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PODCAST

Free State with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning

Gold Hat Productions

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

news politics

All Episodes

52:10

The True History of Iran (and Mayo footballers)

Free State with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning ·

2025/06/17

The world is moving closer to annihilation and still people beat the drumbeats for war.On Free State today, Joe and Dion look at how Israel’s attack on Iran is a case of history repeating itself.Iran is the bogey man that allows warmongering to prosper and no matter how many times this has happened before, the noises are still the same and as bloodthirsty.Joe also explains why Mayo footballers aren’t serious people after their defeat to Donegal. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more

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1:13:58

Famine, plague and slaughters: Ireland and The Great...

Free State with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning ·

2025/06/14

“Political history, not natural history, turned a potato failure into a famine.”Between 1845 and 1851, one million people on the island of Ireland died of famine-related causes. Another 1.5 million people emigrated.On Free State today, historian Padraic X Scanlan, author of the outstanding history of the Famine, Rot, joins us to discuss what caused Ireland to suffer as it did.He considers the main characters like Charles Treveleyan and the failure of an ideology that believed in the pure virtue of

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52:21

Ballymena Blues. Why Ulster loyalists hate everyone...

Free State with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning ·

2025/06/12

In Ballymena this week, those who have come from abroad to make their lives in the town were putting union jacks in the window in the hope it would prevent them being attacked.In the random and brutal rioting that saw the homes and businesses of foreigners attacked and terrorised this was they did to protect themselves and their families.On Free State today, Joe and Dion ask what is the root cause of this savagery which the police described as feral. Is it hatred or fear, supremacy or

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47:18

"God save Oireland ! " said the heroes feat. Conor...

Free State with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning ·

2025/06/10

“The kids were coming down for breakfast when these five men wearing cargo pants, big jackets arrived. They came into the third floor, stood in front of the bedroom door, took the three kids back in and told them to pack up. We heard them say: ‘You are going to be deported.’ As soon as the other children heard then they were all crying. It was such a horrific scene.”This was how a resident in an IPAS centre in West Dublin described the scenes when families were deported last week and sent back to

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52:13

Irish not Scouse? How Liverpool became a global city...

Free State with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning ·

2025/06/07

TP O’Connor was elected as MP for the Liverpool constituency of Liverpool Scotland in 1885. He represented that constituency from then until his death in 1929. TP O’Connor was an Irish Nationalist MP and he is the only Irish Nationalist ever elected to a constituency outside the island of Ireland.On Free State today, we look at the story of Liverpool and Ireland and the tensions that travelled from Ireland to the city. While it returned a nationalist MP, it also had 50 Orange Order lodge by the

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48:51

Why Gerry Adams beat the BBC

Free State with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning ·

2025/06/05

When a jury found in Gerry Adams’s favour in his case against the BBC, executives from the British Broadcasting Corporation sounded like they had won.On Free State today, Joe and Dion disagree about the importance of the verdict in the libel trial. Joe explains why the jury reached that verdict and why the BBC’s evidence was flawed.They look at how the BBC was a propaganda tool in the north for too long and why this verdict might be a long awaited turning point. Hosted on Acast. See

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49:29

Highway to Hell. An Irish surgeon’s journey into...

Free State with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning ·

2025/06/03

“Our revenge will be the laughter of our children,” Bobby Sands famously said. But what happens in a land where children are being killed in their thousands?On Free State today, trauma surgeon Morgan McMonagle provides a harrowing insight into his time working in the Nasser Hospital in Gaza.Morgan went to Gaza for the first time in 2024 and returned in 2025. He talks about how Israel’s onslaught over the past 20 months has destroyed a land and a people.He talks about the playgrounds that are no

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42:19

Love, loss and destruction. Writer Oona Frawley on...

Free State with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning ·

2025/05/31

How do we make sense of a world when it no longer contains the people we love?How do we make peace with the past when it’s still a mystery?On Free State today, writer Oona Frawley talked about her new memoir This Interim Time. A book about the loss of her parents and the gratitude that comes from her children.She talks about her own father’s struggle with alcoholism and Dion reflects on how drink and its consequences can be handed down through generations. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for

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41:36

The Liverpool Parade and why white nationalism is on...

Free State with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning ·

2025/05/29

In a recent survey, supporters of Nigel Farage ranked ‘being English’ ahead of ‘being a parent’ as a signifier of who they are.How has it come to this? Even as the dissatisfaction with Brexit grows, Farage who drove so much of the vote by playing on the most irrational fears, is England's most popular politician.On Free State today, Joe and Dion look at the rise of English nationalism and what it means for the rest of Britain, as well as Ireland.They look at the frenzy within minutes of the

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36:16

The Persecution of Kneecap: A legal perspective with...

Free State with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning ·

2025/05/27

When Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh was charged with terror offences, it made global headlines. The world reported the charge that the man had allegedly displaying a flag in support of proscribed organisation Hezbollah in November 2024.Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh is better known as Mo Chara of Kneecap and he is alleged to have committed the act at a gig in Kentish Town in London 18 months ago. He denies the charge.On Free State today, Joe provides a legal insight into the charge and what it is intended to do. They look

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56:00

How the Northern Bank robbery changed Ireland with...

Free State with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning ·

2025/05/24

On the 20th December, 2004, £26.5 million was stolen in plain sight from the Northern Bank in Belfast. This wasn't a victimless crime, but some saw it as a caper. Most believed only one organisation was capable of pulling off an operation of this scale. On Free State today, the great writer Glenn Patterson joins us to discuss his new book on the Northern Bank robbery and what it tells us about Ireland. Patterson talks about his own identity too, growing up in a Protestant estate. Belfast has changed

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41:58

The Assassination of Gary Lineker by the coward BBC

Free State with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning ·

2025/05/22

Gary Lineker will leave the BBC this weekend but why has it come to this?On Free State, Joe and Dion look at how Lineker had a target on his back for years but when he spoke out about Gaza, the clock was ticking.As Israel’s actions in Gaza become more atrocious and babies starve, more and more people are becoming tarred.How has the western world allowed this to happen? How have so many people been silenced when it comes to speaking out on genocide?Joe recalls a situation in his own life when he had

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47:49

Gary Lineker, the Mayo footballers and the mechanics...

Free State with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning ·

2025/05/20

When Keir Starmer said Britain risked becoming an ‘island of strangers’, in whose interests was he speaking?When Gary Lineker left the BBC, was it because he unwittingly shared an antisemitic post - which he subsequently apologised for - or because he had been outspoken on the genocide in Gaza?On Free State today Dion and Joe look at how the world is ordered and what needs to change.They examine how inequality is now hardwired into systems and ask what can be done about it.Joe also has a story of

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52:21

Who by Fire - Living and dying on the border with the...

Free State with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning ·

2025/05/17

Eoin McNamee received a message when his new novel The Bureau was published telling him it was the book he was ‘born to write’.This is not a trite phrase. This is a book about living and dying in the north and how so many people who came into the orbit of McNamee’s father died.Eoin McNamee is our guest on Free State today to tell his story. It is the story of his father too, a complex and complicated personality who, after he was struck off as a solicitor, set up the first Bureau de Change on the

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53:16

Go on home British soldier, go on home - The IRA &...

Free State with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning ·

2025/05/15

When Jon Trigg was sent to Northern Ireland as a young officer, he was going to war. It wasn’t the Troubles or a conflict but a war.Trigg served his tour of duty in 1993 and moved on, but, unusually he returned, not as a soldier but as a writer.In an extraordinary conversation today, Jon Trigg talks to Joe and Dion about his new book on the IRA in Derry. Joe and Jon speak frankly, and sometimes with tension, about the conflict, but also recall the figures from the IRA they both knew.He tells of his

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38:19

Cocaine Nights on the Kyiv Express (feat Emmanuel...

Free State with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning ·

2025/05/13

When is a cocaine spoon not a cocaine spoon? When is a tissue a wrap of an illegal substance?On Free State today look at how a story spreads online as it did over the weekend when Emmanuel Macron, Keir Starmer and Friedrich Merz were filmed on a train going to Kyiv. Soon the idea that drug paraphernalia was in the carriage took hold online.The story was dismissed as fantasy and Russian propaganda but does it demonstrate something more profound: a severe distrust in what people have been asked to

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45:25

Where The Wildelings Are. Writer Lisa Harding on...

Free State with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning ·

2025/05/10

Lisa Harding’s stunning new book The Wildelings is set in a fictional university in Dublin.On Free State today, Lisa talks to us about her own time at Trinity in the 90s, when students would be rated on their looks. She talks to Dion about the male gaze and their shared experiences of drink and how when she became an actress she turned to tequila to take the edge off her anxiety. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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35:27

Skorts, Skirts and Shorts. What will the new pope say?

Free State with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning ·

2025/05/08

Since we launched the podcast, we have never been afraid to ask the big questions. This has sometimes come at a cost but that is the way it has to be. Today we ask one of the questions that will define this generation: what is a skort?On Free State, Joe and Dion wonder why this issue which should be so simply resolved in favour of women in sport became so complicated and laced with bullshit. There are working groups and committees working to resolve the issue going forward to the satisfaction of all

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1:04:27

“I want nothing to do with this.” Gaza & the myth of...

Free State with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning ·

2025/05/06

"One day, when it's safe, when there's no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it's too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this." On October 25 2023, novelist Omar El Akkad posted this message on X.On Free State today Omar El Akkad joins Joe and Dionto talk about how the world looked away. His magisterial new book One Day Everyone Will Always Have Been Against This details the complicity of the west.Gaza is enduring a famine and Israel maintains

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44:55

The Revolutionary Road. Women’s Liberation Movement...

Free State with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning ·

2025/05/03

Rosita Sweetman wanted to change the world. Like many of her generation, she was inspired by the civil rights movement in the US. She became a founder of the women’s liberation movement in Ireland. She was fearless and it was fun.But her life wasn’t. On Free State today Rosita Sweetman talks about her new memoir Girl With A Fork In A World of Soup. She tells us about having to divorce her family and the extraordinary scene when at a family meeting, her sisters were asked by a psychiatrist if any of

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