeinchaospod | @chaoscurtis

🖊️ Sponsored by The Ink Factory, Temple Bar — Ireland's highest rated tattoo studio. theinkfactory.ie | @theinkfactory

One of the Greatest to Ever Wear the Dublin Jersey — But This Isn't About Football. Philly McMahon on Ballymun, His Brother, and What Really Shaped Him.

Philly McMahon is considered one of the greatest Gaelic footballers to ever play for Dublin. But behind the medals and the All-Ireland titles is a far more interesting story: growing up in working-class Ballymun, losing his brother John to addiction, becoming a father, and spending his life trying to understand what really drives people from communities like his.

Ryan sits down with Philly for a wide-ranging, honest conversation that goes nowhere near a highlight reel.

What we get into:

• Growing up in the Ballymun flats and the community that shaped him
• How systemic decisions, not just individual choices, ghettoised whole areas
• The hero's journey, slaying the dragon, and why hardship is where the growth is
• The story of the footballer he transformed by sending him to feed the homeless
• Losing his brother John to addiction, and what his mother taught him about love and connection
• Why "tough love" often isn't the answer, and what actually helps someone struggling
• Fashion, identity and status in working-class communities
• Parenting: how much hardship to pass on, and how much to protect them from
• Why our prisons are full of people from a handful of postcodes, and what that says about class
• Adverse childhood experiences and how much of our lives trace back to childhood
• What Philly hopes people remember about him, and why it isn't football

Ryan Curtis is a former Irish MMA fighter who was paralysed from the neck down and told he would never walk again. Made in Chaos exists to platform guests who've turned adversity into hard-earned wisdom worth sharing.

Follow: @madeinchaospod | @chaoscurtis

🖊️ Sponsored by The Ink Factory, Temple Bar — Ireland's highest rated tattoo studio. theinkfactory.ie | @theinkfactory

He's 23 and Has Spent Years on Dublin's Streets Helping the Homeless — Not Because It's His Job, But Because He Chose To.

Everyone has walked past someone sleeping rough. Most of us glance, wonder, and keep walking. Brandon O'Connor spends his nights sitting beside those people — hearing their stories and watching addiction, trauma, kindness and hope all exist on the same street.

Brandon founded Dublin Homeless Awareness at just 16, as a transition year school project. Years later, his team run first-aid patrols, missing-person searches, river-safety patrols and mental health interventions across the city. In this episode, Ryan sits down with him for an honest, eye-opening conversation about what really happens on Dublin's streets — and what needs to change.

What we get into:

• Why most people develop addictions after becoming homeless, not before
• How Dublin Homeless Awareness started as a school project and grew into a frontline service
• The reality of night patrols: overdoses, mental health crises and river rescues
• The systemic gaps that leave people with nowhere to go
• Why homelessness can happen to almost anyone — including nurses, guards and charity workers
• Brandon's own story: growing up with a mother who was homeless and addicted
• What frontline work does to your own mental health, and how the team protects each other
• The small acts of kindness that people never forget
• What every one of us can do differently when we walk past someone sleeping rough

Ryan Curtis is a former Irish MMA fighter who was paralysed from the neck down and told he would never walk again. Made in Chaos exists to platform guests who've turned adversity into hard-earned wisdom worth sharing.

Follow: @madeinchaospod | @chaoscurtis

To support or report a concern, find Dublin Homeless Awareness on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.

🖊️ Sponsored by The Ink Factory, Temple Bar — Ireland's highest rated tattoo studio. theinkfactory.ie | @theinkfactory

He Won Olympic Silver in Beijing. Two Years Later He Hit Rock Bottom. Kenny Egan on Winning, Addiction & Finding Himself Again.

Kenny Egan has one of the greatest stories in Irish sport, a ten-time senior champion, the only man ever to win ten consecutive senior titles, and an Olympic silver medallist in Beijing 2008. But once the gloves came off and the homecoming faded, Kenny faced a very different fight.

Ryan sits down with Kenny for one of the most honest and important conversations Made in Chaos has had, about what happens when the biggest win of your life doesn't fix everything, the loss of identity that followed, the two-year spiral into addiction, and the long road into recovery that he now values more than any medal.

What we get into:

• ​Growing up one of five brothers in Clondalkin and how boxing found him
• ​Losing three All-Ireland finals in a row and nearly quitting at 13
• ​The coach who told him he was a "2 out of 10", and how that rebuilt him
• ​Gary Keegan drawing a line on the gym floor and changing Irish boxing forever
• ​Beijing 2008, five near-flawless fights and an Olympic silver medal
• ​Why winning the medal sent him from zero to rock bottom in two years
• ​The loss of identity: "Who am I now?"
• ​Walking away from a 10-year professional contract while in active addiction
• ​The night his mam walked into a pub and said "Come home, son"
• ​The day he got sober, 12th of August 2010, and never looked back
• ​Becoming a psychotherapist and what real purpose looks like now
• ​Why his sobriety means more to him than any Olympic medal
• ​His upcoming charity fight for the Irish Cancer Society in memory of his late mother

Ryan Curtis is a former Irish MMA fighter who was paralysed from the neck down and told he would never walk again. Made in Chaos exists to platform guests who've turned adversity into hard-earned wisdom worth sharing.

Follow: @madeinchaospod | @chaoscurtis

🖊️ Sponsored by The Ink Factory, Temple Bar, Ireland's highest rated tattoo studio. theinkfactory.ie | @theinkfactory

Real Strength Isn't Pushing Through Everything. It's Learning to Bend Without Breaking. A Clinical Psychologist Explains.

Most people think mental strength means never slowing down, never breaking, never letting anyone see them struggle. Professor Ross G. White, clinical psychologist, author and performance specialist who works with the Irish Rugby Football Union, argues that this exact belief is why so many people are burnt out, anxious and quietly losing themselves.

Ryan sits down with Ross for a conversation packed with usable frameworks on resilience, purpose, pressure and emotional avoidance, the kind of practical psychology that genuinely changes how you think about your own life.

What we get into:

• The get, threat and reset modes, and why high achievers neglect the one that keeps them well
• Why being "relentlessly relentless" guarantees burnout
• The arrival fallacy, why hitting your biggest goal won't make you happy
• Shallow success vs deep success, focusing on values and process over outcome
• Why you don't find your purpose, you form it
• Treating emotions as messengers, and why there's no such thing as a negative emotion
• The inner critic, where it comes from, and self-compassion as strength turned inward
• Survivorship bias, why copying Michael Jordan's mindset won't make you Michael Jordan
• Towards moves vs away moves, the one question that can change every decision you make
• Strong intention, light attachment, protecting your identity beyond one pursuit
• What burnout actually is, and why it's not your fault
• "You're not broken, you're stuck", and how a flexible mind helps you get unstuck

Ryan Curtis is a former Irish MMA fighter who was paralysed from the neck down and told he would never walk again. Made in Chaos exists to platform guests who've turned adversity into hard-earned wisdom worth sharing.

Follow: @madeinchaospod | @chaoscurtis

🖊️ Sponsored by The Ink Factory, Temple Bar, Ireland's highest rated tattoo studio. theinkfactory.ie | @theinkfactory

He Built the Road for Irish Muay Thai Himself. Two Years Homeless. A Best Friend Lost. World Champion.

Craig "Coco" Coakley is one of Ireland's most accomplished Muay Thai fighters a Dublin Combat Academy fighter who became Irish Fighter of the Year, won multiple titles including a world title, and fought for Yokkao, Muay Thai Grand Prix and ONE Championship. But what makes Craig's story remarkable isn't the trophy cabinet. It's everything that happened underneath it.

Ryan sits down with Craig for an unfiltered conversation about growing up in Dublin's inner city, falling into fighting almost by accident, spending two years homeless while building a career at the same time, losing his best friend to suicide, and walking away from the security of the biggest promotion in the sport because his sanity mattered more than the contract.

What we get into:

• Growing up in Dublin 1, community, hardship and what people get wrong about "rough areas"
• How Craig fell into Muay Thai after getting battered in his first boxing match
• The brutal reality of fight week, fight camps and the sacrifices nobody sees
• Two years homeless in a hotel room with a newborn while still actively competing
• The loss that nearly broke him, his best friend James, and the system that failed him
• Why fighting is more mental than physical, and what losing taught him about who's really in your corner
• Walking away from ONE Championship and choosing his sanity over the biggest contract in the sport
• Becoming a father and how it completely reshaped what he was fighting for
• What he wants people to actually remember about Craig Coakley when it's all said and done

Ryan Curtis is a former Irish MMA fighter who was paralysed from the neck down and told he would never walk again. Made in Chaos exists to platform guests who've turned adversity into hard-earned wisdom worth sharing.

Follow: @madeinchaospod | @chaoscurtis

🖊️ Sponsored by The Ink Factory, Temple Bar. Ireland's highest rated tattoo studio. theinkfactory.ie | @theinkfactory

It's Not About the Food. A Life Coach Who Spent 22 Years in an Eating Disorder Explains What It's Really About.

On the night her mum died, Cara O'Loughlin was 15 years old. That same night, she picked up her first eating disorder behaviour. What followed was 22 years of anorexia, bulimia, binge eating, exercise addiction, a stroke at 29, osteoporosis, infertility warnings, and eventually, full recovery.

Today, Cara is a life coach specialising in eating disorder recovery, a yoga teacher, and one of the clearest and most credible voices on why these patterns start and what it actually takes to break them. This is one of the most important episodes Made in Chaos has ever recorded.

What we get into:

• Why eating disorders are never about food, and what they're really about
• The genetic predisposition, the personality traits, and the trigger that sets it off
• The physical toll most people never see: bone density, fertility, heart, thyroid, stroke
• Why Cara was at her sickest when she looked her healthiest
• What Ryan's own experience with weight cutting in MMA revealed about disordered eating in sport
• The HALT framework, and why overwhelm was always Cara's trigger
• Orthorexia: the unhealthy obsession with eating healthily that nobody is diagnosing yet
• Why 98% of diets fail, and the set point theory that explains everything
• Ozempic: who it's for, who it isn't, and what Cara is seeing in her clients
• How to raise children with a healthy relationship with food without ever mentioning weight
• The division of responsibility, and why finishing your dinner is doing more harm than you think
• Men and eating disorders: Bigorexia, gym obsession and the conversation nobody is having
• What someone struggling right now needs to hear, and where to get help

Ryan Curtis is a former Irish MMA fighter who was paralysed from the neck down and told he would never walk again. Made in Chaos exists to platform guests who've turned adversity into hard-earned wisdom worth sharing.

Follow: @madeinchaospod | @chaoscurtis

🖊️ Sponsored by The Ink Factory, Temple Bar - Ireland's highest rated tattoo studio. theinkfactory.ie | @theinkfactory

A Brain Haemorrhage. Then Breast Cancer. Same Man. Two Years Apart. Dec Pierce Gets Completely Honest.

Most people know Dec Pierce as the voice of Block Rockin' Beats — the man who brought thousands together through music, through lockdown, through the nights they'll never forget. But behind the energy and the stage presence, the last three years of Dec's life have been extraordinary in the worst possible way.

In 2023, Dec suffered a subarachnoid brain haemorrhage mid-run in Ringsend. In 2025, he was diagnosed with breast cancer — a condition so rare in men it accounts for just 1% of all cases. Two life-threatening illnesses in two years, in a man who doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, exercises, eats well and does everything right.

Ryan sits down with Dec for one of the most important men's health conversations Made in Chaos has ever had.

What we get into:

• Growing up as a quiet, bullied kid and how music became his alter ego
• Recording his own pretend radio shows at 8 years old from a ghetto blaster
• Dutch courage, a garden shed in Ballybrack and how pirate radio changed his life
• Why dance music and nostalgia connect with people on a deeper level than almost anything else
• Starting Block Rockin' Beats at his lowest professional point — and doing it for free for six months
• How the birth of his daughter Ava removed every roadblock and fear of failure overnight
• The bomb that went off in his head mid-run — and the sliding doors moment that saved his life
• What a subarachnoid haemorrhage actually does to the body, and the long road back
• The lump he found in New York in the shower — and almost let sit there
• The phone call he got on the first day of his holiday in Spain
• Why men don't check themselves — and why that silence costs lives
• The youngest male diagnosis his specialist had ever made — and the earliest detection
• Telling his 9-year-old daughter about the mastectomy scar
• The nights when catastrophic thinking takes over — and how he got through them
• What two life-threatening illnesses gave him that nothing else could

Ryan Curtis is a former Irish MMA fighter who was paralysed from the neck down and told he would never walk again. Made in Chaos exists to platform guests who have turned adversity into something worth sharing.

Follow: @madeinchaospod | @chaoscurtis

🖊️ Sponsored by The Ink Factory, Temple Bar — Ireland's highest rated tattoo studio. theinkfactory.ie | @theinkfactory

He Was Addicted to Heroin for 15 Years. Now He Has a PhD in Neuroscience. The Same Brain Did Both.

Brian Pennie started using heroin at 16. By 20 he was chronically addicted, every single day for 15 years. He held down a job, sold drugs to fund his habit, and accumulated 50 grand in debt to dealers and money lenders. He had a violent seizure from benzo withdrawal, nearly died, and hit a moment of complete surrender in a hospital on a trolley at 35 years old.

What happened next is one of the most extraordinary personal transformations Ryan has ever had on Made in Chaos. Brian went to detox, discovered the human mind, met a doctor who told him he had a sharp brain, and four years later was teaching in Trinity College. He now has a PhD in neuroscience and lectures across Ireland and the world on addiction, trauma, habits and change.

What we get into:

• The operation as a baby with no anaesthetic, and the trauma he didn't know he was carrying
• Why heroin felt like "the anaesthetic I never got as a baby"
• Why the choice theory of addiction is wrong, and what actually drives people to substances
• The difference between Brian and his best mate who got addicted: two traumatised people in the same group
• The ABC habit loop, why tackling the behaviour is completely the wrong starting point
• Why the opposite of addiction is awareness, not sobriety
• The eagle in the chicken coop, and why most people die thinking they're something they're not
• Why your brain doesn't care about your happiness, it only cares about avoiding pain and chasing pleasure
• Imposter syndrome reframed: it's not a warning sign, it's a compass pointing toward growth
• Self-deception, limiting beliefs and building a wall of evidence instead of self-belief
• Why motivation is bullshit, and what actually changes behaviour
• Social media, AI and the terrifying perfect storm quietly destroying our ability to think
• What Brian would say to someone who feels completely stuck right now

Ryan Curtis is a former Irish MMA fighter who was paralysed from the neck down and told he would never walk again. Made in Chaos exists to platform guests who've turned adversity into hard-earned wisdom worth sharing.

Follow: @madeinchaospod | @chaoscurtis

🖊️ Sponsored by The Ink Factory, Temple Bar — Ireland's highest rated tattoo studio. theinkfactory.ie | @theinkfactory