Cocaine Nights on the Kyiv Express (feat Emmanuel Macron, Keir Starmer and the German guy)

When is a cocaine spoon not a cocaine spoon? When is a tissue a wrap of an illegal substance?

On Free State today look at how a story spreads online as it did over the weekend when Emmanuel Macron, Keir Starmer and Friedrich Merz were filmed on a train going to Kyiv. Soon the idea that drug paraphernalia was in the carriage took hold online.  

The story was dismissed as fantasy and Russian propaganda but does it demonstrate something more profound: a severe distrust in what people have been asked to believe in the west?

Dion doesn’t think so and he rants at Joe about the story. But is he just a gullible centrist or is Joe in danger of falling for the craziest online fantasies?

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.

• No. of episodes: 231
• Latest episode: 2025-05-17
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