Episódios
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Christopher Nolan has been generous enough to put together a full-on Origin Story film, combining key elements from the Nuclear War and McCarthyism episodes. So Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt put on their Oppenheimer cosplay outfits including suit trousers waisted up to the chest, and set off to the cinema to watch it.
Here's what they had to say…
Support Origin Story on Patreon for more bonus episodes: www.Patreon.com/originstorypod
Reading List:
Luis Alvarez – Alvarez: Adventures of a Physicist
Martin Amis – Einstein’s Monsters
Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin – American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
David C. Cassidy – J. Robert Oppenheimer and the American Century
Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi – The Worlds of Herman Kahn
Herman Kahn – On Thermonuclear War
William Lanouette – Genius in the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilard
William L. Laurence – Dawn Over Zero: The Story of the Atomic Bomb
Robert Jay Lifton and Richard Falk - Indefensible Weapons
Ronald Reagan – An American Life
Jonathan Schell – The Fate of the Earth
P.D. Smith – Doomsday Men: The Real Dr Strangelove and the Dream of the Superweapon
H.G. Wells – The World Set Free
The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, by Lawrence Freedman and Jeffrey Michaels
The Ascent of Man by Jacob Bronowski
Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production by Alex Rees, music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Lead Producer is Anne-Marie Luff. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production.
https://twitter.com/OriginStorycast
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Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey host an evening of storytelling, debate, gallows humour and intense irritation recorded with an audience on a balmy evening in Soho, London.
They look at the idea of The Elite. What the hell does it mean? Where did it come from? How has it changed over the years? And why does it always seem to refer to whoever you happen to disagree with?
For their sins Dorian and Ian read Values, Voice and Virtue: The New British Politics by Matthew Goodwin and pick apart the case against the so-called “new elite".
Reading list:
Matthew Goodwin - Values, Voice and Virtue: The New British Politics
Charles Wright Mills - The Power Elite
Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production and music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Lead Producer is Anne-Marie Luff. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production.
https://twitter.com/OriginStorycast
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Uncovering the hidden histories of concepts, people and events you thought you knew.
In a first for Origin Story, Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt focus on a living figure: the ubiquitous and divisive richest man in the world, Elon Musk.
In the past two years the public perception of Musk has changed dramatically, from Time's Man of the Year and “real-life Iron Man" to radicalised right-wing troll and destroyer of Twitter. Ian and Dorian trace his journey from sci-fi obsessed child prodigy in Apartheid-era South Africa to dotcom entrepreneur to the self-appointed techno-messiah at the helm of SpaceX and Tesla, and ask what happened to the man who said he wanted to save the world. They discuss what his career says about the arc of Silicon Valley and 21st-century capitalism, the cult of technocracy and the dangers of believing your own hype.
Support Origin Story on Patreon for exclusive benefits: www.Patreon.com/originstorypod
“He doesn’t seem that interested in money. The choices he’s made have not been your regular ‘rich guy’ choices.” – Dorian Lynskey
“On Twitter some of the disinformation has been morally abysmal. You think, how could you be a person who would even write these words?” – Ian Dunt
"He said it was the duty of the educated to reproduce so ‘we don’t devolve into a not very literate, theocratic and unenlightened future.’ It’s low-level eugenics.” — Dorian Lynskey
Reading list:
Eric Berger – Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX
Agustin Ferrari Braun – The Elon Musk Experience: Celebrity Management in Financialised Capitalism
David S. Kidder – The Startup Playbook
Hamish McKenzie – Insane Mode: How Elon Musk’s Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil
Ashlee Vance – Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Is Shaping Our Future
Douglas Coupland, ‘The smartest person in any room anywhere:’ in defence of Elon Musk, The Observer, 2021
Tad Friend, Plugged In, The New Yorker, 2009
Jordan Liles – What We Know About Elon Musk and the Emerald Mine Rumor, Snopes, 2022
Linette Lopez, Elon Musk Doesn’t Care About You, Business Insider, 2018
David J Roth, Burning Down the House, Defector, 2023
Neil Strauss – Elon Musk: The Architect of Tomorrow, Rolling Stone, 2017
Matthew Sweet, Why Jeff Bezos and Elon’s Musk real business inspiration is science-fiction, The Times, 2021
The Elon Musk Show, BBC documentary, 2022
I Do Not like Elon Musk Very Much, Behind the Bastards podcast
Elon Musk: The Techno Shaman, Decoding the Gurus podcast
Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production and music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Lead Producer is Anne-Marie Luff. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production.
https://twitter.com/OriginStorycast
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Explaining the most misunderstood ideas and people in politics
In another two-parter, Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt break down the long, THORNY history of Zionism. In part two, the horror of the Holocaust persuades the international community to mandate a Jewish state in Palestine, with the surprising endorsement of Stalin, but Zionism remains divided.
In the year of Israel’s 75th anniversary, Ian and Dorian discuss how successive governments lost the left and courted the right, what happened to Theodor Herzl’s utopian vision, and what people really mean when they say they are anti-Zionist.
Hear the next episode right now when you support Origin Story on Patreon: www.Patreon.com/originstorypod
"In 1948 Israel is one of the most popular countries in the world, perhaps the only country supported by both sides of the Cold War." – Dorian Lynskey
"Ultimately if you restrict Zionism to the oldest idea of a homeland for Jews for safety and identity, that is a really provocative, radical and interesting idea.” – Ian Dunt
Reading list:
Steven Beller – Herzl
Lenni Brenner – Zionism in the Age of Dictators
Walter Laqueur – A History of Zionism
Alex Ryvchin – Zionism: The Concise History
Avi Shlaim – The Iron Wall
Michael Stanislawski – Zionism: A Very Short Introduction
Melvin J. Urofsky – American Zionism from Herzl to the Holocaust
Jeff Walker – The Revisionists and the Rise of Right-Wing Zionism
Geoffrey Wheatcroft – Churchill’s Shadow
Paul Bogdanor’s critique of Lenni Brenner
https://fathomjournal.org/an-antisemitic-hoax-lenni-brenner-on-zionist-collaboration-with-the-nazis/
The Making of Modern Zionism: The Intellectual Origins of the Jewish State, by Shlomo Avineri
Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production and music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Lead Producer is Anne-Marie Luff. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production.
https://twitter.com/OriginStorycast
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Explaining the most misunderstood ideas and people in politics.
In another two-parter, Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt break down the long thorny history of Zionism.
In part one, covering the 1890s to the 1930s, they explain how Theodor Herzl single handedly created a movement for a Jewish nation, Chaim Weizmann won over Churchill and Balfour, and Ze’ev Jabotinsky sowed the seeds of Likud. Utopian dreams wrestle with hard-nosed pragmatism as the Zionists clash with the world’s great powers, and each other, about what a Jewish nation should be.
Hear Part Two right now when you support Origin Story on Patreon: www.Patreon.com/originstorypod
“Herzl didn’t see the Holocaust coming but he was a realist about the durability of antisemitism.” — Dorian Lynskey
It’s a very communistic, very socialistic, very politically radical community that ends up in Palestine.” — Ian Dunt
“At the time of Herzl’s death, only about one per cent of the world’s Jews were Zionists.” — Dorian Lynskey
Reading list:
Steven Beller – Herzl
Lenni Brenner – Zionism in the Age of Dictators
Walter Laqueur – A History of Zionism
Alex Ryvchin – Zionism: The Concise History
Avi Shlaim – The Iron Wall
Michael Stanislawski – Zionism: A Very Short Introduction
Melvin J. Urofsky – American Zionism from Herzl to the Holocaust
Jeff Walker – The Revisionists and the Rise of Right-Wing Zionism
Geoffrey Wheatcroft – Churchill’s Shadow
Paul Bogdanor’s critique of Lenni Brenner:
https://fathomjournal.org/an-antisemitic-hoax-lenni-brenner-on-zionist-collaboration-with-the-nazis/
The Making of Modern Zionism: The Intellectual Origins of the Jewish State, by Shlomo Avineri
Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production and music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Lead Producer is Anne-Marie Luff. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production.
https://twitter.com/OriginStorycast
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Uncovering the hidden histories of concepts, people and events you thought you knew.
In part two of the story of climate change denial Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey take a closer look at the techniques of the “merchants of doubt" who took the denial of man made global warming into the mainstream. Ian tells the real story behind 2009’s phoney scandal “Climategate”, while Dorian reads Michael Crichton’s crank thriller State of Fear and watches the controversial Channel 4 documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle to explain how denial became a kind of conspiracy theory.
A tale of wild claims, false balance, scientists under siege and the giant mess that the deniers have left behind.
Hear the next episode right now when you support Origin Story on Patreon: www.Patreon.com/originstorypod
“It’s the most malicious, cynical, unrepresentative assault on good science that you can imagine” – Ian Dunt
"It’s apparently a conspiracy between corrupt scientists, hippies, neo-Marxists and Margaret Thatcher. I would love to have been at the meetings." – Dorian Lynskey
“Science operates within doubt, that’s how it moves forward” – Ian Dunt
Reading List:
Michael Crichton – State of Fear
Ross Gelbspan – The Heat Is On: The High Stakes Battle Over Earth’s Threatened Climate
Clive Hamilton – Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change
Bjorn Lomborg – The Skeptical Environmentalist
Chris Mooney – The Republican War on Science
Thomas Gale Moore – Climate of Fear: Why We Shouldn’t Worry About Global Warming
Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway – Merchants of Doubt
Nathaniel Rich – Losing Earth: The Decade We Could Have Stopped Climate Change
Peter Stott – Hot Air: The Inside Story of the Battle Against Climate Change Denial
The Great Global Warming Swindle (Channel 4)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYhCQv5tNsQ
Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production and music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Lead Producer is Anne-Marie Luff. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production.
https://twitter.com/OriginStorycast
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Uncovering the hidden histories of concepts, people and events you thought you knew.
This time: Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey try to cool their tempers as they take on climate change denial. They trace denial’s journey from fossil-fuel lobbyists and neoliberal think tanks into the heart of the mainstream media and lay out the dire consequences.
In this first part Ian and Dorian discuss how global warming grew from a minor nineteenth-century hypothesis into the consensus scientific position by the eco-conscious 1970s. Jimmy Carter installed solar panels on the White House and even Margaret Thatcher was worried about carbon emissions. Starting in 1988, though, contrarian scientists, lobbyists and right-wing politicians weaponised scepticism to ensure that nothing was done about it. Also: how discredited panics about overpopulation and a new ice age helped to fuel the politics of denial.
Conspiracy theories, culture wars, pseudo-science and media credulity come together in the story of one of the greatest scandals of modern times.
Hear Part Two right now when you support Origin Story on Patreon: www.Patreon.com/originstorypod
Tickets for the Origin Story live show are available now: https://www.tickettext.co.uk/ZwCihZbENZ
“It is extraordinary how far back this goes…there’s cross-party recognition of man-made climate change in the 1960’s.” – Ian Dunt
“It’s incredible that the Clean Air Act actually makes global warming worse.” – Dorian Lynskey
“It’s the same technique as McCarthy, used again and again.” – Ian Dunt
Reading List:
Michael Crichton – State of Fear
Ross Gelbspan – The Heat Is On: The High Stakes Battle Over Earth’s Threatened Climate
Clive Hamilton – Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change
Bjorn Lomborg – The Skeptical Environmentalist
Chris Mooney – The Republican War on Science
Thomas Gale Moore – Climate of Fear: Why We Shouldn’t Worry About Global Warming
Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway – Merchants of Doubt
Nathaniel Rich – Losing Earth: The Decade We Could Have Stopped Climate Change
Peter Stott – Hot Air: The Inside Story of the Battle Against Climate Change Denial
The Great Global Warming Swindle (Channel 4)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYhCQv5tNsQ
Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production and music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Lead Producer is Anne-Marie Luff. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production.
https://twitter.com/OriginStorycast
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Uncovering the hidden histories of concepts you thought you knew.
Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey pick up the story of nuclear war in the 1950s with the arrival of the H-bomb, and travel from the deadly face-off the Cuban Missile Crisis to the theory of nuclear winter and the place of nuclear weapons in a post-Cold War world.
Kennedy and Khrushchev contemplate the abyss, Ronald Reagan frets about Armageddon, and Dr Strangelove brings the twisted psychology of nuclear deterrence to the screen. Plus the dark allure of the Cobalt Bomb, the Doomsday Machine that never existed.
It’s a story of threats, war games and hair-raising close shaves. Did the strategists get it right in the end or were we just very lucky?
Listen to next week’s episode right now when you support Origin Story on Patreon: www.Patreon.com/originstorypod
“In the US there was a recognition over and over by presidents stating…we know that if we fire, we get fired back on.” – Ian Dunt
“(the Cuban Missile Crisis) brought the world to the abyss of destruction and the end of mankind.” – Robert Kennedy
“Distrust almost destroyed the world” – Dorian Lynskey
Reading List:
Luis Alvarez – Alvarez: Adventures of a Physicist
Martin Amis – Einstein’s Monsters
Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin – American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
David C. Cassidy – J. Robert Oppenheimer and the American Century
Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi – The Worlds of Herman Kahn
Herman Kahn – On Thermonuclear War
William Lanouette – Genius in the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilard
William L. Laurence – Dawn Over Zero: The Story of the Atomic Bomb
Robert Jay Lifton and Richard Falk - Indefensible Weapons
Ronald Reagan – An American Life
Jonathan Schell – The Fate of the Earth
P.D. Smith – Doomsday Men: The Real Dr Strangelove and the Dream of the Superweapon
H.G. Wells – The World Set Free
The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, by Lawrence Freedman and Jeffrey Michaels
The Ascent of Man by Jacob Bronowski
Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production and music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Lead Producer is Anne-Marie Luff. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production.
https://twitter.com/OriginStorycast
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Uncovering the hidden histories of concepts you thought you knew.
This time: the ‘genocide machine’ – nuclear war. With Christopher Nolan’s biopic of the father of the atomic bomb J. Robert Oppenheimer on its way and anxieties about Putin’s nuclear arsenal in the air, Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey take us through how the human race learned to live with the first weapon that could potentially spell global annihilation.
From the invention of the atomic bomb in a novel by HG Wells to the triumph of the Manhattan Project and the horror of Hiroshima, a modern Pandora’s Box opens. Einstein calls his role in the story his “one great mistake”, Oppenheimer says he has blood on his hands, and an anxious world wonders if it will be blown up tomorrow.
This one has the lot: fear, guilt, paranoia and a glimpse of the end of the world.
Listen to Part 2 right now when you support Origin Story on Patreon: www.Patreon.com/originstorypod
“It wasn’t just a weapon. It’s an angry god. It’s Godzilla.” – Dorian Lynskey
“The peoples of this world must unite or they will perish… The atomic bomb has spelled [these words] out for all to understand.” – J Robert Oppenheimer
“There should be a statue of Vasili Arkhipov in every town in the world. His refusal to fire stopped a nuclear war.” – Ian Dunt
Reading List:
Luis Alvarez – Alvarez: Adventures of a Physicist
Martin Amis – Einstein’s Monsters
Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin – American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
David C. Cassidy – J. Robert Oppenheimer and the American Century
Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi – The Worlds of Herman Kahn
Herman Kahn – On Thermonuclear War
William Lanouette – Genius in the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilard
William L. Laurence – Dawn Over Zero: The Story of the Atomic Bomb
Robert Jay Lifton and Richard Falk - Indefensible Weapons
Ronald Reagan – An American Life
Jonathan Schell – The Fate of the Earth
P.D. Smith – Doomsday Men: The Real Dr Strangelove and the Dream of the Superweapon
H.G. Wells – The World Set Free
The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, by Lawrence Freedman and Jeffrey Michaels
The Ascent of Man by Jacob Bronowski
Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production and music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Lead Producer is Anne-Marie Luff. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production.
https://twitter.com/OriginStorycast
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This time: the tumultuous history of Atheism. The concept has been around since the ancient world but for centuries it was demonised and suppressed. Who could believe such a thing? Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey track the ultimate heresy from the earliest days of western civilisation to the freethinkers of the Enlightenment and the bare-knuckle oratory of the New Atheists.
What’s the difference between atheism, agnosticism, secularism and deism? What does it stand for? Can it explain the world while also satisfying the need for meaning and community? Was totalitarianism the monstrous zenith of atheism or just a substitute religion?
Thomas Paine, Bertrand Russell, Percy Shelley, Albert Camus, Richard Dawkins and more feature in the story of the fight for the right not to believe in God.
Listen to next week’s episode right now when you support Origin Story on Patreon: www.Patreon.com/originstorypod
“Every day around the world it is incalculable the amount of damage done by religions saying; you can’t go there, you can’t marry them, you can’t say that.” – Ian Dunt
“Declaring oneself an atheist is still a bold claim.” – Dorian Lynskey
“It’s quite a humbling experience to think it’s taken us 1,500 years to get back to the position we were in in 300AD.” – Ian Dunt
Reading List:
Julian Baggini – Atheism: A Very Short Introduction
David Berman – A History of Atheism in Britain: From Hobbes to Russell
Albert Camus – The Myth of Sisyphus
John Gray – Seven Types of Atheism
Christopher Hitchens – God Is Not Great
Christopher Hitchens (ed.) – The Portable Atheist
Susan Jacoby – Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism
Percy Bysshe Shelley – The Necessity of Atheism
James Thrower – A Short History of Western Atheism
Tim Whitmarsh – Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World
Richard Dawkins – The God Delusion
Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production and music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Episode art by James Parrett. Lead Producer is Anne-Marie Luff. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production.
https://twitter.com/OriginStorycast
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Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt explain the most misunderstood ideas and people in politics.
This time: part 2 of their Winston Churchill deconstruction. The pair chronicle the turbulent decade that defined Churchill's political legacy. From Munich and his unexpected elevation to power, from the Bengal Famine to victory over Hitler, his surprise defeat in the 1945 election and his long, gloomy decline, they look at a life which still casts a shadow over Britain. And they even read Boris Johnson’s Churchill book, so you don’t have to.
Churchill craved greatness. Did he live up to his ideal? There’s only one way to find out…
Listen to next week’s episode right now when you support Origin Story on Patreon: www.Patreon.com/originstorypod
“I think what he did was primarily journalism, rather than being a prime minister.” – Ian Dunt
“People think they can look at Churchill like a lifestyle guru they can replicate without the nuance.” – Dorian Lynskey
“Churchill personifies the European confusion that has lasted in this country to the present day” – Ian Dunt
Reading List:
Churchill by Roy Jenkins
The Churchill Factor by Boris Johnson
Churchill: Military Genius or Menace? By Stephen Napier
Churchill and Orwell: The Fight for Freedom by Thomas E. Ricks
Churchill: Walking with Destiny by Andrew Roberts
Oblivion or Glory: 1921 and the Making of Winston Churchill by David Stafford
Churchill’s Shadow by Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Free Thinking: Churchill's Reputation – BBC Radio 3
Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production and music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Lead Producer is Anne-Marie Luff. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production.
https://twitter.com/OriginStorycast
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New Series! Explaining the most misunderstood ideas and people in politics.
This time: Winston Churchill is caricatured as either a bigoted villain or a stainless hero. Is he neither… or both? Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt take on a Churchillian task: to avoid reducing the legacy of Britain’s war leader into a simple binary.
In part one they look at Churchill’s complicated childhood, his military adventures, his surprisingly progressive time as Home Secretary, his role in the Gallipoli disaster and his journey from the Tories to the Liberals and back again, leaving him on the brink of the 1930s. And they weigh up the allegations against him, from racism to sending troops to fire on striking miners at Tonypandy. Between the myths and the countermyths there’s a fascinating mess of a man.
Get Part Two of our Churchill exploration right now – and all of our episodes a week early – when you support Origin Story on Patreon: www.Patreon.com/originstorypod
“Yes, he is a racist imperialist warmonger. He’s also the most important antifascist of human history.” – Ian Dunt
“He had no followers. No ‘Churchillites’. Nobody in politics would sacrifice a thing for him.” – Dorian Lynskey
“At this point he’s Woke Winston. He's a liberal, supports votes for women, nationalising the railways and restrictions on monopolies.” – Dorian Lynskey
Reading List:
Churchill by Roy Jenkins
Walking With Destiny by Andrew Roberts
The Churchill Factor by Boris Johnson
Churchill: Military Genius or Menace? By Stephen Napier
Churchill and Orwell: The Fight for Freedom by Thomas E. Ricks
Oblivion or Glory: 1921 and the Making of Winston Churchill by David Stafford
Churchill’s Shadow by Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Free Thinking: Churchill's Reputation – BBC Radio 3
Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production and music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Lead Producer is Anne-Marie Luff. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production.
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A between-seasons special: The Lineker Affair didn’t just expose the BBC’s fear of the Government. It triggered a flood of bad takes on whether it’s ever permissible to compare contemporary politics to 1930s Germany; BBC employees’ rights to speak their minds; the limits of Twitter; and even whether the Nazis were in fact left-wing. Spoiler: they weren’t.
Seasoned spotters of bad faith arguments Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt examine a gala week of political nonsense, obfuscation, straw-manning and plain old bullshit.
Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production and music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production
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New series preview: How much do we really know about the people who make the headlines? In a provocative new series the acclaimed journalist Michael Crick, formerly of BBC, C4 and Newsnight, delves into the backgrounds of the powerful and the influential.
In this first episode: Few newspaper editors wield as much power as the Daily Mail’s Paul Dacre. Feared and courted by politicians, he’s imposed his singular vision of Britain on successive governments – while sometimes stretching the law in pursuit of justice. But what makes Dacre tick? What does he want? And how might this epic career end?
Like this excerpt? Hear the complete episode on all platforms right now here. And subscribe for new episodes every Monday.
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A taster of our new series. Search for Jam Tomorrow in your favourite podcast app or visit https://kite.link/JTS1
Episode One: Every Day Is Like D-Day. How did Britain’s dreams of a new postwar world go unfulfilled? And what does that mean for us today? In the first of a new documentary series from the makers of Oh God, What Now?, Ros Taylor looks at the legacy of the War itself. Ιdeals of the Blitz Spirit and dreams of wartime heroism still shape everything from pop culture and entertainment to the Brexit debate. But the truth of the War is more complex and less comforting. What will it take for us to see the Second World War – and ourselves – clearly?
• “If you’re going to have a foundation myth it might as well be one where you destroy Nazism.” – Al Murray
• “If the response to air raid wasn’t stoicism there was a fear that morale would break down.” – Lucy Noakes
• “The Keep Calm And Carry On poster was designed for a type of war that never arrived.” – Henry Irvine
• “Britain went into the war not alone but at the head of the world’s biggest empire… When Britain went to war, so did vast part of the world.” – Lucy Noakes
Written and presented by Ros Taylor. Produced by Jade Bailey. Voiceovers by Imogen Robertson. Original music by Dubstar. Lead producer: Jacob Jarvis. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Jam Tomorrow is a Podmasters production.
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“We surely live in the stupidest possible era of debate about free speech,” says Ian Dunt. When a key arbiter of free expression is the smirking tech bro who owns Twitter, he might be right. How did the right to express yourself freely get hijacked by reactionaries? Are progressives really a threat to freedom of speech?
Dorian Lynskey and Ian delve back in time from the printing press and its early “paper bullets” via the surprisingly racy life of John Stuart Mill right up to the First Amendment of the US Constitution and our current panics over woke, hate speech and cancel culture. How did shouting “free speech” become an instant way to shut down debate?
Support Origin Story to get extra episodes and more at https://www.patreon.com/originstorypod
“If somebody tries to make their point about freedom of speech by using a cartoon on the internet, they’ve probably simplified it a bit.” – Dorian Lynskey
“There is a choice not between order and liberty, it is between liberty with order and anarchy without either.” – Justice Robert H Jackson
“The whole story of free speech is the story of doubt.” – Ian Dunt
Reading List
From Ian
Jacob Mchangama – Free Speech: A Global History From Socrates To Social Media
John Rees – The Leveller Revolution
John Stuart Milll – On Liberty
The Complete Works Of Harriet Taylor Mill – Editor Jo Ellen Jacobs
Richard Reeve – John Stuart Mill: Victorian Firebrand
From Dorian
Anthony Lewis — Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment
Suzanne Nossel — Dare to Speak: Defending Free Speech for All
Nat Hentoff – Free Speech for Me But Not for Thee: How the American Left and Right Relentlessly Censor Each Other
Stanley Fish — There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech
Samuel P Nelson — Beyond the First Amendment: The Politics of Free Speech and Pluralism
Karl Popper — The Open Society and Its Enemies
Flemming Rose — Tyranny of Silence
PE Moskowitz — The Case Against Free Speech
Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic — Must We Defend Nazis?: Why the First Amendment Should Not Protect Hate Speech and White Supremacy
Henry Louis Gates Jr — Let Them Talk
George Orwell — Freedom of the Park
Herbert Marcuse — Repressive Tolerance
Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production and music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production
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Drugs won the War on Drugs decades ago, so why are governments still squandering billions on this unwinnable battle? Where did the idea come from? Can we even agree on what drugs are? Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt delve into the tortuous evolution of the futile battle against narcotics. From morphine users Jules Verne and Bismarck and cocaine fan Sigmund Freud to the Opium Wars, the Red Scares, the Jazz Panic, Richard Nixon’s declaration of war on narcotics in 1971 up to Nancy Reagan’s “Just say no”, the War on Drugs becomes a justification for racism, a proxy assault on the ’60s – and an immovable block on evidence-based policy.
Support Origin Story to get extra episodes and more at https://www.patreon.com/originstorypod
Thank you to drugs expert Steve Rolles for his assistance with this episode.
“This is about as profound a policy failure as any you can find anywhere on Earth.” – Ian Dunt
“If the hideous monster Frankenstein came face-to-face with the monster Marijuana he would drop dead of fright.” – Harry J Anslinger, Federal Bureau of Narcotics director
“When they say ‘war on drugs’ what they mean is, war on some things we don’t like.” – Ian Dunt
“By accident or design, the drugs war had evolved into a race war.” – Mike Gray, author of Drug Crazy
“Drugs function like pornography or the military do with technology. They drive forward rapid change.” – Ian Dunt
Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production and music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production
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Few terms are thrown about as freely now as “Fascist” but what does the ultimate political condemnation really mean? Where did Fascism come from? Are all Fascists Nazis, and were the Nazis even Fascists themselves? From Mussolini and Nietszche to Adolf Hitler, Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey delve into fascism’s primordial stew of violence, racism, antisemitism, mysticism, anti-intellectualism and bizarrely modern aesthetics. They discover a brutal, anti-rational creed that is equally obsessed with futurist technology and ancient myth – and which inevitably drives itself towards war.
Get next week’s episode right now when you back us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/originstorypod
“Fascists are inferior people who believe it when told they are superior.” – Kurt Vonnegut
“Except in struggle there is no more beauty. No work without an aggressive character can be a masterpiece.” – Filippo Tomasso Marinetti
“The fist is the synthesis of our theory.” – Italian fascist, 1920
“Germans would even dream of the state interfering in their lives. The Nazis had infiltrated even their sleep.” – Ian
“You can’t have a violent rebirth without the sense that you’ve been oppressed and put upon.” – Dorian
Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production and music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production
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“But it’s satire!” says every Twitter lout, demagogue or disinformationist to justify their abuse, pile-ons or straight-up lies. But what IS satire? How does it work? What distinguishes it from bullying? Does it even have to be funny? Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey go in search of the truth of satire on a journey that takes in The Thick Of It, Basil Fawlty, Jonathan Swift, Succession, Lenny Bruce, trickster gods, Boris Johnson, Peter Cook and Beyond The Fringe, Spitting Image and more… all the way back to the origin 1.4 million years ago of laughter itself.
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“Wait… this word that I’ve been using all of my life, nobody knows what it means?” – Dorian Lynskey
“Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own” – Jonathan Swift
“Satire tells you more about its era than any other literature.” – John R Clarke
“Laughter is a response to frustration, just as tears are. And it solves nothing, as tears do.” – Kurt Vonnegut
“Audiences like to think satire is doing something but mostly it’s making them satisfied – rather than angry, which is what they should be.” – Tom Lehrer
Picture: The Thick Of It, BBC
Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production and music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production
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Culture war: it’s been around way longer than Fox News raging against drag queens or The Last Jedi. Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt trace the history of the hatreds that split societies from Bismarck’s original German kulturkampf up to climate denial, gun fetishism, the demonisation of liberal Hollywood, and our modern hellscape of permanent outrage. The secret weapon of culture warriors? Permanent grievance in a battle they can never win.
Get next week’s episode right now, and help Ian and Dorian develop the series, when you back Origin Story on Patreon: www.Patreon.com/originstorypod
“Culture war is not about victory. It’s about perpetual rolling grievance.”
“The rhetoric of culture war is absolutist. Your opponents are the absolute worst. They are morally evil and must be stopped.”
“The Republicans manage to unhook class conflict from economics and took it to culture. Which was genius.”
Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production and music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production
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