Free State with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning

The former England football manager Gareth Southgate warned this week that “callous, manipulative and toxic influencers” are having a dangerous effect on the lives of young men. The Netflix drama series Adolescence has captured the public’s imagination because of what it says about the dangers of social media and the corrupting influence of certain figures who warp the brains of young people. Dona...

Conor McGregor’s appearance in the White House for St Patrick’s Day was another insight into Trumpworld. McGregor was claiming to speak for Ireland while the Burkes went to Washington but were left to shout and roar outside. McGregor may seem to have no chance of running for president but Ireland would need to take heed of the forces that have brought Trump to the White House. On Free State t...

When Donald McRae was a young sportswriter, Hugh McIlvanney told him one night at a bar in Las Vegas that as he made a life covering boxing, “ambivalence will be your constant companion”. McRae found the romantic in boxing and particularly in boxers. He was drawn to fighters and trainers rather than promoters and advisers. His gifts as an interviewer meant that men like Tyson Fury revealed their v...

Micheál Martin walked out of the Oval Office feeling triumphant. He had left the lion’s den - or the bully’s lair - without humiliation. Donald Trump demands craven obedience and while history might look differently on those who humoured him, the Taoiseach wasn’t thinking about history. On Free State today, Dion and Joe ask if Micheál Martin had any choice but to laugh along as Trump played his hi...

The Irish establishment is softening people up to sacrifice the country’s neutrality. But why?  On Free State today, Joe and Dion look at how countries throughout history have been organised to prepare for war. They trade on anxiety and fear to push towards increased militarisation. Joe looks at Simon Harris’s recent interview with RTÉ about Israel and why the government is looking to re...

Colum McCann won’t look back. His life as a writer has always drawn him to the edge. In an exhilarating conversation on Free State today, McCann talks about what is needed to change the world at this time of peril. He speaks about his new novel Twist and how the connected world we take for granted exists precariously in the darkness of the ocean. This new colonialism demonstrates why the real powe...

When Trevor Birney was arrested by the PSNI in 2018, he was thrown in a police cell and told an incredible tale. His documentary No Stone Unturned had named the man many believed was responsible for the Loughinisland Massacre in 1994. Birney was told by the police that this man’s business was being damaged by the documentary and for this reason they could charge him with breaching the Official Sec...

Volodymyr Zelensky walked into a trap when he sat down beside Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Friday. He was surrounded by bullies who were emboldened by the knowledge that totalitarians around the world had their backs. Trump and JD Vance toyed with Zelensky, dismissing him as a weak man when he has shown more courage than they ever did. On Free State today, Joe and Dion look at Trumpworld, th...

On the evening of June 18, 1994, Ireland stopped. At the Giants Stadium in New York, Ireland were playing Italy in the first match of the World Cup. Across the country, people were making plans to watch the game. In The Heights Bar in Loughinisland Co Down, the small community had gathered on a Saturday evening with the added excitement of the game. In Belfast and other places there were fears of...

When Donald Trump shared an AI video of Gaza, the world responded as it often does to Trump’s behaviour, with a mixture of disbelief, shock, resignation and laughter. “Gaza 2025…What’s next,” read the caption before delivering a vision of what’s next. "Donald's coming to set you free,” the video’s song’s declared, “bringing the light for all to see, no more tunnels, no more fear: Trump Gaza's fina...

Brendan ‘Bik’ McFarlane’s life could be a metaphor for The Troubles. When he was 16, Bik McFarlane left Belfast to train as a priest in North Wales for two years. But with the nationalist community under siege, he cut short his studies and joined the IRA. During the hunger strikes, he was the commander of the IRA in the H-Blocks, with the unenviable task of being the man whose duty it was to let B...

It was a week when decades happened. By the end of it, Steve Bannon was doing a Nazi salute, as Trump continued his policy of siding with the strongmen and rewarding their acts of war and aggression. On Free State, Dion and Joe look at what comes next. As Germany prepares for elections this weekend, will there be a further sense that whenever things have hit rock bottom there is further still to f...

At the age of 16 Joe Lynskey joined a monastery with the intention of becoming a Cisterian monk. He spent six years in Mount Melleray monastery in Waterford but he decided to leave the order. He joined the IRA instead. He became a founding member of the Provisional IRA and the intelligence officer for the Belfast Brigade. They called him ‘the Mad Monk’ but he also reclaimed the youth he had abando...

The last episode of Free State ended with Joe and Dion arguing while guest Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc kept the peace.  Today, they continue the conversation about how Ireland deals with the trauma of the wars fought on this island over the past 100 years. What would have become of Michael Collins if he hadn’t been killed? Would he have continued to simply be a fine finance minister as some Fine Gael...

The story of the disappeared in Irish history is long and murky. Why are some of the tales wrapped up in myth and others part of the barbaric recent past? On Free State today Padraig Óg Ó Ruairc joins Dion and Joe to talk about his book The Disappeared. Dion and Joe turn on each other as they interrogate the past and examine these tragic stories. Why do the restless dead haunt Irish history and wh...

As Elon Musk and Donald Trump take control in America, what is the consequence of resistance? Musk campaigns against the unelected bureaucrats even though he is unelected too. Meanwhile he delivers dog whistles and simple fascist salutes for the far right. But what does it matter in Ireland? On Free State today we look at the international network supporting the far right movement in Ireland north...

On Sunday evening, Donald Trump became the first sitting American president to attend the Superbowl. His attendance, in the eyes of many, sealed the union between American Football and American Nationalism. On Free State today, Joe and Dion look at how the NFL became part of the US war machine. From Vietnam to Iraq, the sport embraced militarisation but insisted that sport and politics should neve...

There are times when, as a great writer said, the past beats inside us like a second heart. The death of Paddy Cullen was, for so many people, one of those moments. It transported them back to the days of Heffo’s Army and the rivalry with Kerry which were the foundation for a million sporting dreams. On a Free State Special, Joe remembers the Paddy Cullen he knew, a member of that Dublin team who...

In 1981, the FBI raided the New York apartment of a 27-year-old Englishman who they believed had been commissioned by the Provisional IRA to murder a unionist politician. On Free State today, Aaron Edwards continues his journey inside the psyche of unionism and reveals the details of that extraordinary story. He talks to Dion and Joe about unionism’s reluctance to change. The goodies and baddies m...

CS Lewis wrote that there would be no better to place to live than Northern Ireland ‘if only I could deport the Ulstermen’. On Free State today Joe and Dion talk to the world-renowned historian Aaron Edwards about the predicament of unionism today. Is unionism a philosophy or an anxiety? Do unionist politicians have a strategy or are they trapped by parochialism? Edwards talks about his own upbrin...

What were the challenges in being part of the resistance to the Nazis? What was the peculiar torment for women who took on the Reich? On a Free State Special, Dion talks to author Joseph O’Connor about his gripping new book The Ghosts of Rome. It continues the story of the Rome Escape Line, the extraordinary group that smuggled allied soldiers into the Vatican and away from the Nazis. He also look...

When President Donald Trump said he wanted to ‘clean out’ Gaza, where was the condemnation from world leaders? People might dismiss it as just another crazy thing Donald Trump says but it was more revealing that that. On Free State today, Joe and Dion look at how the world is being reshaped by the response of the west to Gaza.  They consider Pankaj Mishra’s new book The World After Gaza and w...

What does giving poitín to a cow who has just calved have to do with the new rules in Gaelic football? On Free State today, Joe explains how Jim Gavin’s plans will allow Gaelic football to embrace chaos again. A game that has been coached to the brink of extinction will be reborn by a return of the skills that made people love it in the first place. Dion wonders if you can ever go back, but a...

Storm Eowyn swept across Ireland on Friday morning as winds of biblical force shook the nation. 32 counties were joined in a red alert and in towns, villages and cities people sheltered from the storm. But perhaps Storm Eowyn’s greatest show of force was to silence Joe Brolly, as he was among hundreds of thousands who lost electricity and internet. On Free State today, Dion looks back on episode t...

Who is Michael Lowry and what does he want? On Wednesday, the sitting of the Dail had to be abandoned after the opposition collectively resisted attempts to allow those supporting the new government to speak also as opposition. Micheál Martin called it a ‘subversion of the constitution’. But Micheál Martin has said many things in the Dail, especially about the effective leader of those independent...