Free State with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning

When Israel’s contestant in the Eurovision appeared on stage in Vienna on Tuesday night, a lone voice shouted ‘stop, stop the genocide.’ The Israeli contestant kept singing and nothing stopped.On Free State today we look at why the Eurovision became a key part of Israel’s propaganda war.We examine the money that was spent ensuring Israel’s entries got votes and we ask why. We also look at some of the less notable Irish entries over the years and Joe tries out his own power ballad.

There was a huge response to last week’s episode on Universal Basic Income.On Free State, Dion and Joe look at the arguments made in the emails and comments.But as they go through the comments, the atmosphere changes and Free State reaches another crossroads…

A study after the covid pandemic established that in care homes controlled by private equity firms the death rate was more than 50 per cent higher than in other homes.On Free State today we look at how private equity is capitalism cannibalising itself. Hettie O’Brien, author of The Asset Class, is on with us to talk about how this happened, how governments retreated from the public realm and left private equity take over the world.She explains how they took over the things we have to have, electricity, childcare, housing when governments retreated. And as they did, things became worse. She explains how ideology took hold and while the masses were scolded for acquiring debt, private equity found they could live with it, or somebody else could die with it.

More than 60 per cent of Irish jobs are in positions highly exposed to the threat from AI. So what do we do in the face of this threat? Give everyone free money.On Free State today we look at universal basic income and how it could transform lives.How does it work and why would it be profound? And why does the opposition to this sound like the opposition to every other great transformations in society?  On Free State today we explain why.

What does Ireland in 1926 tell us about Ireland today? What do absences tell us about the lives we live whether it is in Ireland a hundred years ago or at a graduation in Gaza today? On Free State, Joe and Dion look at loss and absence. They examine the emotion that can pack a punch from a hundred years ago and the lives that are ripped apart today

It would be harder, Jamie Bartlett says, to open a sandwich shop in Dublin than to release a large language model of near infinite power into general public use. On Free State, Bartlett talks about his new book on how to talk to AI and what we are doing when we hand agency to a personality type that is drawing from the worst of impulses. How do we protect ourselves? Is the only winning move not to play but is that even possible?

What does the world look like when the world has turned away? On Free State today we ask about the loss of faith that will echo through the generations following the genocide in Gaza. We examine how leaders failed and are left taking comfort in the circus of a visit from a king to the court of Donald Trump. We also wonder how far someone can let themselves go that they don't iron their shoelaces.

“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’Sullivan came on the podcast. “I’ve never done anything like this before,” it continued, “but I felt I had to say something given how things are going. I wrote it out of a genuine sense of frustration with the direction the country seems to be heading. More than that, I’m writing as a father of a young family, and I’m increasingly worried about what kind of Ireland my kids are going to grow up in.”On Free State today we ask why people hurting has been turned into an urban versus rural debate when everyone is affected. Does this tell us something about the inability of the ruling class to see beyond the short term? Why is there always a defensive attack or a short term fudge rather than leadership?And when it comes to lack of leadership? Could things actually get worse for Mayo?

“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 Prison in 1916.Roger Casement’s final years were lived in pursuit of Irish independence. But was he a driver of rebellion or a hopeless romantic whose brainwaves did more harm than good? On Free State today, Rory Carroll talks about his book A Rebel and a Traitor about Casement and Reginald Hall, the man who pursued him.He talks about the lover who betrayed Casement, why Irish prisoners of war in Germany didn’t trust him and the complicated legacy that persists to this day.