Sportswashing works. From the English Premier League to the World Cup to golf, sport is being transformed by countries whose main interest is transforming their image. 
On Free State today, Dion and Joe ask what is the real cost of sportswashing and is it an inevitable consequence of a broader issue?
Society is divided and while inequality grows people have been persuaded that the problem is the refugee child looking for shelter in a Roscrea hotel. The real problem lies elsewhere and sport is being used to conceal the truth.
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.

Who wants to be a (Swiss) billionaire? Part 2

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.&nbsp;
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.&nbsp;
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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The Ulster final was a study in winning and losing. A perfect example of the question everyone in sport has wrestled with for generations: what makes one team win and another team lose?
What makes one team confident as they reach the dying moments of a game while another becomes tense, tight and anxious?
What separates Dublin from Mayo or Donegal from Armagh? What distinguishes Alex Ferguson from David Moyes?
On Free State today, Dion and Joe look at the difference between winning and losing. Joe talks about the time he spent with the men from the great Kilkenny sides recently and what he discovered from those conversations about the secret of success. And when they talk about winning, naturally the conversation leads back to Jim McGuinness.
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.

Winners & Losers

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.

Superman. An American football story. Joe Klecko, quarter back killer

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 Part 2. The Mission.

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.

Roger Casement And The Temple Of Doom Part 1

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.

Who wants to be a (Swiss) billionaire? Part 2

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