{"podcast":{"title":"Free State with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning","slug":"free-state-with-joe-brolly-and-dion-fanning-6213217","podcast_index_feed_id":6213217,"rss_url":"https://feeds.acast.com/public/shows/641338125bde790011089c5b","website_url":"https://shows.acast.com/free-state-with-joe-brolly-and-dion-fanning","image_url":"https://assets.pippa.io/shows/cover/1678981116872-078471f28dd3685d12e6a3cc8147fbb4.jpeg","author":"Joe Brolly","episode_count":390,"summary":"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 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.","last_synced_at":null,"page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/free-state-with-joe-brolly-and-dion-fanning-6213217"},"episode":{"title":"The country that defied an empire","slug":"the-country-that-defied-an-empire","published_at":"2026-04-04T00:00:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/free-state-with-joe-brolly-and-dion-fanning-6213217/the-country-that-defied-an-empire","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/free-state-with-joe-brolly-and-dion-fanning-6213217","url":"https://freestatepodcast.com","audio_url":"https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/641338125bde790011089c5b/e/69d043433a785fb94b1e7f97/media.mp3","summary":"Olivier Norek says he has never met a killer who wasn’t eaten inside by what they’d done. Before he became a writer, Norek was a policeman in the most dangerous parts of Paris and a humanitarian worker in the former Yugoslavia. On Free State today, Norek tells the story of Simo Hayha, the sniper known as the White Death, who fought for Finland during the Winter War when the Soviet Union invaded the country. He tells the story of how Finland, abandoned by the world to fight alone, stood against the Red Army, fighting for their communities. Norek researches his books the way he would investigate a crime and in preparation for the Winter Warriors, he spent a winter in Finland, experiencing the subzero temperatures in which Finns fought to defend their country. He tells us what the Winter War meant to Finland and how it shaped the world we live in today. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.","meta_description":"Olivier Norek says he has never met a killer who wasn’t eaten inside by what they’d done. Before he became a writer, Norek was a policeman in the most dan…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":2879,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/free-state-with-joe-brolly-and-dion-fanning-6213217/episodes/the-country-that-defied-an-empire/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/free-state-with-joe-brolly-and-dion-fanning-6213217/the-country-that-defied-an-empire.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}