Free State with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning

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 years of obstruction and resistance. The benefit to all communities of Euro 2028 was gone but for some it mattered more that a GAA stadium would not be built. On Free State we look at what the ongoing battle to build Casement tells us about Northern Ireland. Gordon Lyons, the minister responsible, says there is a ‘funding gap’. But is the real chasm something more fundamental?

“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 fascinated by what he saw as ‘the delicate balance of terror’ that was part of the Cold War. To give his satire power he realised it needed ‘inspired lunacy’. That inspired lunacy now drives Trump’s military strikes where satire is meaningless and death is what happens to other people.On Free State, we look at how far America will go in Iran. What happens when Trump loses interest? What happens when Netanyahu wants something else?Let us know what you think - info@freestatepodcast.com

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 people drinking.They discuss the line of Kurt Vonnegut that ‘Alcoholics Anonymous is America’s greatest contribution to the 20th century’ and Charles explains why modern science agrees with Vonnegut.

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 they are advancing ‘without mercy’ Hegseth said.On Free State today we look at what the US, Israel and Donald Trump want. Are their aims of total control in the Middle East achievable? Or will the ambitions of the US and their allies spiral out of control as they have before but not before there is endless human misery?

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 Saturday. Is this a turning point for how volunteers view the GAA, certainly the GAA as represented by Croke Park?

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 Geoghegan talks to us about the extraordinary and chilling practices of Labour Together. He tells the story about the decision to hire a PR firm to investigate the motivations of journalists who were reporting on their funding. As Keir Starmer faces threats from all sides, will this be the scandal that upend him. Is this the scandal that is grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented?

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 establishment has protected the monarchy at all costs.We recall the horrific abuse in Kincora and the work done by Chris Moore to uncover Louis Mountbatten’s part in that scandal.When the future of the monarchy is discussed, is what has been revealed in the Epstein files an aberration or simply another chapter in a long history of self enriching hustle and worse?

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 is he there? Some people ask the same about U2 and their music…Let us know what you think - info@freestatepodcast.com

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 Gerard Shannon about the fanaticism that drove him.O’Connor became the public face of opposition to the Treaty but he also became the most human face when he was executed in December 1922, following a decision by the Free State cabinet including his great friend Kevin O’Higgins.O’Connor had been best man at O’Higgins’s wedding a year before and now O’Higgins was part of the brutal decision to have him executed. Shannon explains too why O’Connor faded from memory after his death and the extraordinary coincidence behind the killing of O’Higgins as he walked home from Mass in 1927.