99 episodes
Free State with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning Gold Hat Productions
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4.4 • 38 Ratings
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Free State is a podcast for the curious that stimulates, provokes, challenges and entertains, while never taking itself too seriously. Free State covers topics from sport to politics, love to loss, the human condition and how to fix the world, with guests from across the planet including Nigerian princes, former Prime Ministers, ex convicts, footballers, boxers and extraordinary people from every walk of life.
Free State is presented by Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning. Brolly is a barrister, an original thinker with a fascinating backstory, who donated a kidney to a stranger and then led a crusade to transform organ donation on the island of Ireland, and Fanning is an award-winning interviewer and author.
They are not motivational gurus or life coaches. They will never try to sell you a penis scented candle. They are two people from very different worlds, with one core belief uniting them - this is not a high performance podcast.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Superman. An American football story. Joe Klecko, quarter back killer
Joe Klecko always had mayhem on his mind. Klecko, the legendary defensive linemen for the New York Jets, is regarded as the strongest man in the history of American Football.
When Joe Klecko was inducted into the Hall of Fame, he invited Joe Brolly to Cleveland to be part of the event.
On Free State today, Joe Klecko talks to Joe about his life on the front line of the most demanding sport of all. But it came easy to a man who once wrestled a bear and another time pulled the doors off Burt Reynolds’s tour bus. How he dealt with Joe was another story…
Free State with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning is a Gold Hat Production in association with SwanMcG.
For more on Free State: https://freestatepodcast.com/
To get in touch with the podcast: info@freestatepodcast.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. -
Roger Casement Part 2. The Mission.
Roger Casement’s executioner described him as ‘the bravest man it fell to my unhappy lot to execute’. In part 2 of a special Free State on Casement, his biographer Roland Philipps explains the doomed and heroic final act of Casement’s life when he was driven by an obsessive desire for Irish freedom. He talks to Dion and Joe about the love affair which helped to condemn an impractical romantic.
If Roger Casement’s life had ended after he had exposed the barbarity in the Congo, he would have been hailed as one of history’s great humanitarians. But his final years were taken up with the cause closest to his heart: Irish freedom
Free State with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning is a Gold Hat Production in association with SwanMcG.
For more on Free State: https://freestatepodcast.com/
To get in touch with the podcast: info@freestatepodcast.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. -
Roger Casement And The Temple Of Doom Part 1
When Roger Casement was hanged in Pentonville Prison in 1916, he died an Irish hero and a traitor to the British Empire.
On Banna Strand in 2016, President Higgins described Casement as “not just a great Irish patriot, he was also one of the great humanitarians of the early 20th century”.
On Free State today, Joe and Dion look at the many lives of a man who so impressed a tribe of cannibals with his courage that they didn’t eat him.
Casement’s lives were varied, and some of them were secret, but he also, as President Higgins said, exposed “the darkness that lay at the heart of European imperialism”. His biographer Roland Philipps joins Joe and Dion to talk about this modern story. A story of a man who exposed the rotten heart of empire. It was a life that changed Ireland and the world. Nobody will ever live a life like Roger Casement’s again.
Free State with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning is a Gold Hat Production in association with SwanMcG.
For more on Free State: https://freestatepodcast.com/
To get in touch with the podcast: info@freestatepodcast.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. -
Jimmy’s Winning Matches (Again)
What drives Jim McGuinness? Why does he inspire such devotion and how does he command such loyalty?
On Free State, Joe explains his own complicated relationship with Jim McGuinness.
In a world where GAA managers are conformist and conservative, McGuinness is a man apart. Is this why he was able to dismantle Derry? And Joe reveals what he was shouting at Mickey Harte from the stand.
Free State with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning is a Gold Hat Production in association with SwanMcG.
For more on Free State: https://freestatepodcast.com/
To get in touch with the podcast: info@freestatepodcast.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. -
Anyone For the Last Few Choc Ices? The Life and Turbulent Times of Christy Moore. Part 3
Christy Moore has been a giant in Irish life. In the final part of the Free State special he talks to Joe and Dion about the songs and the people who have guided him along the way.
He plays the songs whose success surprised him and he talks about the ones that were censored. What word led the BBC to ban ‘St Brendan’s Voyage’? How did a review of ‘The Time Has Come’ lead to it being taken off the airwaves?
He also tells the extraordinary story of how he was given the lyrics to ‘Back Home In Derry’ which were written by Bobby Sands in the H Blocks.
Free State with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning is a Gold Hat Production in association with SwanMcG.
For more on Free State: https://freestatepodcast.com/
To get in touch with the podcast: info@freestatepodcast.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. -
They Never Came Home. The Life and Turbulent Times of Christy Moore. Part 2
When the Stardust Families were on their own, Christy Moore stood with them.
On Part 2 of the Free State Special, Christy Moore remembers the dark days of the tragedy in 1981. When Christy found himself in court in 1985 charged with contempt because of one line in his song about the fire ‘They Never Came Home’, the Stardust Families stood with him. Christy also talks about the impact his father’s death had on him and the rest of his family. He also turns the tables on Joe and has a few questions of his own.
Free State with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning is a Gold Hat Production in association with SwanMcG.
For more on Free State: https://freestatepodcast.com/
To get in touch with the podcast: info@freestatepodcast.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Customer Reviews
Good, bu-
Love the podcast, both hosts have insightful and thought-provoking things to say. For that reason, wish Joe didn’t roll over Dion so often
Out of touch with reality
The two lads are so far removed from what's going on in the real world it's a little frightening.
Joe, a once prominent Irish sportsperson, demonstrates his athleticism as he preforms an impressive display of mental gymnastics with a synchronized ballet of back-flips and summersaults which enable him to dip, duck, dive and dodge around real life topics which exist to the minority of us still living in the real world. The two bais should at least google who Slade Sohmer, Jeffery Epstein and dare I say, the Catholic Church are before denouncing a global p ring... or maybe Biden's affiliation to the Obama/Clinton mob is a subject a little to close to home for umbrella.
Free State
Good listen but really should be named the Dion Fanning tries to get a word in edgewise podcast!