Origin Story

Welcome to the grand finale of Origin Story season seven, as we conclude the remarkable story of Martin Luther King Jr. With the march from Selma to Montgomery and the passing of the Voting Rights Act, 1965 marked the zenith of the civil rights movement as a unified, effective force under King’s leadership. The decade-long fight to desegregate the South had given it strategic clarity and mainstream support. After that, things got much trickier as King switched his attention to economic injustice in cities like Chicago and came out against the war in Vietnam. Estranged from President Johnson, challenged by the young firebrands of Black Power, hounded by the FBI and horrified by the despair that fuelled urban riots, King spent the rest of his life on the back foot. In 1968, he staked everything on an ambitious Poor People’s Campaign but his movement had fragmented and public opinion had turned against him. On 4 April, he was shot dead in Memphis. The assassination simplified King into a martyr. We track the explosive unrest in the days after his death, the long struggle to make Martin Luther King Day a national holiday, and the way his philosophy has been caricatured and neutered by those who believe that civil rights have gone far enough. Finally, we unpack some of King’s most famous quotes to separate the myth from the reality. Why did the movement unravel after Selma? Did King pick the wrong battles or were the forces ranged against him too powerful to vanquish? What happens when a human being becomes a symbol? How has his message been whitewashed by the right? Does President Trump’s backlash politics prove that King was right to lose faith in white America’s willingness to reject racism? And what can today’s activists learn from King’s victories and defeats? Thanks for listening to season seven of Origin Story, and for supporting our work. We’ll be back soon with bonus episodes and Q&As. Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Produced by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the final topic of Origin Story season seven: the extraordinary life and legacy of Dr Martin Luther King. By Origin Story standards, there’s an unusual moral clarity to this story — a genuinely good man up against genuine horrors — but that doesn’t make it a straightforward one. The mainstream caricature of King as a kindly, colour-blind saint is not just a simplification but a cynical misrepresentation, designed to drain his example of its power. Born in Atlanta in 1929, the son of a prominent pastor, King was a brilliant student who developed a sophisticated worldview grounded in both Christianity and philosophy. His Gandhi-inspired belief in nonviolent resistance became central to the civil rights struggle when he was thrust onto the frontlines during the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955-6 and quickly became the most admired black man in America. He was just 27. King’s new role as leader and symbol of the movement was both an honour and a burden. Abused, threatened, assaulted and jailed, he wrestled with his own feelings of inadequacy and guilt as well as the violent forces of white racism and the obsessive attention of the FBI. We follow him through his great triumphs — Montgomery, Birmingham, the March on Washington, Selma — but also his setbacks, his mistakes and his complicated relationships with presidents and fellow activists. What made this previously unknown preacher the unrivalled leader of the civil rights movement for more than 12 years? How did he develop, and evolve, his philosophy of nonviolence? Who were his loyal allies, vicious antagonists and complicated frenemies? How did he play to his strengths and transcend his weaknesses? And what gave him the strength to carry on in the face of both the American South’s barbaric racism and his own ceaseless insecurities? This is an inspiring and often surprising story of moral courage and strategic leadership pitted against terrible odds — one with vital lessons for anybody who seeks to change the world for the better. Plus! Another Origin Story playlist, featuring songs about and inspired by Martin Luther King. It’s sequenced to tell his story chronologically. Reading list • Ralph Abernathy, And the Walls Came Tumbling Down: An Autobiography (1989) • Jonathan Eig, King: The Life of Martin Luther King (2023) • Marshall Frady, Martin Luther King, Jr: A Life (2001) • Martin Luther King Jr, Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story (1958) • Martin Luther King Jr, Why We Can’t Wait (1963) • Martin Luther King Jr, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? (1967) • Dr Martin Luther King Jr, A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches, edited by James Melvin Washington (1986) • Stephen B. Oates, Let the Trumpet Sound: A Life of Martin Luther King, Jr (1982) • Jason Sokol, The Heavens Might Crack: The Death and Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr (2018) Articles • Renata Adler, ‘The Selma March’, The New Yorker (1965) • Jelani Cobb, ‘Martin Luther King, Jr.’s History Lessons’, The New Yorker (2022) • Alex Haley (uncredited), Playboy interview: Martin Luther King (1965) • Howell Raines, ‘Driven to Martyrdom’, New York Times (1986) • Kelefa Sanneh, ‘Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Perilous Power of Respectability’, The New Yorker (2023) • Time, ‘THE SOUTH: Attack on the Conscience’, Time (1957) • Time, ‘America’s Gandhi: Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’, Time (1964) • Calvin Trillin, ‘The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi’, The New Yorker (1964) Video • 60 Minutes interview with Martin Luther King (1966) • BBC Face to Face interview with Martin Luther King (1961) • Martin Luther King, ‘I Have a Dream’ speech (1963) ... Full reading list continues on Patreon Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Produced by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome back to Origin Story, where we’re discussing the concept of economic growth. Growth is the world’s great obsession. When it’s booming, it makes everything easier. When it stagnates or goes into reverse, everybody panics. But what exactly is it, what drives it and what does it cost us? For most of human history economic growth didn’t exist. The average person was no better off than their distant ancestors. Even when the age of growth began with the Industrial Revolution, nobody knew how to measure it or control it until the 1940s. Enter GDP, which quickly became the most important number in the world despite its creators acknowledging from the start that it was both artificial and deeply flawed. We talk about what GDP does and does not measure and how it has adapted to an increasingly complicated global economy. We meet the economists who created it (hello again, John Maynard Keynes) and those who tried to reform or replace it. Robert F Kennedy claimed in 1968 that GDP “measures everything except that which makes life worthwhile”. Is the number that rules the world really fit for purpose? Then we explore our addiction to relentless growth and ask if there is a more sustainable way to thrive: green growth, slow growth or degrowth? Preserving our natural resources without risking economic and political disaster is the great challenge of our times. Is growth essential to the survival of democracy or the cause of many of its problems? What fuelled the miraculous growth of previous eras and why isn’t it working anymore? Can advanced economies escape the low-growth trap or do we need to rethink our whole approach to growth and prosperity? Does GDP still tell us what we need to know? And are we valuing the right things? • Support Origin Story on Patreon • Get the Origin Story books on Fascism, Centrism and Conspiracy Theory Reading list • Donella H. Meadows et al., The Limits to Growth (1972) • Barry Commoner, The Closing Circle: Nature, Man & Technology (1971) • Diane Coyle, GDP: A Brief but Affectionate History (2014) • Diane Coyle, The Measure of Progress: Counting What Really Matters (2025) • Ehsan Masood, GDP: The World’s Most Powerful Formula and Why It Must Now Change (2021) • Jason Hickel, Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World (2020) • John Maynard Keynes, How to Pay for the War (1940) • Kate Raworth, Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist (2017) • Daniel Susskind, Growth: A Reckoning (2024) Articles • John Cassidy, ‘Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth’, The New Yorker (2020) • Herman Daly, ‘The Canary Has Fallen Silent’, New York Times (1970) • Editorial, ‘Pandemic Calls for a New Approach to Growth’, Financial Times (2020) • Editorial, ‘Are there limits to economic growth? It’s time to call time on a 50 year argument’, Nature (2022) • Idrees Kahloon, ‘The World Keeps Getting Richer. Some People Are Worried’, The New Yorker (2024) • Carolyn Kormann, ‘The False Choice Between Economic Growth and Combatting Climate Change’, The New Yorker (2019) • Katy Lederer, ‘The End of G.D.P.?’, The New Yorker (2015) • David Marchese, This Pioneering Economist Says Our Obsession with Growth Must End, New York Times (2022) • Bill McKibben, ‘To Save the Planet, Should We Really Be Moving Slower?’, The New Yorker (2023) • John Merrick, ‘The prophet of the new right’, The New Statesman (2025) • Peter Passell, Marc Roberts and Leonard Ross, ‘The Limits to Growth’, New York Times (1972) Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Produced by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the first ever episode of Origin Story dedicated to a planet. We’re taking a long look at the place of Mars in the popular imagination, from ancient civilisations to fin de siècle Mars mania to the current techbro obsession with exploration and colonisation. Is there life on Mars? Let’s find out. The ancients associated the red planet with gods of war. With the invention of the telescope in the 17th century, astronomers began to understand Mars better and speculate about its inhabitants. Thanks to the amateur astronomer Percival Lowell, the romance of the red planet, and its alleged “canals”, became a craze in the 1890s. H.G. Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs imagined the Martians as colonisers and colonised respectively, while luminaries like Nikola Tesla and Francis Galton hatched outlandish schemes to contact them. Science played the killjoy. Even as a new wave of Mars mania swept the post-war world, NASA probes unveiled the reality of a cold, dusty, dead planet. But their findings allowed for a new breed of romance: the possibility of actually reaching and settling on Mars. Ray Bradbury compared Mars to a mirror. What does humanity’s fascination with it say about our own dreams and fears over the centuries? How did the fictional Martian turn from a friendly pacifist into a ruthless killing machine? Why is there such a thin line between fact and fiction? Is Elon Musk’s obsession with settlement really possible or just another delusion? And why exactly do so many people want to travel to a planet that makes the least hospitable places on earth look like Center Parcs? It’s a mindboggling tale of scientific discovery and wild fantasy, with an all-star cast including Lord Tennyson, William Herschel, Thomas Edison, David Bowie and Arthur C. Clarke. Plus! Our first ever Origin Story playlist, with 23 songs about Mars. We have lift-off. • Support Origin Story on Patreon • Get the Origin Story books on Fascism, Centrism and Conspiracy Theory Reading list • Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles (1950) • Albert Burneko, ‘Neither Elon Musk nor Anybody Else Will Ever Colonize Mars’ (2025) • Stuart Clark (ed.), The Book of Mars: An Anthology of Fact and Fiction (2022) • Robert Crossley, Imagining Mars: A Literary History (2011) • Marc Hartzman, The Big Book of Mars (2020) • Robert Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) • Walter Isaacson, Elon Musk (2023) • Nicky Jenner, 4 th Rock from the Sun: The Story of Mars (2017) • Dorian Lynskey, Everything Must Go: The Stories We Tell About the End of the World (2024) • Lord Tennyson, ‘Locksley Hall Sixty Years After’ (1886) • Walter Tevis, The Man Who Fell to Earth (1963) • Kelly and Zach Weinersmith, A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? (2023) • H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds (1898) • Robert Zubrin, The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must (1996) Audio and video • Alternative 3, written by David Ambrose and directed by Christopher Miles (1977) • The Bunker: Why Elon Musk’s plan for life on Mars is a terrible idea (2025) • The Martian, written by Drew Goddard and directed by Ridley Scott (2015) • A Trip to Mars, directed by Ashley Miller for the Edison Company (1910) • The War of the Worlds, written and directed by Orson Welles (1938) Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Produced by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome back to Origin Story and join us as we wrap up the story of appeasement. It’s 1938. After the Anschluss, Hitler makes his bid for the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia and tests the moral and strategic arguments for appeasement to breaking point. While Chamberlain insists it would be madness to go to war over “a quarrel in a faraway country, between people of whom we know nothing,” opponents like Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee are equally convinced that selling out the Czechs will only encourage Hitler to go further. Desperate diplomacy culminates in the Munich Agreement but Chamberlain’s “triumph” is short-lived as opposition mounts across the country. The German invasion of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 destroys appeasement as a mainstream proposition, leaving only an uneasy alliance of fascists and pacifists. When Stalin chooses Germany over Britain and France, war is inevitable. We look at the people who still wanted to make a deal with Hitler even once the war had begun, the fall of Chamberlain and the revenge of Churchill. We debunk the revisionist case for appeasement, explore how the legacy of Munich has been used and abused to justify military intervention ever since, and ask whether history is repeating itself over Putin and Ukraine. Why did Munich’s popularity collapse so quickly? How did Chamberlain misread Hitler’s intentions so badly? What motivated the die-hard appeasers, and the historians who defend the policy even now? Are the lessons of appeasement a double-edged sword? And which of Chamberlain’s foes had the best zingers? • Support Origin Story on Patreon • Get the Origin Story books on Fascism, Centrism and Conspiracy Theory Reading list • Anonymous, ‘A New Dawn’, The Times (1 October 1938) • W.H. Auden, ‘September 1, 1939’ (1939) • Frederick T. Birchall, ‘Olympics Leave Glow of Pride in the Reich’, New York Times (16 August 1936) • Tim Bouverie, Appeasing Hitler: Chamberlain, Churchill and the Road to War (2019) • Cato (Michael Foot, Peter Howard and Frank Owen), Guilty Men (1940) • Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey, Fascism: The Story of an Idea (2024) • Martin Gilbert, The Roots of Appeasement (1966) • Richard Griffiths, Fellow Travellers of the Right: British Enthusiasts for Nazi Germany, 1933-9 (1980) • Cicely Hamilton, Theodore Savage: A Story of the Past or the Future (1922) • Lucy Hughes-Hallett, ‘How the appeasement of Hitler played into his hands’, New Statesman (2019) • Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day (1989) • Ian Kershaw, Making Friends with Hitler: Lord Londonderry and Britain’s Road to War (2004)• James Levy, Appeasement and Rearmament: Britain 1936-1939 (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006) • Frank McDonough, Neville Chamberlain, Appeasement and the British Road to War (1998) • Malcolm Muggeridge, The Thirties: 1930-1940 in Great Britain (1940) • George Orwell, Facing Unpleasant Facts: 1937-1939, edited by Peter Davison (1998) • ‘Policy of His Majesty’s Government’, day three of House of Commons debate on Munich, Hansard (5 October 1938) • Martin Pugh, ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts!’: Fascists and Fascism in Britain Between the Wars (2005) • Stephen H. Roberts, The House That Hitler Built (1937) • Viscount Rothermere, Warnings and Predictions (1939) • A.J.P. Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War (1961) • Things to Come, written by H.G. Wells and directed by William Cameron Menzies (1936) • Neville Thompson, The Anti-Appeasers (1971) • Lord Vansittart, The Mist Procession (1958) Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Produced by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome back to Origin Story. This week we turn to the story of the appeasement of Hitler’s Germany during the 1930s. With appeasement in the news again in relation to Ukraine, understanding the mistakes of 90 years ago is urgently necessary. How did noble impulses like optimism, fairness and the desire for peace lead to history’s most infamous foreign policy disaster? During the 15 years following the First World War, horror of conflict and a growing consensus that the Treaty of Versailles had immiserated Germany made appeasement a positive effort to ensure peace in Europe. Even Winston Churchill was on board. But the arrival of Hitler put paid to that. The question now became: how could a militarily weak Britain rein in an unpredictable dictator, not to mention Italy and Japan? And what did Hitler really want? We move from the desperate fudging of Ramsay MacDonald and Stanley Baldwin to the evangelical appeasement of Neville Chamberlain, and from crisis to crisis: Manchuria, Abyssinia, the Rhineland, the Anschluss. We meet the most fervent appeasers and their most furious opponents. As Chamberlain’s government begins to crack, Hitler sets his sights on Czechoslovakia… How did appeasement transform from a benign peace-making strategy into a moral and diplomatic disaster? Why is Chamberlain’s reputation as a weak, indecisive leader so misleading? How did Hitler manage to fool so many powerful people? When could Britain and France have stopped him in his tracks? And what combination of good intentions, bad judgements and apocalyptic delusions led to catastrophe? • Support Origin Story on Patreon • Get the Origin Story books on Fascism, Centrism and Conspiracy Theory Reading list • Anonymous, ‘A New Dawn’, The Times (1 October 1938) • W.H. Auden, ‘September 1, 1939’ (1939) • Frederick T. Birchall, ‘Olympics Leave Glow of Pride in the Reich’, New York Times (16 August 1936) • Tim Bouverie, Appeasing Hitler: Chamberlain, Churchill and the Road to War (2019) • Cato (Michael Foot, Peter Howard and Frank Owen), Guilty Men (1940) • Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey, Fascism: The Story of an Idea (2024) • Martin Gilbert, The Roots of Appeasement (1966) • Richard Griffiths, Fellow Travellers of the Right: British Enthusiasts for Nazi Germany, 1933-9 (1980) • Cicely Hamilton, Theodore Savage: A Story of the Past or the Future (1922) • Lucy Hughes-Hallett, ‘How the appeasement of Hitler played into his hands’, New Statesman (2019) • Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day (1989) • Ian Kershaw, Making Friends with Hitler: Lord Londonderry and Britain’s Road to War (2004)• James Levy, Appeasement and Rearmament: Britain 1936-1939 (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006) • Frank McDonough, Neville Chamberlain, Appeasement and the British Road to War (1998) • Malcolm Muggeridge, The Thirties: 1930-1940 in Great Britain (1940) • George Orwell, Facing Unpleasant Facts: 1937-1939, edited by Peter Davison (1998) • ‘Policy of His Majesty’s Government’, day three of House of Commons debate on Munich, Hansard (5 October 1938) • Martin Pugh, ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts!’: Fascists and Fascism in Britain Between the Wars (2005) • Stephen H. Roberts, The House That Hitler Built (1937) • Viscount Rothermere, Warnings and Predictions (1939) • A.J.P. Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War (1961) • Things to Come, written by H.G. Wells and directed by William Cameron Menzies (1936) • Neville Thompson, The Anti-Appeasers (1971) • Lord Vansittart, The Mist Procession (1958) Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Produced by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We had a very good time at Origin Story Live at 21 Soho on Wednesday night. Thanks to everyone who showed up or watched the livestream. The theme of the show is the American inferno and how to think about it. In part one, Normalisation, we use British responses to Hitler in the 1930s to explain how normality bias prevents much of the media from facing up to the crazed extremism of Donald Trump and rip into some of the spectacularly wrong predictions of the pundit class. In part two, Complicity, we take on the politicians, commentators and voters who actively enable Trump and ask what the residents of one German town can tell us about MAGA’s fascist groupthink. But it’s not all bad news. We explore how Trumpism might fail and how Europe might emerge stronger. Finally, we take audience questions about Elon Musk, the nature of evil, why dystopian fiction doesn’t account for stupidity, and the horrifying idea of President Truss. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome back to Origin Story, where we’re concluding the story of the partition of India and Pakistan. We resume in March 1947 with the arrival of the last viceroy of the Raj, Lord Mountbatten, and his formidable wife Edwina. They find a country on the precipice of civil war, with the Punjab consumed by ethnic violence between Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs. Nehru, Jinnah, Gandhi and the British haggle over the details of partition as the deadline draws near and tensions rise. After independence is declared on 15 August, the leaders struggle to bring peace to the new nations of India and Pakistan and avert all-out war over Kashmir. When did partition become truly inevitable? Was British incompetence to blame for the bloodshed? What, or who, brought an end to the violence? How does the legacy of partition continue to shape the subcontinent’s politics? And what can we learn about the dangers of identity-based politics today? • Support Origin Story on Patreon • Get the Origin Story books on Fascism, Centrism and Conspiracy Theory Reading list • John Bew, Citizen Clem: A Biography of Attlee (2016) • William Dalrymple, ‘The Great Divide’, The New Yorker (2015) • Patrick French, ‘The Brutal “Great Migration” That Followed India’s Independence and Partition’, Life.com (2016) • Sarvepalli Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography: Volume One: 1889-1947 (1975) • Sarvepalli Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography: Volume Two: 1947-1965 (1979) • Ramachandra Guha, Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World 1915-1948 (2018) • Gandhi, written by John Briley and directed by Richard Attenborough (1982) • Nisid Hajari, Midnight’s Furies: The Deadly Legacy of India’s Partition (2015) • Ayesha Jalal, The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan (1985) • George Orwell, ‘Reflections on Gandhi’, Partisan Review (1949) • Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children (1981) • Alex von Tunzelmann, Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire (2007) Audio • Empire: Mahatma Gandhi (2022) • Empire: Muhammad Ali Jinnah (2022) • Empire: The Last Viceroy of India (2022) • Empire: Partition (2022) • Jawaharlal Nehru, Independence Day speech (1947) Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Produced by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome back to Origin Story. This week we begin the immense story of the partition of India and Pakistan at midnight on 14-15 August 1947. In a stroke, 340 million people gained independence from the British Empire but a day of celebration came in the midst of horrific ethnic violence which left between 1 and 2 million people dead and more than 15 million displaced in the largest ever movement of people. Historians have argued ever since about whether this traumatic bloodshed, and partition itself, could have been avoided if different politicians had made different decisions. We start by introducing the key players in India, all of them British-educated lawyers: Mahatma Gandhi, the spiritual leader who became an international icon through his use of nonviolent protest to demand independence; Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the Muslim leader who rebounded from numerous defeats to become the father of Pakistan; and Jawaharlal Nehru, who wanted nothing more than to hold India together as a secular, multicultural state. On the British side, Clement Attlee was determined to bring the Raj to a peaceful conclusion, Winston Churchill was equally obsessed with preserving it, and viceroys Lord Linlithgow and Archibald Wavell took very different approaches to Indian nationalism. The story takes us from late Victorian London to the Amritsar massacre, and from Gandhi’s triumphant Salt March to the disaster of the Quit India campaign during the Second World War. We see Pakistan go from a utopian fantasy to a plausible reality while believers in a united India do everything they can to prevent it. And as negotiations falter, riots and pogroms begin to inflame the country. We end on the cusp of 1947 as Lord Mountbatten becomes the last viceroy and partition looks almost inevitable. To what extent did the personalities of a handful of politicians in India and Britain dictate the course of world history? How did Jinnah bring Pakistan to life? Does Gandhi deserve his saintly reputation? And why don't we like to talk about it? • Support Origin Story on Patreon • Get the Origin Story books on Fascism, Centrism and Conspiracy Theory Reading list • John Bew, Citizen Clem: A Biography of Attlee (2016) • William Dalrymple, ‘The Great Divide’, The New Yorker (2015) • Patrick French, ‘The Brutal “Great Migration” That Followed India’s Independence and Partition’, Life.com (2016) • Sarvepalli Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography: Volume One: 1889-1947 (1975) • Sarvepalli Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography: Volume Two: 1947-1965 (1979) • Ramachandra Guha, Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World 1915-1948 (2018) • Gandhi, written by John Briley and directed by Richard Attenborough (1982) • Nisid Hajari, Midnight’s Furies: The Deadly Legacy of India’s Partition (2015) • Ayesha Jalal, The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan (1985) • George Orwell, ‘Reflections on Gandhi’, Partisan Review (1949) • Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children (1981) • Alex von Tunzelmann, Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire (2007) Audio • Empire: Mahatma Gandhi (2022) • Empire: Muhammad Ali Jinnah (2022) • Empire: The Last Viceroy of India (2022) • Empire: Partition (2022) • Jawaharlal Nehru, Independence Day speech (1947) Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Produced by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In part two of Thatcherism, Margaret Thatcher has survived a grim first term and her political and economic bets have paid off. She’s ready to wage war on everything she considers socialism: trade unions, local councils, nationalised industries, the BBC, you name it. The Britain she leads is wealthier and more dynamic yet more divided and unequal — a land bisected into winners and losers, where her beloved free-market economics rips through the families and communities she claims to value. Success has turned Thatcher into a harsh, unbending autocrat, hated by half the country and increasingly alienated from her own ministers. Her stubborn belief in her own instincts leads to catastrophic hubris over Europe and the poll tax, turning allies into assassins. On 22 November 1990, she is forced to resign as prime minister. We wrap up by discussing Thatcher’s record and legacy, both of which are far messier than her acolytes claim. Where did Thatcher succeed and fail in fundamentally changing Britain? Why did her strengths become fatal flaws? How did she sow the seeds of Brexit and Tory civil war? And what were Thatcherism’s unacknowledged contradictions? Is it just another world for neoliberalism or a far more eccentric bundle of beliefs, prejudices and mannerisms? Are her disciples in today’s Tory Party learning all the wrong lessons? Join us as we explode some myths and tell the real story of Thatcherism. • Support Origin Story on Patreon • Get the Origin Story books on Fascism, Centrism and Conspiracy Theory Reading list • Andy Beckett, Pinochet in Piccadilly: Britain and Chile’s Hidden History (2002) • Andy Beckett, When the Lights Went Out: Britain in the Seventies (2009) • Andy Beckett, Promised You a Miracle: Why 1980-82 Made Modern Britain (2015) • Brian and Maggie, written by James Graham and directed by Stephen Frears (2025) • Ronald Butt, Interview with Margaret Thatcher, Sunday Times (1981) • Conservative Central Office, ‘The Right Approach’ (1976) • Iain Dale (ed.), Memories of Margaret Thatcher (2013) • Patrick Dunleavy, ‘The lasting achievement of Thatcherism as a political project is that Britain now has three political parties of the right, instead of one’, LSE (2013) • Ian Gilmour, Dancing with Dogma: Britain Under Thatcherism (1992) • Ipsos polling on the Falklands War, Ipsos (1982) • John Harris, ‘Spare a thought for the late unlamented one nation Tory’, The Guardian (2013) • John Hoskyns and Norman Strauss, ‘Stepping Stones’ (1977) • Geoffrey Howe’s resignation speech (1990) • Geoffrey Howe, Conflict of Loyalty (1994) • The Iron Lady, written by Abi Morgan and directed by Phyllida Lloyd (2011) • Sir Keith Joseph, ‘Notes Towards the Definition of Policy’, Conservative Research Department (1975) • Kwasi Kwarteng et al, Britannia Unchained: Global Lessons for Growth and Posterity (2012) • Kenneth Minogue and Michael Biddiss (eds.), Thatcherism: Personality and Politics (1987) • Charles Moore, Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography: Volume One (2013) • Mollie Panter-Downes, ‘Letter from London’, New Yorker (1982) • Robert Saunders, Yes! To Europe: The 1975 Referendum and Seventies Britain (2018) • Margaret Thatcher, ‘Speech to Conservative Party Conference’ (1975) • Margaret Thatcher, ‘Speech to Conservative Rally in Bolton’ (1979) • Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (1993) • Margaret Thatcher, The Path to Power (1995) • Phil Tinline, The Death of Consensus: 100 Years of Political Nightmares (2022) • D.R. Valentine, ‘Margaret Thatcher on History, Economics & Political Consensus’, University of Oxford (2013) • Brian Walden, Interview with Margaret Thatcher after Nigel Lawson’s resignation (1989) ... reading list continues on Patreon Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Produced by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit...

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 expression of a very unusual personality? In part one we follow Thatcher from her birth in Grantham in 1925 to her triumph in the Falklands War 57 years later. We investigate the influence of her father, the Methodist grocer and local celebrity Arthur Roberts; her entry into the reformist wing of the Conservative Party at Oxford University; and her journey to becoming MP for Finchley in 1959. It’s only in the 1970s that Thatcherism really takes shape. Scarred by her vilification as the “Milk Snatcher”, and repelled by Ted Heath and the post-war consensus, she follows the likes of Enoch Powell and Keith Joseph to the right, finding intellectual ideas to match her instinctive beliefs. The Thatcher who becomes Tory leader in 1975 and prime minister in 1979 is more “Cautious Margaret” than “Iron Lady”, not yet allergic to advice and compromise. She even has nice things to say about Europe. But before long, she’s the most unpopular prime minister since polling began. As her radical monetarist experiment leads to recession, mass unemployment and civil unrest, she appears doomed but once she’s defeated both the Tory “wets” and Argentina’s General Galtieri, Thatcherism is unchained. What were Thatcher’s formative influences? How did she grow to hate consensus politics and see herself as the antidote? Who were the other architects of Thatcherism? How close did she come to disaster and was it really the Falklands that saved her? And can Keir Starmer learn anything from her chaotic and unpopular first term? Next week the story continues with the 1983 election, the miners’ strike and the Thatcherite revolution, before it all goes horribly wrong for Maggie. If you’re a Patreon, you don’t have to wait: you can hear it right now. • Support Origin Story on Patreon • Get the Origin Story books on Fascism, Centrism and Conspiracy Theory Reading list • Andy Beckett, Pinochet in Piccadilly: Britain and Chile’s Hidden History (2002) • Andy Beckett, When the Lights Went Out: Britain in the Seventies (2009) • Andy Beckett, Promised You a Miracle: Why 1980-82 Made Modern Britain (2015) • Brian and Maggie, written by James Graham and directed by Stephen Frears (2025) • Ronald Butt, Interview with Margaret Thatcher, Sunday Times (1981) • Conservative Central Office, ‘The Right Approach’ (1976) • Iain Dale (ed.), Memories of Margaret Thatcher (2013) • Patrick Dunleavy, ‘The lasting achievement of Thatcherism as a political project is that Britain now has three political parties of the right, instead of one’, LSE (2013) • Ian Gilmour, Dancing with Dogma: Britain Under Thatcherism (1992) • Ipsos polling on the Falklands War, Ipsos (1982) • John Harris, ‘Spare a thought for the late unlamented one nation Tory’, The Guardian (2013) • John Hoskyns and Norman Strauss, ‘Stepping Stones’ (1977) • Geoffrey Howe’s resignation speech (1990) • Geoffrey Howe, Conflict of Loyalty (1994) • The Iron Lady, written by Abi Morgan and directed by Phyllida Lloyd (2011) • Sir Keith Joseph, ‘Notes Towards the Definition of Policy’, Conservative Research Department (1975) • Kwasi Kwarteng et al, Britannia Unchained: Global Lessons for Growth and Posterity (2012) ... reading list continues on Patreon Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Produced by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 race illuminated MPs’ growing ambivalence about her, and her subsequent performance has only amplified those doubts. Even her allies admit that her weaknesses are more visible than her strengths. As she fights to win back right-wing voters from Reform while disdaining the moderates lost to Labour and the Liberal Democrats, are her days numbered? We start by examining Badenoch’s upbringing under military dictatorship in Nigeria, and the confusing stories she tells about it. She moves to London at the age of 16 and, after a rocky start, becomes a computer engineer. At 25, she joins the Conservative Party. At 30, she’s fighting her first election (unsuccessfully). We follow her through Coutts bank, The Spectator and the London Assembly to Westminster, where she acquires a mixed reputation. Diligent and nuanced in some areas, stubborn and lazy in others. Willing to stand up to the Brexit hardliners yet increasingly radicalised on cultural issues. Some Tory MPs hail her as the future of the right while others mutter that she is arrogant, bullying and unfriendly. And she does say some very odd things. How did Nigeria shape Badenoch’s politics? When did she start talking like a right-wing podcast? Are her prejudices more powerful than her values? Can she really revive the Tory Party or simply drive it further down a hard right cul-de-sac? Why did Michael Gove lose faith in his protégé? And if Badenoch is trying to follow Margaret Thatcher’s playbook, does her copy have half the pages missing? The story is stranger than you think. • Origin Story is live at Soho21 on the 16th of April. Tickets here • Support Origin Story on Patreon • Get the Origin Story books on Fascism, Centrism and Conspiracy Theory Reading list Articles • Aubrey Allegretti and Nicola Woolcock, ‘Kemi Badenoch: “epidemic” of children being told they’re trans’ (2023) • Richard Assheton, ‘Nigeria roots for Kemi Badenoch’s fighting spirit’ (2022) • Kemi Badenoch, maiden speech in the House of Commons (2017) • Kemi Badenoch, ‘I want to set us free by telling people the truth’, The Times (2022) • Kemi Badenoch, ‘Gagging of the brave has let gender ideologues seize control’, Sunday Times (2024) • Katy Balls and Michael Gove, ‘“I will die protecting this country’: Kemi Badenoch on where she plans to take the Tories’, The Spectator (2024) • Conservative Home, ‘Speech of the year: Kemi Badenoch on critical race theory’, Conservative Home (2020) • Rachel Cunliffe, ‘How Kemi Badenoch became the Tory front runner’, The New Statesman (2024) • Annabelle Dickson, ‘Kemi Badenoch: The Conservative Party’s next leader but one?’, Politico (2022) • Joe Murphy, ‘Kemi Badenoch: New vice chairman of the Conservatives talks about her fight to recruit a more diverse range of MPs’, Evening Standard (2018) • Parliament Square, ‘Questioning “Kemi”’s Comments’, The Critic (2024) Radio and podcasts • Political Thinking with Nick Robinson, Radio 4 (2020) • Kemi Badenoch’s Commons speech on Critical Race Theory (2020) • Profile, Radio 4 (2022) • Political Thinking with Nick Robinson, Radio 4 (2024) • Honestly with Bari Weiss: Is Kemi Badenoch the Next Margaret Thatcher? (2024) • Triggernometry with Kemi Badenoch (2025) Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Produced by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 Jewish, used critical theory and social studies to infiltrate American life and undermine “Judeo-Christian culture” from within. Hence, allegedly, political correctness and much else besides. The delusion of Cultural Marxism was made famous by Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik in 2011 but it is not confined to neo-Nazis. As a pseudo-intellectual justification for the anti-woke backlash, it has been cited by Jordan Peterson, Paul Dacre, Viktor Orbán, Ron DeSantis and Suella Braverman, making it perhaps the clearest bridge between the far right and “respectable” conservatism: a modern Red Scare for a cultural Cold War. Dorian takes Ian through the evolution of the theory, from post-war fascist Francis Parker Lockey via conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche to the paranoid fringes of conservatism and ultimately the mainstream. Is Cultural Marxism just a rebranding of Hitler’s antisemitic obsession with “cultural bolshevism” or something more ornate? Who were the Frankfurt School and what were they really trying to do? Why do conservative politicians keep using a phrase popularised by a fascist terrorist? And what does this have to do with the Beatles or A Nightmare on Elm Street? Join us as we unravel one of the most perniciously influential conspiracy theories in the world. • Support Origin Story on Patreon • Get the Origin Story books on Fascism, Centrism and Conspiracy Theory Reading list The History of Political Correctness (1999) Moses Apostaticus, ‘Cultural Marxism Is Destroying America’, The Daily Caller (2016) Hannah Barnes, ‘The Intolerant Age’, New Statesman (2024) Bill Berkowitz, ‘“Cultural Marxism” Catching On’, Southern Poverty Law Center (2003) Paul Gottfried, Antifascism: The Course of a Crusade (2021) Martin Jay, ‘Dialectic of Counter-Enlightenment: The Frankfurt School as Scapegoat of the Lunatic Fringe’, Salmagundi (2010) Stuart Jeffries, Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School (2016) Stuart Jeffries, ‘Why Theodor Adorno and the Frankfurt School failed to change the world’, New Statesman (2021) William S. Lind, ‘Understanding Oklahoma’, Washington Post (1995) William S. Lind, ‘What Is Cultural Marxism?’ (undated) William S. Lind, ‘The Origins of Political Correctness’ (2000) William S. Lind (ed.), ‘“Political Correctness”: A Short History of an Ideology’ (2004) Sarah Manavis, ‘What Is Cultural Marxism? The alt-right meme in Suella Braverman’s speech in Westminster’, New Statesman (2018) Matt McManus, ‘On Marxism, Post-Marxism, and “Cultural Marxism”’, Merion West (2018) Michael Minnicino, ‘The New Dark Age: The Frankfurt School and “Political Correctness”, Fidelio (1992) Samuel Moyn, ‘The Alt-Right’s Favorite Meme Is 100 Years Old’, New York Times (2018) David Niewert, ‘The new age of chain terrorism: White far-right killers are inspiring each other sequentially’, Daily Kos (2019) Ari Paul, ‘“Cultural Marxism: The Mainstreaming of a Nazi Trope’ (2019) The Red Phoenix, ‘Debunking William S. Lind & “Cultural Marxism”’, The Red Phoenix (2011) Matthew Rose, ‘A World After Liberalism: Philosophers of the Radical Right’ (2021) ... reading list continues – full list available on Patreon Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Produced by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 Russell T. Davies, with an increasingly pointed and explicit political agenda. What are its core values and ideas? How does it balance consistency with change? And how does one programme get away with promoting such a radically progressive message inside the otherwise anxious BBC? This is the story of one of the weirdest and most beloved characters in popular fiction, in all its timey-wimey goodness. Find yourself a decent spot behind the sofa and we’ll begin… Reading list John Higgs – Exterminate/Regenerate (2025) Dorian Lynskey – ‘Once Upon a Time Lord’, Empire magazine (2013) An Adventure in Space and Time, written by Mark Gatiss and directed by Terry McDonough, BBC (2013) • Support Origin Story on Patreon • Get the Origin Story books on Fascism, Centrism and Conspiracy Theory Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Produced by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 his own image. He gutted the payroll, cluttered the timeline with crud, welcomed back trolls with open arms and rebranded the corpse as X. At the same time, his breakneck self-radicalisation made him the new lodestar of the international far right. In due course the “global town square” became a playground for conspiracy theorists, grifters and extremists. Musk used to agonise that the Twitter takeover was a ruinous mistake but he’s ended up with a seat in the Trump administration and more billions than ever. It’s everyone else who’s paying the price. Why was Musk so determined to own Twitter in defiance of all financial logic? What role did the platform’s eccentric founder Jack Dorsey play? Why does Musk’s professed love of free speech only cut in one direction? (Trick question.) How does all this play into his messianic delusion that he is the saviour of humanity? And can Bluesky redeem the failed experiment of social media? NOTE: This episode was recorded in December, before Musk escalated his attacks on the Labour government and his support for Germany’s AfD, but he was already dreadful beyond belief. • Support Origin Story on Patreon • Get the Origin Story books on Fascism, Centrism and Conspiracy Theory Reading list Axios – How It Happened: Elon Musk vs. Twitter (2023) Kate Conger, Mike Isaac, Ryan Mac and Tiffany Hsu – ‘Two Weeks of Chaos: Inside Elon Musk’s Takeover of Twitter’, New York Times (2023) Kate Conger and Ryan Mac – Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter (2024) Sheon Han – ‘What We Lost When Twitter Became X’, New Yorker (2024) Katie Harbath – ‘Elon Musk’s Takeover’, Lawfare (2024) Walter Isaacson – Elon Musk (2024) Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Produced by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• Give or get 20% off annual Patreon backing for Origin Story in our Black Friday sale •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 relationship to the truth. He perfects the winning formula of gravitas, fun and permanent outrage while getting so close to Margaret Thatcher that the Mail effectively becomes an arm of the Conservative campaign machine. Enter Paul Dacre in 1992 — the Mail’s most long-lasting and divisive editor. Socially awkward and writhing with prejudice, he sees himself as the vessel for the aspirations and phobias of the middle classes — the voice of the ordinary man and woman despite his giant salary, multiple homes and Etonian sons. For 26 years, he terrorises staff, persecutes minorities, intimidates politicians and rails against institutions like the EU and the BBC. (Be warned: this episode contains a record number of beeped obscenities.) We close by talking about Dacre’s toxic legacy and how his peculiar ideas about Britain continue to shape the direction of the country even under his successors. But the Mail’s circulation is plummeting and even its cursed website has lost momentum. Almost 130 years after Alfred Harmsworth founded it, why does it remain the most venomously powerful newspaper in Britain? How did the Mail reverse its decline and become what it is today? Do the editors or the readers decide its preoccupations? How did it influence both James Bond and the Beatles? What do Paul Dacre’s shoes tell us about this self-proclaimed voice of the people? And is the Mail really as plugged in as it thinks it is? Join us for the dramatic story of the newspaper that reveals Britain’s dark heart. • Get the Origin Story books on Fascism, Centrism and Conspiracy Theory Reading list Books Adrian Addison – Mail Men: The Unauthorized Story of the Daily Mail, the Paper That Divided and Conquered Britain (2017) Richard Bourne – Lords of Fleet Street: The Harmsworth Dynasty (1990) William E Carson – Northcliffe: Britain’s Man of Power (1918) Tom Clarke – My Northcliffe Diary (1931) James Curran and Jean Seaton - Power Without Responsibility: The Press and Broadcasting in Britain (1998) Nick Davies – Flat Earth News (2008) Stephen Dorril – Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley and British Fascism (2006) Roy Greenslade – Press Gang: How Newspapers Make Profits from Propaganda (2003) Reginald Pound and Geoffrey Harmsworth – Northcliffe (1960) Martin Pugh – ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts!’: Fascists and Fascism in Britain Between the Wars (2005) ... Full reading list can be found on Patreon Journalism Paul Dacre on Desert Island Discs (2004) Paul Dacre – Cudlipp Lecture (2007) Paul Dacre – Speech to the Society of Editors (2008) Lauren Collins – ‘The Mail Supremacy’, New Yorker (2012) ... Full reading list can be found on Patreon Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Produced by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• Give or get 20% off annual Patreon backing for Origin Story in our Black Friday sale •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 Northcliffe) is a dynamic visionary whose understanding of the British public enables him to build the world’s biggest magazine empire while still in his 20s. In 1896 he launches the Daily Mail to give the newly literate and enfranchised middle classes exactly what they want: gossip, jingoism, punchy headlines and making stuff up. Snapping up venerable institutions like the Times and the Observer, Northcliffe soon owns half the market and uses it to promote his own views on issues like rearmament (good) and women’s suffrage (bad). By the First World War, he’s a formidable power-broker with the muscle to bring down a prime minister and bag himself a place in the war cabinet. But his mental health collapses and he dies in 1922, paranoid and lonely. Alfred’s brother Harold ‘Bunny’ Harmsworth is the money man who dreams of becoming the richest man in the land and almost gets there. He’s also a right-wing zealot who boasts of toppling the Labour government with the infamous Zinoviev letter and considers Stanley Baldwin’s Tories “semi-socialist”. Inevitably, he is drawn to fascism. It’s not just his support for Oswald Mosley and that notorious headline, ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts!’ Enthralled by Mussolini and Hitler, Rothermere becomes Britain’s loudest cheerleader for fascism and appeasement. Hitler, in return, declares that the Mail is “doing an immense amount of good”. We pause the story in 1940, with Rothermere dead, his unremarkable son Esmond taking the reins and Lord Beaverbrook’s Daily Express determined to steal the Mail’s thunder. How did Northcliffe revolutionise British newspapers? Was his hatred of Germany really one of the drivers of the First World War? Which politician denounced his “diseased vanity”? And what led Rothermere to turn the Mail into a vehicle for fascist propaganda? It’s a tale of power, money, madness and extremism. • Get the Origin Story books on Fascism, Centrism and Conspiracy Theory Reading list Books Adrian Addison – Mail Men: The Unauthorized Story of the Daily Mail, the Paper That Divided and Conquered Britain (2017) Richard Bourne – Lords of Fleet Street: The Harmsworth Dynasty (1990) William E Carson – Northcliffe: Britain’s Man of Power (1918) Tom Clarke – My Northcliffe Diary (1931) James Curran and Jean Seaton - Power Without Responsibility: The Press and Broadcasting in Britain (1998) Nick Davies – Flat Earth News (2008) Stephen Dorril – Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley and British Fascism (2006) Roy Greenslade – Press Gang: How Newspapers Make Profits from Propaganda (2003) Reginald Pound and Geoffrey Harmsworth – Northcliffe (1960) Martin Pugh – ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts!’: Fascists and Fascism in Britain Between the Wars (2005) ... Full reading list can be found on Patreon Journalism Paul Dacre on Desert Island Discs (2004) Paul Dacre – Cudlipp Lecture (2007) Paul Dacre – Speech to the Society of Editors (2008) Lauren Collins – ‘The Mail Supremacy’, New Yorker (2012) ... Full reading list can be found on Patreon Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Produced by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• Give or get 20% off annual Patreon backing for Origin Story in our Black Friday sale 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 Attenborough’s highbrow upstart BBC2 introduces the nation to colour TV and landmark documentaries. The 70s and 80s are a golden age for ratings, from Morecambe and Wise to Live Aid to EastEnders. Yet there’s also a looming existential crisis thanks to Margaret Thatcher, who loathes the corporation as the embodiment of the bloated state and centre-left groupthink. After the defenestration of DG Alasdair Milne, John Birt gives the BBC a Thatcherite makeover that fends off the Tory assault, but at what cost? In the 21st century, the BBC has lived under the shadow of scandals, cuts and relentless salvos from the right — every blunder, from the Iraq War to Jimmy Savile, becomes another cudgel for its enemies to beat it with. Too successful and it’s accused of stifling competition. Not successful enough and it’s not worth the license fee. The crisis never ends. Yet more than nine in ten of us use it every week and would be devastated to lose it. How has the BBC lived up to the Reithian imperative to inform, educate and entertain, and why did Reith himself end up hating it? How can an organisation so powerful be so vulnerable? Is its unruly pluralism a blessing or a curse? Is it really politically biased — and if so, in which direction? And who did Mary Whitehouse personally blame for Britain’s “moral collapse”? Tune in. Reading list Patrick Barwise and Peter York – The War Against the BBC (2020) John Birt – The Harder Path: The Autobiography (2002) Bill Cotton – Double Bill: 80 Years of Entertainment (2000) Desert Island Discs with Sir Hugh Greene (1983) Simon Elmes – And Now on Radio 4: A Celebration of the World’s Best Radio Station (2007) Lionel Fielden – The Natural Bent (1960) Grace Wyndham Goldie – Facing the Nation: Television and Politics 1936-1976 (1977) David Hendy – The BBC: A People’s History (2022) Charlotte Higgins – This New Noise: The Extraordinary Birth and Troubled Life of the BBC (2015) Sam Knight – ‘Can the BBC Survive the British Government?’, New Yorker (2022) Ian McIntyre – The Expense of Glory: A Life of John Reith (1993) Eric Maschwitz – No Chip on My Shoulder (1957) Hilda Matheson – Broadcasting (1933) Joe Moran – Armchair Nation: An Intimate History of Britain in Front of the TV (2014) JCW Reith – Broadcast Over Britain (1924) JCW Reith – Into the Wind (1949) Jean Seaton – Pinkoes and Traitors: The BBC and the Nation 1974-1987 (2015) Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Produced by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• Give or get 20% off annual Patreon backing for Origin Story in our Black Friday sale 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 listeners to Britain’s first national broadcaster. Its founding director general, John Reith, defined its mission in three words: “Inform, educate, entertain.” When Reith and his team set up shop in Savoy Hill in 1923, the BBC’s staff numbered just 31, including the cleaner. A century later, the BBC is the world’s most popular public broadcaster and most trusted news source. It is the heart of the UK’s soft power and one of our most beloved national institutions. It is the mirror of our tastes and concerns and the background to our lives. Yet it has always been a battleground, too, tormented by newspaper barons, rival broadcasters, suspicious politicians and its own internal tensions. As 1960s director general Hugh Carleton Greene observed, it is “the universal Aunt Sally of our day”. The story begins with the utopian dreams of the wireless pioneers, and Reith’s own paternalistic idealism about the power of radio to elevate the nation. We meet such gamechanging talents as Hilda Matheson and Cecil Lewis as they develop the art of broadcasting — including one, inevitably, who becomes a fascist. In 1926, the BBC faced its first major crisis, the General Strike, and made its first sworn enemy, Winston Churchill. By 1939, the BBC had 34 million radio listeners and was pioneering the new medium of television. During the Second World War, it proved its worth as a morale-boosting, unifying force at home and an advertisement for democratic British values abroad. One French broadcaster called it “a torch in the darkness.” We end part one with the BBC preparing to enter the radically transformed post-war world and the age of television. What are the origins of the BBC’s values and structures? Who were the shellshocked misfits who got it off the ground and why did they think it would change the world? Why did the General Strike almost bring it to its knees? How did it help win the war? Oh, and what did Reith have against television? It’s a saga of bohemians, bureaucrats and bust-ups, with walk-on parts for George Orwell, HG Wells, the Bloomsbury set, JB Priestley, Ewan MacColl, Lord Haw-Haw and Mickey Mouse. And at the centre of it all is the prickly, domineering, inspirational figure of John Reith. Stand by for one minute please! Reading list Patrick Barwise and Peter York – The War Against the BBC (2020) John Birt – The Harder Path: The Autobiography (2002) Bill Cotton – Double Bill: 80 Years of Entertainment (2000) Desert Island Discs with Sir Hugh Greene (1983) Simon Elmes – And Now on Radio 4: A Celebration of the World’s Best Radio Station (2007) Lionel Fielden – The Natural Bent (1960) Grace Wyndham Goldie – Facing the Nation: Television and Politics 1936-1976 (1977) David Hendy – The BBC: A People’s History (2022) Charlotte Higgins – This New Noise: The Extraordinary Birth and Troubled Life of the BBC (2015) Sam Knight – ‘Can the BBC Survive the British Government?’, New Yorker (2022) Ian McIntyre – The Expense of Glory: A Life of John Reith (1993) ... Full reading list available on Patreon Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Produced by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices