Free State with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning

This week Irish life returned to normal and Irish politics resumed its normal parlour games. The resignation of Michael Healy Rae was described repeatedly as a ‘bombshell’ and the political parties shouted at each other in the Dail. Outside protestors and malcontents hovered but will their protests take on those who are really exploiting the ordinary people? Since Israel and the US launched their...

‘Nobody has a right to blockade our country,’ Micheal Martin stated when announcing what the government would be doing in response to the protests that brought the country to a halt. But what does it tell us about the fraying of the social contract that people felt they had to take to the barricades in their country to demonstrate how desperate things have become? On Free State today Joe and Dion...

“It is a low bar to ask that people aren’t killed so that I can fill up my car.” Alex Perry is an investigative journalist who has uncovered an extraordinary story. It is a story where the backdrop is the new imperialism. If the first scramble for Africa was led by the imperial nations in the 19th century, the second has been by the oil companies that have so much power in the world today. In Irel...

How close did the world come to annihilation this week? What will happen the next time Trump parades his negotiating skills and can the world always be sure that Trump Always Chickens Out? On Free State, Dion and Joe reflect on a ceasefire which was a defeat for Trump and ignored by Benjamin Netanyahu. Does this mean peace or does it mean we should enjoy the little things that make life worth livi...

Stalin was reported to have asked ‘How many divisions does the pope have?’ when told of the Vatican’s view on world affairs. On Easter Sunday, Pope Leo addressed the crowds at St Peter’s Square and said, "Let those who have weapons lay them down. Let those who have the power to unleash wars choose peace." Shortly afterwards, Donald Trump gave his view on world affairs. “Open the F***in’ Strait, yo...

Olivier Norek says he has never met a killer who wasn’t eaten inside by what they’d done. Before he became a writer, Norek was a policeman in the most dangerous parts of Paris and a humanitarian worker in the former Yugoslavia. On Free State today, Norek tells the story of Simo Hayha, the sniper known as the White Death, who fought for Finland during the Winter War when the Soviet Union invaded th...

When a California court ruled that Meta and YouTube had deliberately designed addictive products, many declared that this might be the Big Tobacco moment for the tech companies. The plaintiff was awarded $6 million damages. Meta’s revenue in three months last year was 60 billion dollars. Their share price was unaffected. On Free State today we ask what will it take to make a difference?  If t...

Trust the process has become one of world’s worst cliches. But what if the alternative was worse? What if ‘trusting the emotions all around’ was the other option? On Free State today Joe and Dion wonder why Ireland lose.  The country will not be at the World Cup this summer. How much was this down to the Irish players’ inability to keep their heads and be led by the emotion that was all aroun...

Toby Harnden was sent to Northern Ireland for the first time in 1995. A reporter for the Daily Telegraph, it was an assignment that was not expected to produce much at a time when the peace process was the dominant story. But Harnden became fascinated with the republican movement and in particular how South Armagh had become a place that, not only could not be touched by the British government, bu...

“The White House does not tolerate any administration official illegally profiteering off of insider knowledge, and any implication that officials are engaged in such activity without evidence is baseless and irresponsible reporting.” Fifteen minutes before Donald Trump posted that there had been ‘productive conversations’ with Iran, $580 million in oil bets were made in a period of 60 seconds. Wh...

When Michael Lyster started presenting The Sunday Game, Ronald Reagan was seeking reelection as president of the United States. When he stopped presenting it, Donald Trump was president for the first time. For 34 years Lyster was the presenter who shaped our summer days. He was the accompaniment to the drama and the tension, the celebration and the argument. It is no wonder that when his death was...

Adam Doyle, the artist known as Spicebag, achieved some notoriety when his art depicting evictions became a talking point in the national media. He is an artist of significance and he is also doing significant work. On Free State today he tells us about the project he is involved where his merchandise has funded a centre for children in Gaza The Ionad Hind Rajab is an Irish–Palestinian solidarity...

Micheal Martin emerged from his meeting with Donald Trump on St Patrick’s Day with the commentariat purring. He had stood up for Europe, for Keir Starmer and, in part, for Winston Churchill but that didn’t matter. He had survived. On Free State today we ask does any of it matter. As oil and gas fields in Iran, Qatar and Saudi Arabia are attacked, oil prices rise and governments insist they will pr...

When the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission threatened to revoke broadcasters’ licences because of their coverage of the war, some complained that it violated the First Amendment, guaranteeing freedom of speech. On Free State we look at what those rights mean in a country where Trump must get what he wants. We go back to what happened in Iraq when the country was broken apart, its r...

Riham Jafari has heard the stories of her grandparents. The stories of a time before the Nakba when her family lived a simple existence in a village outside Jerusalem. They enjoyed farming the land and their independence. It was a “beautiful life” her grandparents said before occupation came. After the Nakba, they lived in a camp one square kilometre, crowded with nowhere for children to play. Rih...

The story of Casement Park is a metaphor for post conflict Northern Ireland. Once there was a dream about a shining stadium on a hill, a stadium which would benefit everyone in the north when it hosted matches at the European Championships in 2028. Two years ago, that dream ended when the British government said they would not fund the cost of the stadium which had ‘risen dramatically’ during year...

“Based on what I’ve seen, it was done by Iran.” When Donald Trump spoke on Air Force One about the bombing of a school in southern Iran, he was, of course, lying. That is what Trump does but in the attack on Iran he has also tapped into the American fantasy about their righteousness that can only be fully displayed through military force.  When Stanley Kubrick made Dr Strangelove, he was fasc...

Professor Charles Knowles is a very smart man. He is a surgeon and clinical researcher. He is able to apply logic and reason to find solutions to most things. But logic and reason made no sense when it came to his own drinking. On Free State today Charles Knowles explains why we drink and why we drink too much. He talks to Dion about his own struggles and why there is a genetic reason for many peo...

When a US submarine torpedoed an Iranian warship in the Indian Ocean, 150 Iranians were believed to have been killed. ‘It thought it was safe in international waters,” Pete Hegseth the US’s self styled Secretary of War proclaimed. “Instead it was sunk by a torpedo, a quiet death.” More than a thousand civilians have been killed since the US and Israel launched their offensive. This is a campaign t...

A few minutes before 1pm on the Saturday of the 2026 GAA Congress some protestors forced their way inside. The response to this protest may have far reaching implications for the GAA. On Free State we look at how the GAA has failed to deal with the understandable anger about the Allianz sponsorship deal. Dion and Joe argue about how they should be addressing it and Jarlath Burns’s comments on Satu...

Labour Together was set up in the summer of 2015 as a way of uniting the UK Labour Party, but with the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader it soon became something very different. Driven by Morgan McSweeney, it became a means of destroying Jeremy Corbyn‘s leadership ‘by any means necessary. Keir Starmer was the vessel to take Labour away from Corbyn‘s politics. On Free State today, Peter Geog...

In the House of Commons, a Labour minister described Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor as a ‘man on a constant self-aggrandising and self-enriching hustle; a rude, arrogant and entitled man who could not distinguish between the public interest, which he said he served, and his own private interest’. This is undoubtedly true but is Andrew the exception or the norm? On Free State we look how the establishm...

What links Bono and Tony Blair? You may be asking, what doesn’t?  Both men have made the news as U2’s new EP was released and Blair addressed the world as part of Donald Trump’s Board of Peace. But what is the fervour that drives them? On Free State today we look at Blair and Bono and what happens when a man believes he can change the world. What is Blair’s goal on the Board of Peace and why...

In March 1922, a relatively unknown member of the IRA was asked by journalists if they could take from his answers that Ireland would have a military dictatorship. ‘You can take it anyway you like,’ he replied. On Free State today we look at the life of Rory O’Connor who was prepared to go to any lengths for the Republic of his ideals.  We talk to the author of a new biography of O’Connor Ger...

In the 19th century, Manchester first began to be a destination for immigrants.  It was Scottish, Welsh and Irish in huge numbers who shaped the city and made it their home. Over the next hundred years, immigrants from across the world turned Manchester into the city it was. It was this vibrant and complex city that Matt Busby loved and which saw him shape the great Manchester United sides in...