Free State with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning

Donald Trump destroys everyone in his orbit. His transactional nature means that eventually whoever is close to him is ruined Gianni Infantino might soon know how that feels.‘I regularly discuss matters related to the FIFA World Cup with the President of the United States,’ Infantino said as he explained how FIFA had lifted the suspension on the USA forward Folarin Balogun. “During our conversation, I explained that there was an ongoing legal process involving FIFA’s independent judicial bodies and that the case would be decided in due course by the competent bodies. That is how FIFA’s system works, and it is a principle that I will always uphold.”On Free State, we look at those principles and how they fit in with Donald Trump’s. The White House insists that Trump’s only concern is the American people. As he spends every hour thinking about them, he just happens to have made more than a billion dollars from crypto in his first year back in office.

The World Cup continues to captivate. France stunned the world with their performance against Sweden, with a display of pace and skill that was as good as anything witnessed in the competition.But what is the hidden World Cup? What is the secret anguish that this and all sporting events facilitate.In their final episode in this series looking at the dangers of online gambling, Joe and Dion look at how the dopamine hit is so carefully regulated and how the ebb and flow of sporting events became another hook.

How many times do you look at your smartphone each day? How often do you pick it up? How aware are you of how it makes you feel?On Thursday’s Free State we looked at how gambling has got out of control.Today Dion and Joe examine how what we are dealing with is an entirely new phenomenon, a supercharged addiction of smartphone and gambling, a dopamine hit of huge power. We look at the demographic most affected and ask when will people do enough to help them?

When Fintan Drury wrote his first book on Palestine - Catastrophe, Nakba II, the manner in which it resonated with people told its own story. Now he has written Genocide - Sponsoring the destruction of Palestine, another searing and detailed account of how the Palestinian people have been failed. He talks to Dion about why now is the time to act.

The 1992 Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act prohibited betting on baseball, basketball, American football and most other sports in nearly every US state.In 2018, the Supreme Court declared the act unconstitutional, opening up America to a stampede of betting.On Free State today we look at how the gambling industry achieved such prominence and how they made gamblers feel that the problem wasn’t them it was you. With tens of billions being bet on the World Cup and prediction markets like Polymarket allowing people to take a position on everything, we wonder where it will end?

‘I have come to sell a product called soccer.’ The former FIFA president Joao Havelange announced himself in 1974 with these words. They have been the model for the expansionist, grasping FIFA that has existed to this day.But maybe what matters was not the product but everything but the product?On Free State today we look at why the World Cup matters and why it might be everything that Donald Trump’s America is not.From David Clifford and Kerry to Messi and Argentina, sport is what it is because of the communities that are brought together.Could it be that as America experiences the World Cup, they see that the world is a better place than their leaders want them to believe?

In Power Ballad, Rick, played by Paul Rudd, a washed-up wedding singer, and Danny, a fading boy band star, bond over music and a late-night jam session. On Free State today, old friends Dion and Peter McDonald, co-writer and co-start of Power Ballad, discuss their own late night escapades, Peter's time in the theatre and and his extraordinary time working with the legendary Robert Altman.

There are no atheists in the foxholes and in the darkness of the night there is nobody who won’t find consolation in the World Cup.On Free State today Joe talks about his own World Cup journey. Joe and Dion look at why the tournament captivates and what it tells us about communities as opposed to the leaders of those communities.At a time when Elon Musk had become the world’s first trillionaire, we look at the hatred he is trying to foment. And we look at the story of Palestine Action and what it tells us the authoritarian direction of the world today.