Free State with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning

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 which is a global event. Last year nearly a million people attended the Fleadh in Wexford.But be warned. All this music and culture is not what it appears. A DUP councillor has warned that a spin off event in Bangor has potential to cause ‘ill feeling’ because it takes place on the same day as the Ulster Championships for Pipe Bands.On Free State today Joe and Dion look at how a strand of unionism sees everything as a zero sum game. But it’s a game they are losing.

‘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. Nigel Farage is promising to build bigger prisons and send prisoners to Estonia and El Salvador. There are more people in prison in the US than in any country in the world.On Free State today we look at how society gave up on prisoners. We examine why populism and media scares matter more than any idea of rehabilitation. And there is news on the GAA quiz which was postponed as Joe questioned Dion’s right to even answer the questions. Send your questions to info@freestatepodcast.com

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 by the Spiritan Order over abuse that took place in its schoolsThe statement by the schools spoke of the “great harm done” to pupils over an extended period.It added that “Philip Feddis, Corry McMahon, Louis Hoffman and John Coulter, all of whom left school at the end of the 1970s, showed extraordinary courage in bringing the scale of the problem to attention. Over the last number of years the determination these four men and indeed many others have displayed, warrants our collective gratitude.”On Free State today, two of those extraordinarily courageous men Corry McMahon and John Coulter talk to us about their years in Blackrock College and the junior school Willow Park. They talk about the darkness and the light of their schooldays and the joy of friendship which has helped them deal with the horrors.They speak about the restorative justice programme they have worked on for the past four years and what needs to happen next.

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 world is not a safe place for many these days but in this time of danger, the residents of Fivemiletown are particularly at risk.On Free State today we look at why Fivemiletown appeared on a Russian strike list. What does it tell us about the drumbeats for war that the residents of the village are being told to prepare for nuclear annihilation?Meanwhile Dion prepares for a purity test as Joe decides to set a GAA quiz for him. Send your questions to info@freestatepodcast.com

When Nicolás Maduro, the deposed Venezuelan leader, appeared in a federal courtroom in lower Manhattan, he insisted ‘I am still president of my country.’Maduro was labouring under a misapprehension, not just about his own country but about how things now work.On Free State today, Joe and Dion look at the new age of empire as Donald Trump’s gangsterism spreads across the world.America now has Venezuela’s oil but it also has exercised muscle and for a bully like Trump that is its own reward.They explain why international law matters except when it doesn’t and they wonder what this means for the FIFA peace prize.

"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/TwitterOn 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.This episode originally aired on May 6th 2025