I listen to the Second Captains to stay updated on sport in Ireland. They introduced me to podcasting when they left Newstalk in 2013. I admired their ambition and principles when they took that risk. I'm happy to see how well it has worked for them. Success wasn't guaranteed.

One of the benefits as a member is that I get exposed to some non sport commentaries and interviews such as this one with Mark Jones. Mark Jones is a Lecturer/Assistant Professor in Global History at University College Dublin and is a specialist in the history of political violence, war, and revolution. He is also a recognized authority on the history of the Weimar Republic.

He recently published a book "1923: The Forgotten Crisis in the Year of Hitler’s Coup". The interview mostly focuses on the period in question. The state of Germany post World War 1 and its relationship with France and the occupation of the Ruhr region. This led to the German response which was to attempt to support what amounted to a strike where the German population of Ruhr region refused to co-operate with the French. They attempted to do this by printing money. This eventually led to hyperinflation that inflicted so much suffering on the German population. This helped set the stage for Adolf Hitler ascent to power.

The book sounds fascinating and I'm looking forward to reading it. Listening to the interview you hear of messages and slogans that are echoed today. There are some worrying similarities in the rise of extremist politics. Just this week there were attacks in Cork and Dublin related to the housing of refugees. The library in Cork had to be closed due to fear for staff safety because of a protest taking place outside. It brings to mind the quote attributed to Mark Twain - "History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes."

Ken Early does bring up the question of what is the value of knowing this? Jones brings an impassioned defence of historians and the importance of knowing history. How vital it can be to look back to see the similarities in the present. It is important to remember.

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

1984 - George Orwell

One disturbing thought is they discussed the possibility of violence, especially when one side celebrates its use. I heard someone say before that violence is never the answer until it becomes the only answer. The Nazis were only defeated after an astonishing amount of violence, death and destruction. It is worrying.

It is important to remember that it is not inevitable. There is always hope even when there are no clear answers.

One of the podcasts I enjoy the most is The Free State podcast. The normal structure is a discussion between Dion Fanning, a journalist with The Currency, and Joe Brolly, a barrister as well as a former Gaelic football All Star and current GAA pundit.

The quality can vary depending on the topic but as this review attests, the political discourse is where it comes into its own.

Where these two presenters add real value, for this listener, is when they get stuck into politics: class politics, Northern politics, political punditry, and when Brolly in particular brings his personal context to the conversation. He and Fanning air their differences, and it’s smart and heartfelt and fascinating listening. They up the ante to the point of real difference, and still they keep talking. Nobody cancels anybody else, nobody walks out, nobody stoops to insult or opprobrium. That’s the kind of conversation I can pull up a stool for.

"Free State With Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning aims at too many easy targets" - Laura McCann (The Irish Times)

Joe Brolly does have an axe to grind with RTÉ as he used to work as a pundit with them for 20 years before his contract was not renewed in 2020. He has expressed he felt badly treated at the end of his time there.

With that said, the last 2 episodes, which have focused on the ongoing crisis in RTÉ, have been excellent.

RTÉ The Musical - Part 1

RTÉ The Musical - Part 2

Joe's experience as a barrister allows him explain the gravity of the situation that RTÉ finds itself.

One of the topics he narrowed his focus on was the influence of the agent Noel Kelly. I don't think I had heard of him before but when I visited NK Management website I was surprised by the amount of people he represented who have shows on Irish radio and television. Brolly speculated on just how large an influence Kelly had on the programming decisions in RTÉ and it looks to be not insignificant.

I enjoyed his disdain for the RTÉ executives and their appearances before the Oireachteas committees over the past few weeks. It's a valuable lesson that sometimes the people given the jobs with a lot of responsibilities and correspondingly high salaries are sometimes not deserving of those positions.

We learned this lesson before. Fanning brought up this quote from a Michael Lewis story on the Irish banking collapse in 2008.

In McCarthy’s view, the dominant narrative inside the head of the average Irish citizen—and his receptiveness to the story Kelly was telling—changed at roughly 10 o’clock in the evening on October 2, 2008. On that night, Ireland’s financial regulator, a lifelong Central Bank bureaucrat in his 60s named Patrick Neary, came live on national television to be interviewed. The interviewer sounded as if he had just finished reading the collected works of Morgan Kelly. Neary, for his part, looked as if he had been dragged from a hole into which he badly wanted to return. He wore an insecure little mustache, stammered rote answers to questions he had not been asked, and ignored the ones he had been asked. A banking system is an act of faith: it survives only for as long as people believe it will. Two weeks earlier the collapse of Lehman Brothers had cast doubt on banks everywhere. Ireland’s banks had not been managed to withstand doubt; they had been managed to exploit blind faith. Now the Irish people finally caught a glimpse of the guy meant to be safeguarding them: the crazy uncle had been sprung from the family cellar. Here he was, on their televisions, insisting that the Irish banks were “resilient” and “more than adequately capitalized” … when everyone in Ireland could see, in the vacant skyscrapers and empty housing developments around them, evidence of bank loans that were not merely bad but insane. “What happened was that everyone in Ireland had the idea that somewhere in Ireland there was a little wise old man who was in charge of the money, and this was the first time they’d ever seen this little man,” says McCarthy. “And then they saw him and said, Who the fuck was that??? Is that the fucking guy who is in charge of the money??? That’s when everyone panicked.”

"When Irish Eyes Are Crying" - Michael Lewis (Vanity Fair)

This crisis is far from over. There will be more revelations in the coming weeks and months as auditors comb through the accounts of the national broadcaster.

This is also an opportunity. It's an opportunity to display accountability. The people responsible should lose their jobs. If they have broken the law, they should be prosecuted. Justice should be pursued. I've heard too much talk of punishment and cuts. Some people want to see RTÉ tarred and feathered and made to do the walk of shame. I want to see change.

It is also an opportunity for the Irish citizens to define what they want from public service broadcasting. What does it look like in the age of the internet? How should it be funded? Should commercial advertising play some part? Should there be a ceiling for pay? Should the ceiling rise with inflation? Who sets it? What measures should be put in place to make sure that this doesn't happen again?

There are so many possibilities. I hope this moment isn't squandered.