Double D Live Returns: Catching Up, No Notes, No Filter

After more than a year away, Sarah Elebert and Muireann O'Toole Brennan pick Double D Live back up exactly where two friends do: mid-conversation, with a lot of ground to cover. The Equitas Podcast

Double D Live is back on air, more or less. It has been over a year since Sarah Elebert and Muireann O'Toole Brennan last recorded together. There was no plan for this comeback episode either. A text went out on the morning of recording, "Any chance you're free for a record tonight?", and a few hours later the two friends and co-hosts were back on a call with no notes, no running order and a lot of catching up to do.

That is the shape of the whole episode: unstructured, unfiltered, and genuinely two people finding out what has happened in each other's lives since they last spoke on the record.

For Muireann, the year in between has been a hard one. A difficult family health situation and a full-time return to work, something she had resisted for a long time, reshaped her routine, her headspace and her finances all at once. She talks openly about what that decision cost her and what steadiness it has given back, without pretending either side of that trade-off was simple.

There is lightness too, and plenty of it. A lovely story about her late aunt's house in Dublin, now home to the next generation of the family. New eyebrows!!! and a groom's-eye view of Dublin Horse Show week, including the day her friend Claire took a win that neither of them saw coming, and some plain speaking about how little information grooms are actually given on show day.

Gemma Stevens's win at Burghley and Katie Taylor's retirement both come up too, and the conversation goes past the headlines into what those results actually say about women at the top of their sport.

Sarah brings her own year into it as well: life with baby Shay (and now a mum of 3!), unaffiliated dressage with Hallie that gave her the best of feelings, and the early, wobbly stages of her own daughters getting into the saddle.

Muireann also talks about a first cacao and reiki ceremony that did not go the way she expected it to! That part of the conversation is worth hearing in full rather than summarised here.

Double D Live doesn't have a fixed schedule going forward, and that is by design. Sarah and Muireann are planning to record when the moment is right rather than to a calendar, which means more of these unfiltered catch-ups are coming, but they'll be a pleasant surprise among the next line up of podcast guest so make sure you are following.

Follow Sarah @SarahElebert and Muireann @lifeaftertheyard