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 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.
Episodes
Mentioned books
May 27, 2025 • 36min
The Persecution of Kneecap: A legal perspective with Joe Brolly, barrister-at-law
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 too at the story of Hezbollah and why they are a more complex organisation than some allow.They also consider the chilling effect when artists worldwide are silenced and why it is happening now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
May 24, 2025 • 56min
How the Northern Bank robbery changed Ireland with Glenn Patterson
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 he says, but he reflects on what he believes is still holding integration back. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
May 22, 2025 • 42min
The Assassination of Gary Lineker by the coward BBC
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 to defend himself from accusations of antisemitism. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
May 20, 2025 • 48min
Gary Lineker, the Mayo footballers and the mechanics of change
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 inequality of his own and naturally it involves the Mayo footballers. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
May 15, 2025 • 53min
Go on home British soldier, go on home - The IRA & me, with Captain Jonathan Trigg of the Royal Anglian Regiment
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 difficulty in getting former IRA men to trust him and where they found common ground. Jon recalls too the decisions that led to the Paratroopers moving into Derry on Bloody Sunday and the massacre that followed. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
May 13, 2025 • 38min
Cocaine Nights on the Kyiv Express (feat Emmanuel Macron, Keir Starmer and the German guy)
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 believe in the west?Dion doesn’t think so and he rants at Joe about the story. But is he just a gullible centrist or is Joe in danger of falling for the craziest online fantasies? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
May 10, 2025 • 45min
Where The Wildelings Are. Writer Lisa Harding on surviving Trinity College, anxiety and the Male Gaze
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.
May 8, 2025 • 35min
Skorts, Skirts and Shorts. What will the new pope say?
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 stakeholders.More importantly, what does it tell us about the world today and its obsession with triviality that the skort takes up so much airtime? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
May 6, 2025 • 1h 4min
Omar El Akkad author of One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This on how the west failed Gaza
"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 Have Always Been Against This details the complicity of the west. Gaza is enduring a famine and Israel maintains a blockade where children’s hunger is a weapon of war and an instrument of monumental cruelty. Omar’s voice is a compelling and necessary counterpoint. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
May 3, 2025 • 45min
The Revolutionary Road. Women’s Liberation Movement Founder Rosita Sweetman on divorcing her family and why Kneecap were right
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 them had slept with her ex husband. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
