Free State with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning
Episodes
Urban-rural toxicity, a Guard's fears for Ireland and the even more toxic Roscommon-Mayo divide
28 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
“I’m getting in touch because I’ve written the attached open letter as a serving Garda,” this email was one of many we received since Sinead O...
Roger Casement - Rebel and Traitor? With Rory Carroll
25 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
“The bravest man it fell to my unhappy lot to execute.” These were the words of the hangman who took Roger Casement to the scaffold in Pentonville...
Power and Control: How a manager falls to earth
23 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
What allows a manager to bring a group with them? What is it? How do they possess it and what happens when they lose it? On Free State today, Joe and ...
The Premature Birth of a Nation with Sinead O'Sullivan
21 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
When Sinead O'Sullivan created a graph which she believed illustrated the problems in Ireland, she hadn't realised what would happen next. She found h...
Why some people fail and some succeed. The story of Roy Keane and Ireland
18 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
As a young Roy Keane headed on the train to Dublin from Cork for a coaching course, he saw some railway workers toiling by the track.‘Look at them f...
Fuel me once: When Leo Varadkar ran out of diesel
16 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This week Irish life returned to normal and Irish politics resumed its normal parlour games.The resignation of Michael Healy Rae was described repeate...
How the fuel protests exposed the myth of Irish prosperity
14 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
‘Nobody has a right to blockade our country,’ Micheal Martin stated when announcing what the government would be doing in response to the protests...
The Killing Fields of Oil and Gas
11 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
“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 ...
Trump’s Derangement Syndrome
09 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
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 b...
Open the F*****’ Strait, you crazy bastards: Who will stand up to Donald Trump?
07 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
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, Po...
The country that defied an empire
04 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Victims in the Age of Perfection: The Social Media Pandemic
02 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
When a California court ruled that Meta and YouTube had deliberately designed addictive products, many declared that this might be the Big Tobacco mom...
Why Ireland Lost - Living in the Age of Anxiety
31 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Prince Andrew and Bandit Country
30 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
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 t...
The Wolves of Wall Street - How Trump & Co are making billions from the Iran war
26 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
“The White House does not tolerate any administration official illegally profiteering off of insider knowledge, and any implication that officials a...
Michael Lyster: When We Were Kings
24 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
When Michael Lyster started presenting The Sunday Game, Ronald Reagan was seeking reelection as president of the United States. When he stopped presen...
How To Make the World A Better Place
21 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
World For Sale. The Real Truth about Oil Prices
19 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
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 Sta...
Poems for a world gone to shit. And Conor McGregor’s plan to end the war.
17 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
When the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission threatened to revoke broadcasters’ licences because of their coverage of the war, some co...
Gaza. A fantasy ceasefire
14 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
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 o...
What Casement Park tells us about a United Ireland
12 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
10 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
“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,...
Why We Drink Too Much
07 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Iran - How to Destroy a Country (Prayerfully). A Trump-Netanyahu production
05 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
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 int...
Standing with Allianz - How the GAA Became What It Once Loathed
03 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
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 re...
Grotesque, Unbelievable, Bizarre and Unprecedented - The End of Keir Starmer
28 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
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 bec...
In Defence of the Realm: Prince Andrew, Mountbatten and the British Establishment’s protection racket
26 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In the House of Commons, a Labour minister described Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor as a ‘man on a constant self-aggrandising and self-enriching hustle;...
Bono and Tony Blair's Mission from God
24 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
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 Spiritual Fanatic who shaped the IRA
21 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Jim Ratcliffe and the business of hate
19 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
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 c...
Thoughts and Prayers. Why Ireland WILL play Israel.
17 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
When the Irish football team was drawn against Israel last week, many people in Ireland immediately hoped the game wouldn’t happen.Instead as the da...
How the CIA really operates with David McCloskey
14 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
David McCloskey says he was once a clandestine journalist. Another way of putting it is that he once worked for the CIA.McCloskey is now a spy novelis...
Democracy Dies in Darkness - Trump’s dismantling of the US media
12 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
‘Doors open at the Watergate’. Those words in June 1972 signalled a break in at the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate Building. They ...
Derry or Londonderry? The DUP’s doomed war on reality.
10 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
When Gregory Campbell approached President Connolly in Derry last week, what was the purpose of his intervention?Was he trying to make a good faith ca...
These Sacred Vows
07 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In Ireland, we like to think that the class system is something that dominates Britain. But it shapes this country too.RTE’s new comedy drama These ...
Peter Mandelson and Epstein’s island. The spider in the elites’ global web
05 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In the House of Commons, Keir Starmer said that Peter Mandelson had ‘betrayed our country, our parliament and my party’.But what was that betrayal...
The Melania documentary. A lesson in presidential bribery
03 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
‘If they showed this film on a plane, people would still walk out.’As Melania, the documentary about the US First Lady, opened at the weekend, thi...
Peter Oborne - ‘Trump’s Board of Peace is a Board of War'
31 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In the Orwellian world we now live in, gaslighting is now standard. When Donald Trump creates a Board of Peace, we know that where it says one thing, ...
Allianz’s National Football League, Trump’s World Cup and the silencing of sporting integrity
29 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
When the president of the German football club St Pauli said it was "clearly time to at least discuss a boycott" of the World Cup in the US this summe...
ICE Cold in America: The Execution of Alex Pretti
27 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
“We have all seen the video and our eyes don’t lie,” a friend of Alex Pretti said in the aftermath of Pretti’s murder.He was speaking as Donal...
Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
24 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
What would it mean to be free of financial insecurity? Why does money scare us so much?On Free State today money expert Eoin McGee talks about how we ...
Trump backs down on Greenland and is Tony Blair the world’s worst person?
22 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
When Donald Trump backed down on Greenland, he tried to make it sound like a victory.But what caused him to cave? Western leaders have tried to placat...
From Dingle to Senegal. Can VAR remedy GAA injustice?
20 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
When the Senegal team walked off the pitch in the last seconds of the AFCON final, were we witnessing a moment of brave resistance or gamesmanship?Was...
'The two things DJ looked for were attention and money’
17 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
What drove DJ Carey? What did he believe of the fraud and deception that ended up with him being sent to prison? And as he faces life as a social pari...
Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann - the musical wing of the IRA
15 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In August Belfast will host Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann. More than half a million people will visit the city from around the world for the festival whi...
Nigel Farage’s Reform Prison Blues
13 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
‘A society,’ Dostoevsky said, ‘should be judged not by how it treats its outstanding citizens but how it treats its prisoners.’In the U.K. Nig...
A Few Good Men: The past pupils who took on Blackrock College
10 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In November, 2022, the principals of Blackrock College and its two junior schools issued a statement. It followed a public apology that had been made ...
The Marinera Tanker and the Russian Invasion of Fivemiletown
08 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
As the US military pursued the Russian tanker Marinera in the North Atlantic, a village in South Tyrone might have been paying close attention.The wor...
Make Venezuela Great Again
06 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
When Nicolás Maduro, the deposed Venezuelan leader, appeared in a federal courtroom in lower Manhattan, he insisted ‘I am still president of my cou...
Swimming song - Staying afloat against impossible odds
01 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
"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 wil...
Best of Free State - How AI colonised the planet. With Karen Hao
30 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
There are those who believe Artificial Intelligence will lead to the extinction of mankind. There are those who believe AI will save the world.On ...
Colm Toibin - ‘The problem in life is always middle aged men’
27 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Colm Toibin returns to the Free State studio for what is now the traditional Christmas interview.He reflects on the year when he turned 70, why there ...
Best of Free State - Keith Donald
25 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
First there was the music. Keith Donald was always looking to escape. Music offered the first exit. Then came drink.Keith Donald was abused as a ...
A Free State Family Christmas
23 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Why do so many of us still cherish Christmas? And why do so many find it a tough time of year?On Free State today, Joe and Dion reflect on the po...
'If I was in despair I wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning’ - Leon Diop on building a New Ireland
20 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When he was 11, Leon Diop had his first experience of aggressive racism. But his identity was something he wrestled with in many ways.In a remark...
Rule West Britannia
18 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Causes, as we know, are notoriously bloodthirsty,’ James Baldwin wrote. What does it do to do somebody when they have crossed the boundary into...
Stakeknife, MI5 and the dirtiest war
16 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When the state sanctions it, is it murder? When the state protects its agents from the consequences of their crimes, how long before cynicism corrupts...
Eoin Ó Broin - Why the government doesn’t want to fix the housing crisis
13 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1948, Herbert Simms, under increasing pressure from the demands of his job, took his own life.The pressure came from his job as Dublin’s housing ...
Role Play with AI Girls and Boys - Harmless fun or the end of the world?
11 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
During the heroin epidemic in Dublin in the 1980s, one drug baron infamously remarked as he was jailed, ‘If you think we’re bad, wait til you see ...
The Peace President - Infantino drags FIFA to a new low
09 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When Gianni Infantino created FIFA’s Peace Prize, how could he have imagined that the inaugural winner would be his great friend Donald Trump.But th...
Why I Quit the US Government
06 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“I believe to the core of my soul that the response Israel is taking, and with it the American support both for that response and for the status quo...
2030 A Space Odyssey - Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid
04 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Are there reasons to embrace AI? Are the doomsayers wrong and the apocalyptic warnings overstated? What if an ordinary person can access medical or le...
Bohemian Rhapsody. Dan Lambert, the powerhouse behind Kneecap & Bohemian FC
02 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Daniel Lambert is many things, football man, band manager and activist.Kneecap’s manager was the driving force behind the motion approved by the FAI...
Champion jockey Oisin Murphy on surviving on vodka and chips
29 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Oisin Murphy has been the Champion Jockey in Britain for the past two years. He will travel the country and beyond in pursuit of a winner. Horse racin...
A One - AI and the new colonists
27 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When Donald Trump’s Education Secretary Linda McMahon called ‘AI’ ‘A-One’ it was treated as a gaffe that said a lot about the intellectual c...
Arise Knocknagoshel - Why Sport has to be about community
25 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Sport is what sustains so many of us through the winter. Ireland is a sporting country but what does that mean?On Free State today, we ask if Ireland ...
Colin Davidson - ‘There were moments of trauma in my childhood'
22 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Colin Davidson is one of Ireland’s great artists.In a raw and powerful conversation, he joins us on Free State today to talk about a childhood that ...
How fortunate it is to be Irish
20 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What are the things that matter in this world? What do we mean by the common good?On Free State today Joe talks about the extraordinary beauty and gra...
Troy Parrott and the joy of living in the now
18 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Troy Parrott has transformed the mood of the nation. On Free State today we ask why the player and the Ireland team have had the impact they had?...
How Ben Dunne bought and sold Ireland
15 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
‘Thanks a million, big fella.’ Charlie Haughey’s words to Ben Dunne summed up how Ireland worked for many.But who was Ben Dunne and what were th...
The Legend of the Monday Club
13 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What is the difference between nostalgia and lamenting the loss of something special?Have we become a society that places too much emphasis on proprie...
How Trump & Israel made the BBC great again
11 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Donald Trump is threatening to sue the BBC for a billion dollars.On Free State today we ask what is driving this campaign against the BBC?Many studies...
‘I know a lot of people think Nigel Farage is an extremist. I don’t’
08 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Iain Dale knows he is walking on perilous terrain.Dale is one of Britain’s best known broadcasters and podcasters but his new book is about Ireland,...
Zohran Mamdani, Mayor of New York. Why is corporate America so terrified of a 34 year old Muslim?
06 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In numbers not seen for half a century, New Yorkers went out and voted for Zohran Mamdani as their new mayor.Mamdani becomes New York’s first Muslim...
Simon Harris, Elon Musk & the Stranger Danger Delusion
04 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On Halloween night, a fire broke out an IPAS centre in Drogheda. Four children, including a 20-day-old baby, were among those rescued from the top flo...
Learning to cross the road. A life ruined by Opus Dei
01 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On the day of the All Ireland football final in 1978, Anne Marie Allen believed she was beginning the life she dreamed of.She was 15 years old and wan...
DJ Carey - The rise and fall of hurling’s first superstar
30 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
DJ Carey’s sentencing hearing was postponed until Friday. In July, Carey had pleaded guilty to defrauding 13 people.On Free State today, Joe and Dio...
How racism became respectable.
28 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When the shadow Home Secretary Robert Jenrick visited Handsworth in Birmingham he complained about ‘not seeing another white face’.Many were anger...
Accidental Villain or State Sanctioned Murderer? The story of Sir Hugh Tudor
25 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When Winston Churchill wanted someone to deal with the problems in Ireland, he turned to his old friend Sir Hugh Tudor.Tudor went to Ireland una...
Maccabi Tel Aviv - the most misunderstood football hooligans in the world
23 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When Birmingham City Council announced that they would ban Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from attending the football match against Aston Villa next month, Kei...
Michael Lewis & the lion on the pitch
21 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The great Michael Lewis is one of our favourite ever guests on Free State.On an October morning at the end of a long book tour, he asked us to talk ab...
A Time to Mourn and A Time to Dance
18 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2012, while swimming in the Galapagos Islands, Delphine Kelly suffered an aortic aneurysm and drowned.On Free State today, Julia Kelly talks about ...
Donald Trump, The Last Emperor
16 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Is Donald Trump right for once? Is this the deal to end all deals? And could anyone else have pulled it off?On Free State today, Donald Trump’s role...
Mise Éire with Ian Óg Paisley (just don’t mention bilingual signs)
14 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ian Paisley Jr says he might be open to persuasive arguments over a United Ireland. The DUP says it is not interested in engaging or being persuaded o...
Let’s call the presidential election off. feat Maria Steen, Lara Trump... but not Jim Gavin
09 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Is there any point to the presidential election anymore? Maria Steen who failed to get on the ballot has called for the presidential election to ...
How Jim Gavin came undone in the Nasty Rose of Tralee
07 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What was Jim Gavin thinking? What was going through his head when he decided he would like to be Fianna Fail’s candidate for president.On Free State...
Run Zohran Run - How Zohran Mamdani will become mayor of New York and why he terrifies the establishment
04 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In January 2025, Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic Socialist, running for mayor of New York had an eight per cent chance of winning the race. Today, he h...
Catherine Connolly: ‘Tony Blair has committed war crimes’
02 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Where did Catherine Connolly’s belief in social justice come from? If she is elected president, how will she use the presidency to advance those bel...
The Freedom Flotilla - Sailing serenely on dangerous tides.
30 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Freedom Flotilla is reaching a critical point in its journey to Gaza. In the next 24 hours, those aboard the 50 ships will reach what is believed ...
The Hot-Red Forge of Life: David Trimble from Sectarian to Nobel Peace Prize
27 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“He wasn’t the kind of person who ever greeted you,” Ireland’s former president Mary McAleese says of David Trimble, who was a law student at ...
Sportwashing US Imperialism: The great Dave Zirin on the NFL in Ireland, Charlie Kirk and Kneecap
25 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When Dave Zirin flew home to America last week, as a precaution he wrote the telephone numbers of a lawyer and an Irish politician on his arm.He had b...
Heather Humphreys, Jim Gavin’s white trousers and the sash my husband didn’t wear
23 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When Mary Lou McDonald announced a ‘game changing’ candidate many eyes looked to Joe Brolly. But was he ever in the running and would Dion have vo...
Never too old - Finding Ireland, and yourself, in hurling
20 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What happens when a man tries to take up hurling at 41?What does he learn about himself and Ireland’s relationship with its fabled national game.On ...
Leo Varadkar, United Irishman.
18 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
At the age of 45, Leo Varadkar decided to resign as Taoiseach. Many people wondered why.In an extraordinarily frank interview on Free State today, Leo...
Charlie Kirk: The Death of an American Hero
16 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Who was Charlie Kirk and what had he got to do with Ireland?On a heated episode of Free State, Dion and Joe argue about how to respond to the mur...
The Ascent of Man: How Diarmuid Lyng made sense of the world
13 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Diarmuid Lyng led the life many believe is the dream.But it wasn’t his dream.On Free State today he talks about how there has to be another way. How...
Our Man in Washington: Niall Stanage on Epstein, Trump and Down football
11 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What is it like to cover the Donald Trump White House?How should the media engage with the presidency in a time of crisis?On Free State today, Niall S...
FBI Informant-The Shocking Truth about Donald J Trump
09 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson declared last week that Donald Trump had been an FBI informant working to take down Jeffrey E...
Four Green Fields: The Climate Crisis, Culture Wars and Myths
06 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ireland is a rural country. We believe that the values that sustain us are values that have been shaped by our struggle for land and our struggles on ...
The Age of Deportation-How England’s political class embraced the hate movement
04 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When Nigel Farage arrived in Washington this week, a US congressman Jamie Raskin spoke the truth about this snake oil salesman. In Britain the wo...