Free State is a podcast for the curious that stimulates, provokes, challenges and entertains, while never taking itself too seriously. Free State covers topics from sport to politics, love to loss, the human condition and how to fix the world, with guests from across the planet including Nigerian princes, former Prime Ministers, ex convicts, footballers, boxers and extraordinary people from every walk of life.
Free State is presented by Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning. Brolly is a barrister, an original thinker with a fascinating backstory, who donated a kidney to a stranger and then led a crusade to transform organ donation on the island of Ireland, and Fanning is an award-winning interviewer and author.
They are not motivational gurus or life coaches. They will never try to sell you a penis scented candle. They are two people from very different worlds, with one core belief uniting them - this is not a high performance podcast.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Free State is a podcast for the curious that stimulates, provokes, challenges and entertains, while never taking itself too seriously. Free State covers topics from sport to politics, love to loss, the human condition and how to fix the world, with guests from across the planet including Nigerian princes, former Prime Ministers, ex convicts, footballers, boxers and extraordinary people from every walk of life.
Free State is presented by Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning. Brolly is a barrister, an original thinker with a fascinating backstory, who donated a kidney to a stranger and then led a crusade to transform organ donation on the island of Ireland, and Fanning is an award-winning interviewer and author.
They are not motivational gurus or life coaches. They will never try to sell you a penis scented candle. They are two people from very different worlds, with one core belief uniting them - this is not a high performance podcast.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Would you vote for an AI politician or Simon Harris? Or a robot or Donald Trump?
Thomas R Weaver’s dystopian fiction Artificial Wisdom: A Novel imagines a world where by 2050 people are choosing between a human and an AI politician?
On Free State we talk to him about the reality of AI and what science fiction can tell us about the world in 25 years’ time.
People would never vote for AI to rule them we believe, but is that realistic? Is it any more preposterous than the idea of Donald Trump as president was ten years ago?
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When you go out to get a pint of milk, do you bring your essential survival kit in case of attack from rampaging gangs or immediate societal breakdown? If not, why not?
On Free State today, Joe and Dion are afraid and have recorded from their panic rooms. Maybe they have been watching too much Fox News.
Last week the channel asked ‘What Happened to Dublin?’ and rolled out questionable statistics about rising crime in the city.
We look at why these stories resonate. Why are so many people determined, not just to believe the worse, but to believe things that aren’t happening at all?
But in this climate of fear, opportunists prowl. Men like Conor McGregor are hoping that if people feel lost, they will look for salvation where they have never looked before. On Free State today, Dion and Joe tell us why, actually everything is going to be ok.
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“If these words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice.” These words were published on Anas Al-Sharif’s X account after his death. Sharif was a journalist with Al Jazeera and he was killed by Israel while in a tent for journalists outside a hospital in Gaza.
The headlines said that ‘global outrage’ was mounting over the killing of Sharif and six others, but what does that mean?
How is that outrage has become so pointless, lacking as it does nothing but the weasel words of support from western governments?
On Free State today, Dion and Joe ask if words can help at this point? They look at the post on X from Mo Salah and the impact it had and they consider the statements from Bono and U2.
Why does one have the power to make a difference and the other does nothing except salve the conscience of a rock star activist who has stayed silent for too long?
Why do the words of Anas Al-Sharif haunt us and the words from Bono remind us of how the west has failed?
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‘I probably need to start with the s***,’ Tim MacGabhann writes in his memoir.
On Free State today, Tim MacGabhann talks about the shit and the salvation.
His book is a story of addiction and recovery, a life trying to find something and then finding it in the place he didn’t think it would be.
It’s a story of replacing the s*** with something better.
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When Muhammad Ali visited Ireland in 1972, the country was a different place.
Nobody believed the greatest sportsman the world has ever seen would fight in Dublin except the men who made it possible.
On Free State today Dave Hannigan tells talks about his book The Big Fight - When Ali Conquered Ireland. It is a tale of men with dreams from Kerry and Brooklyn who made it happen. It is also a story of how Ali responded to the unconditional love he encountered and how it changed him.
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As Dion celebrates a personal milestone, on Free State today Joe and Dion look at how to live without drink.
They consider how dark it can get for those on the other side and what helps people become free.
Joe reflects on those he has seen struggle with alcohol and those he has seen create a new and rewarding life for themselves.
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In the summer of 1976, the world was a different place.
In Ireland and Britain, it was a summer of a heatwave. But were there cultural and political changes brought about by the long hot summer of 1976?
On Free State today John Williams, author of a new book Heatwave - the Summer of 1976, Britain at Boiling Point, is our guest. John tells us how that summer changed a country and how the heatwave brought people to the brink in ways nobody could have imagined.
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Have you locked yourself in a panic room? Have you got your tinned foods and toilet rolls in for when the Russians invade? If not, why are you so complacent? Why don’t you understand the threats Ireland faces in the modern world? On Free State today, Joe and Dion look at how Ireland is being told to be afraid.
Is there anything to fear or are the warnings designed to create opportunities for the defence industry?
Their companies have names designed to disguise their true intentions. Are we being asked to surrender to them if not the Russians?
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After Sunday's All Ireland final proved yet again why David Clifford is Superman in shorts, Joe wonders can any team stop a new Golden Years style reign for the Kerry footballers? On Free State today he also looks back on Knockmore Juniors' win over the weekend and explains why the All Ireland final can never quite measure up to the winning feeling with your club.
Producer Cormac O'Malley drops into the hot seat while Dion is away on today's episode.
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As a young reporter Phoebe Greenwood worked as a war correspondent in Gaza. She inhabited the world of fixers where journalists stayed at the Al Deira hotel and Israeli government spokespeople provided statements that contradicted what reporters had witnessed.
Greenwood was there during the 2012 conflict and now she has written a novel, Vulture, which is described as a satire, but might as easily be described as the truth.
On Free State today she talks about how journalism has failed in Gaza, a failure brought about the desire for false balance.
She recalls her own time in Gaza and how the place she knew has gone, destroyed utterly in a genocide where once again much of the media have failed.
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How do you stop a genius? How does a genius thrive?
David Clifford is the greatest Gaelic football who has ever lived but will that be enough on its own to bring Kerry an All-Ireland?
On Free State today, Joe explains the different type of genius that is Jimmy McGuinness. McGuinness has taken advantage of the new rules, the way he took hold of the old but can the spirit of Clifford be contained in Croke Park?
Joe and Dion also look at the princes who have taken the stage at Croke Park before. Dion looks at old Kerry lore and remembers the players he was told about by his Kerry father. He also reveals a family split that will become apparent on final day.
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Did Cork lose the All-Ireland hurling final at half time or was defeat guaranteed long before?
On Free State today, Joe and Dion look at what a sporting humiliation does to a team and if they can ever recover.
Joe identifies failings in the Cork management that led to the defeat on Sunday but it doesn’t end there. He looks at the strike action when Cork were marshalled by Donal Óg Cusack, the consequences of which are still being felt today. Only that can explain what happened in the second half.
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One of Ireland’s great writers Joseph O’Neill is today’s guest on Free State.
O’Neill’s novels Netherland and Godwin have reflected the centrality of sport in people’s lives. He talks about why sport matters so much and why in Ireland it matters even more than that. He reflects on his own upbringing and how he was raised in Holland before becoming a barrister and practising law in London. He has lived in New York for a generation and he reflect on how the media and the Democrats have enabled the rise of a dictator. And on All Ireland hurling final weekend, he shares the story of the time his father played hurling for Cork.
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The Fairground Park pool in St Louis Missouri was the largest pool in America when it was built in 1919. It had enough room for 10,000 swimmers. All of them white.
But when integration came to Missouri, rather than allow all races to swim, the Fairground Park pool closed.
This phenomenon was explored by writer Heather McGhee and on Free State today, Joe and Dion examine the drained pool politics of unionism and the Orange order in Northern Ireland.
When the North Down Cricket Club cross-community sports camp sports was blocked following an online backlash it was a perfect example of how narrow mindedness hurts everyone.
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Jim McGuinness isn’t a pragmatist. He is, Joe says, a pragmatic extremist.
On Free State, Joe and Dion look at the clash between genius and control.
Through the history of sport, geniuses have always made their own way and systems have been devised to stop them. Will this be the case when David Clifford’s Kerry play McGuinness’s Donegal?
We look at how McGuinness saw the opportunity in the new rules before anyone else and what that tells us about his managerial genius.
Dion has been at the England-India game at Lord’s and he talks about the instinctive uncoachable genius that can often undo any system. But will genius be enough to undo Jim McGuinness’s?
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In January, Timothy O’Grady joined Dion and Joe on the podcast to talk about Say Nothing and what it got wrong.
What stayed in people’s minds was his reading from his novel Monaghan.
With the publication of that novel this summer, Tim returns to Free State to talk about what he has learned about war and killing through years talking to people involved in the Troubles. He explains how it shaped his novel and he talks about the work he’s doing with his friend Stephen Rea on the actor’s memoirs.
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When the pictures emerged of the loyalist bonfire in Moygashel in Co Tyrone, most people were horrified at the migrant boat effigy at the top.
Politicians condemned it and called for action but others insisted it was in fact an act or ‘artistic protest’.
On Free State, Joe and Dion look at the celebrations around the Twelfth of July, not as the desperate acts of a lost people, but as an artistic installation.
Have we failed to understand the subversive power and artistic merit of Loyalism for generations? Or should we look at this artistic protest as a brutal sign of a community punching down as they search for people to blame?
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What kind of world do you think you’re living in?
Most people when asked will have one view but on Free State today, Joe explains a surprising truth.
Joe was in Portugal last week when Diogo Jota and his brother Andre Silva died so tragically. As Joe watched the funeral he noticed things about the community of Gondomar where Jota and his brother were from.
Joe and Dion talk about the times when community matters and when we lose sight of it. Dion also offers a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist: how to fix hurling
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Sahar Delijani was born in Evin Prison in Tehran. Her mother, who had been part of the movement that toppled the Shah in Iran, had been jailed as the new regime silenced some of the coalition that brought it to power. Her uncle was subsequently one of many political prisoners executed by the regime in 1988.
Sahar Delijani wrote about those experiences in her bestselling novel, Children of Jacaranda Tree.
On June 23 Israel bombed Evin Prison during their attacks on Iran and 71 people including jailed dissidents were killed.
On Free State today Sahar Delijani recounts her own experiences in Iran and why those experiences have made her more fearful of the west and Israel's demonisation of Iran. She talks about how the dangerous talk of regime change threatens ordinary Iranians. She explains why people have lost faith in the west and why Israel’s attempts to look for change would be laughable if it wasn't so dangerous.
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In the aftermath of having their US visas revoked following their comments at Glastonbury, Bob Vylan issued a statement saying they were “a distraction from the story”.
“We are not for the death of Jews, Arabs or any other race or group of people,” their statement said. “We are for the dismantling of a violent military machine … a machine that has destroyed much of Gaza.”
On Free State today, Joe and Dion look at why Bob Vylan are not a distraction, it is more dangerous than that. Instead they explain why they, like Kneecap, are being turned into a futile sacrifice, not to distract from the genocide but to brainwash the gullible into believing they aren’t seeing what they know they’re seeing.
In the week that Palestine Action were banned alongside two neo Nazi groups, they ask what has happened to a society that foams with outrage over comments on a stage but remains quiet about a genocide.
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