Hello and welcome to season seven of Origin Story, where Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey continue to explore the misunderstood ideas and people that shape our politics today. We hope you’ve enjoyed all the bonus episodes. We’re starting with a topic that’s been on our shortlist since the very beginning, and it’s a big one: Thatcherism. By that we mean Margaret Thatcher herself, born 100 years ago, and the evolution of the rather nebulous idea that bears her name. Is it a coherent ideology or the exp...
Apr 02, 2025•2 hr 35 min•Season 7Ep. 1
Season seven is almost upon us and we’ll be starting with an epic two-parter on Thatcherism, so consider this bonus episode a warm-up. We’re unravelling the unusual story of Kemi Badenoch and what her vexed leadership says about the state of the Conservative Party. As soon as Badenoch became an MP in 2017, she was tipped for big things: a black woman with a compelling backstory, a Thatcherite heart and a strong stomach for culture wars. But the messiness of her victory in last year’s leadership ...
Mar 19, 2025•1 hr 17 min•Season 6Ep. 23
Welcome to another Origin Story bonus episode. This week we’re discussing the conspiracy theory of Cultural Marxism. In the 1990s, cultural conservatives in America began pinning everything they hated, from feminism and gender studies departments to pop music and horror movies, on the legacy of the Frankfurt School, a group of German intellectuals who came together at Frankfurt University in 1923 and resettled in New York in 1935. The theory claims that these Teutonic eggheads, most of whom were...
Feb 12, 2025•1 hr 4 min•Season 6Ep. 20
Travel into the furthest reaches of space and time as we investigate the history of Doctor Who. From its inception in 1963, as a longshot gamble to fill a hole in the teatime schedule, to its current status as British television’s biggest international drama, we track the story of the eccentric alien with two hearts and what the Doctor’s adventures have to say about modern Britain. Doctor Who was the brainchild of a group of outsiders and it maintains that provocative sensibility today under Rus...
Jan 29, 2025•1 hr 5 min•Season 6Ep. 18
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Jan 21, 2025•44 min•Season 6Ep. 17
Happy new year, Origin Story listeners. We’ll be releasing regular bonus episodes between now and the launch of season seven in April and we’re kicking off with a sequel to the finale of season three: Elon Musk and the Death of Twitter. With jaw-dropping behind-the-scenes information from two recent books, Dorian explains how and why the richest man in the world wrecked its most influential social media platform. In October 2022 Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion and set about remaking it in hi...
Jan 08, 2025•1 hr 4 min•Season 6Ep. 15
•Fill in our listener survey for a chance to win an exclusive Origin Story t-shirt. Welcome to part two of the story of the Daily Mail. We pick things up with the disastrous reign of Esmond Harmsworth and his wife Ann, aka “the Monster”. The paper loses direction, readers and money until, in 1971, Esmond’s eccentric son Vere proves his doubters wrong by relaunching the Mail as a tabloid under editor David English. English is young, brilliant and unpredictable: a charming bully with a flexible re...
Dec 18, 2024•1 hr 21 min•Season 6Ep. 14
•Fill in our listener survey for a chance to win an exclusive Origin Story t-shirt. Welcome to the season finale of Origin Story. We put it to the vote and Patreon supporters chose the Daily Mail — the newspaper that loves to hate, and be hated. We thought this would be just one episode but the story is so juicy that it ended up as two, so we’re releasing both parts on the same day as a festive bonus. In part one we chart the rise of the Harmsworth dynasty. Alfred ‘Sunny’ Harmsworth (aka Lord No...
Dec 18, 2024•1 hr•Season 6Ep. 13
Welcome to part two of the story of the BBC. The Second World War is over, radio is booming and television is back. The BBC is stronger than ever, with new talent, new formats and new opportunities. But there are new challenges too: stormy waters over the Suez crisis and a brash new competitor in the form of ITV. Under director general Hugh Carleton Greene, the BBC plugs into the revolutionary energy of the 1960s: Radio 1, Doctor Who, Cathy Come Home, That Was the Week That Was. Meanwhile, David...
Dec 11, 2024•1 hr 26 min•Season 6Ep. 12
So far this season we’ve had to deal with Russell Brand and Benjamin Netanyahu, and we’ve got the Daily Mail coming up, so we all deserve a more uplifting tale. This week we commence the epic story of the British Broadcasting Corporation — the BBC. “Hullo, hullo, 2LO calling. 2LO calling. This is the British Broadcasting Company. Stand by for one minute please!” With those words, at 6pm on Tuesday 14 November 1922, the amiable wireless wizard Arthur Burrows introduced just tens of thousands of l...
Dec 04, 2024•1 hr 21 min•Season 6Ep. 11
This week we complete the story of Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s most politically successful prime minister — and its most divisive. We pick up the story in 1996, with Netanyahu’s first term in office, clashing with both President Clinton and his hard-right coalition partners over the future of the Oslo peace process. We follow his subsequent decade in opposition, as the dwindling of hope and the misfortunes of his rivals enabled him to make yet another unlikely comeback in 2009. Apart from 18 mo...
Nov 27, 2024•1 hr 22 min•Season 6Ep. 10
This week we commence the story of Benjamin Netanyahu. The 75-year-old has become Israel’s longest serving prime minister despite never winning the love of his people, his international allies or even his political colleagues. Now he is accused of prolonging Israel’s horrific wars in Gaza and Lebanon to preserve his own power and save himself from prosecution for corruption. How did the man known even to his foes as Bibi rebound from so many scandals and defeats to become the dominant force in I...
Nov 20, 2024•1 hr 3 min•Season 6Ep. 9
Part two of Ian and Dorian’s post-Presidential Election show at the Tabernacle in West London, recorded on the 7th of November. After signing books (have we mentioned there are Origin Story books out?) Dorian and Ian returned to continue the analysis of what the hell just happened. They also considered what a Trump win means for the UK and answered some excellent audience questions. • Get the Origin Story books on Fascism, Centrism and Conspiracy Theory • Get exclusive extras like supporter-only...
Nov 16, 2024•1 hr 12 min•Season 6Ep. 8
Part one of Ian and Dorian’s post-Presidential Election show at the Tabernacle in West London, recorded on the 7th of November. The show turned into a group therapy session, after Trump won to become the first convicted felon to be elected to the highest office in America. Listen back to Dorian and Ian beginning the process of coming to terms with this world-changing outcome and its implications for global politics. • Get the Origin Story books on Fascism, Centrism and Conspiracy Theory • Get ex...
Nov 16, 2024•55 min•Season 6Ep. 7
The final episode of our two-part story of Artificial Intelligence. Having looked at the emergence and development of AI in part one we now turn to the future and assess the dangers and possibilities it raises. We weigh up two arguments concerning existential risk. Some AI theorists believe the technology has the possibility of becoming sentient and then behaving against humanity's interests. Others worry that it will simply deliver disastrous outcomes on the basis of badly established requests....
Nov 13, 2024•1 hr 16 min•Season 6Ep. 6
It can seem like conspiracy theories have travelled at warp speed from the eccentric margins to the heart of modern politics. But in fact conspiracism has always been one of history’s darkest forces, from the witch hunts to the Holocaust. In this exclusive audiobook extract from the prologue to Conspiracy Theory: The Story of an Idea, Ian explains how conspiracy theories exploit the human brain’s craving for simple explanations in a chaotic and unpredictable world to spin bogus narratives of evi...
Nov 09, 2024•29 min•Season 6Ep. 5
This week we begin the story of Artificial Intelligence. Since the launch of Chat-GPT in late 2022, we have been more excited, and anxious, about AI than ever before. It’s become a daily obsession. But the key question we are grappling with is the same as ever: can machines really ever develop human-style intelligence or merely imitate it? And what is human intelligence anyway? In part two we’ll be exploring the possible ramifications of AI, from the utopian to the dystopian and all points in be...
Nov 06, 2024•1 hr 8 min•Season 6Ep. 4
This week we finish the story of the suffragettes. We pick up the narrative in 1912, when parliament’s failure to deliver women’s suffrage triggered a new phase of violent escalation. No suffragette was more extreme than Emily Wilding Davison, whose death at the hooves of the King’s horse turned a liability into a martyr. Meanwhile, the whole country was convulsed by arson and bomb plots and the Pankhursts’ autocratic leadership was alienating some of their closest allies, including members of t...
Oct 30, 2024•1 hr 18 min•Season 6Ep. 3
This week we begin the tumultuous story of the suffragettes. In 1903, Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst founded the Women’s Social and Political Union. Sick of waiting in vain for women’s suffrage, they decided to secure it by hook or by crook. By 1906, the so-called suffragettes were the most exciting, audacious activists in the land, with their banners of purple, white and green. They then took on the might of the British state with ingenious protests and hunger strikes before agreeing to an u...
Oct 23, 2024•1 hr 8 min•Season 6Ep. 2
What the hell happened to Russell Brand? Ten years ago, the comedian and actor was the loudest voice on the British left as his florid calls for spiritual and political revolution won him the support of politicians and journalists. Now he is a full-time conspiracy theorist and disgraced exile from mainstream culture, conducting prayer meetings with Jordan Peterson and flirting with Donald Trump. The fall of a celebrity is not usually Origin Story material but Brand’s transformation epitomises th...
Oct 16, 2024•1 hr 27 min•Season 6Ep. 1
Sex! Violence! Censorship! These days the British Board of Film Classification rarely makes headlines but it was on the cultural frontlines throughout the 20 th century, from Herbert Asquith and the dawn of British cinema to Mary Whitehouse and “video nasties”. Through the turbulent life of one institution, Ian takes Dorian through a century of moral panics, censorship and furious debates about cinema’s influence on the life of the nation. This (literally) cinematic tale ranges from The Birth of...
Oct 09, 2024•47 min•Season 5Ep. 18
Emmanuel Macron is one of the most fascinating and infuriating figures in 21st century politics. Seven years ago, the philosopher-statesman shredded France’s status quo by seizing the presidency at the helm of a brand new centrist party. But his achievements, at home and abroad, have not lived up to his grand visions and his summer election gamble has left him weaker than ever. Ian tells Dorian a dramatic story of idealism, ambition and hubris, explaining what Macron’s strengths and flaws reveal...
Sep 25, 2024•50 min•Season 5Ep. 16
Over the past eight years, the word “gaslighting” has transformed from an obscure term in psychiatric literature into a ubiquitous buzzword to describe the kind of deceit that makes you feel like you’re losing your mind. But are we using it correctly? What explains its sudden popularity? And is it entirely wise to import a psychological term into the world of politics? Dorian tells Ian how the title of Patrick Hamilton’s hit 1938 play Gaslight gradually became a verb and eventually went viral du...
Aug 28, 2024•37 min•Season 5Ep. 14
The Battle of Cable Street on 4 October 1936 has been described as “the greatest anti-fascist victory on British soil”. It is certainly the most mythologised, most recently inspiring massive anti-fascist protests in British cities. But what actually happened that day? Who exactly was doing the battling? And did this display of working-class solidarity in London’s East End really stop Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists in its tracks? Dorian tells Ian the story of that landmark Sunday and i...
Aug 13, 2024•40 min•Season 5Ep. 12
Racist violence has inflamed several British cities this past week. Should we call the events protests, riots or pogroms? Are the participants actual fascists or ordinary citizens with “legitimate concerns”? And how did the fiction of “two-tier policing” go from extremists to broadcasters in a couple of days? Ian and Dorian analyse how the language of the far right and its mainstream enablers obscures what is really going on and ask if Britain’s worst street violence since 2011 will change anyth...
Aug 06, 2024•47 min•Season 5Ep. 11
Couldn’t make it to the Origin Story live show in London on Monday 15 July? Don’t worry, we’ve got audio for you. Listen up as Dorian and Ian take one last wallow in the glory of Election Night ’24… think about what might be in store for some of our favourite bad losers… see how the events of the campaign relate to the subjects of our past series… and of course answer your questions. Written and presented by Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa We...
Jul 22, 2024•2 hr 59 min•Season 5Ep. 10
The final episode of season five covers the Rushdie Affair. On 14 February 1989, the Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa against Salman Rushdie made The Satanic Verses the most famous novel in the world — for all the wrong reasons. The controversy had far-reaching implications for free speech, international relations and the political identity of British Muslims. Although the issue seemed to have been resolved in 1998, the attempted murder of Rushdie in 2022 showed that it was far from over. Dorian and I...
Jul 10, 2024•1 hr 22 min•Season 5Ep. 9
The season five finale coincides with the general election, so we’ve decided to get very topical indeed with the story of Labour leader and likely prime minister Keir Starmer. To his admirers, he’s the master strategist who took Labour from doom to Downing Street in a single term. To his foes, he’s a ruthless liar who will stop at nothing to crush the left. To the average voter, he remains a bit of a blank slate. What kind of prime minister will he be? Ian and Dorian trace Starmer’s youthful jou...
Jul 01, 2024•1 hr 22 min•Season 5Ep. 8
This episode tells the tale of the anti-vaxxers. The word has only been around since 2001 but inoculation has inspired opposition for as long as it has existed in the West. Dorian and Ian chart the life of vaccines and their opponents from the fight against smallpox in the eighteenth century to the vaccine scandals of the post-war decades. Find out why someone threw a bomb through Cotton Mather’s window, why Gandhi changed his mind, and why Leicester became the anti-vaccine capital of the world....
Jun 26, 2024•1 hr 22 min•Season 5Ep. 7
The war in Gaza has led to accusations of genocide but that word operates on two levels. It’s both a strict legal term that has to be adjudicated by the International Criminal Court and an informal expression of moral outrage. The definition has been contested ever since the word was invented by the lawyer Raphael Lemkin in 1944, in the furnace of the Holocaust. In this two-part episode Dorian and Ian tell the story of genocide as a legal and political category. What exactly does it mean? How is...
Jun 19, 2024•1 hr 9 min•Season 5Ep. 6
