Origin Story

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 JenkinsWalking With Destiny by Andrew RobertsThe Churchill Factor by Boris JohnsonChurchill: Military Genius or Menace? By Stephen NapierChurchill and Orwell: The Fight for Freedom by Thomas E. Ricks Oblivion or Glory: 1921 and the Making of Winston Churchill by David StaffordChurchill’s Shadow by Geoffrey WheatcroftFree Thinking: Churchill's Reputation – BBC Radio 3Written 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

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

A taster of our new series. Search for Jam Tomorrow in your favourite podcast app or visit https://kite.link/JTS1Episode 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“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 ListFrom IanJacob Mchangama – Free Speech: A Global History From Socrates To Social MediaJohn Rees – The Leveller RevolutionJohn Stuart Milll – On LibertyThe Complete Works Of Harriet Taylor Mill – Editor Jo Ellen JacobsRichard Reeve – John Stuart Mill: Victorian FirebrandFrom DorianAnthony Lewis — Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First AmendmentSuzanne Nossel — Dare to Speak: Defending Free Speech for AllNat Hentoff – Free Speech for Me But Not for Thee: How the American Left and Right Relentlessly Censor Each OtherStanley Fish — There’s No Such Thing as Free SpeechSamuel P Nelson — Beyond the First Amendment: The Politics of Free Speech and PluralismKarl Popper — The Open Society and Its EnemiesFlemming Rose — Tyranny of SilencePE Moskowitz — The Case Against Free SpeechRichard Delgado and Jean Stefancic — Must We Defend Nazis?: Why the First Amendment Should Not Protect Hate Speech and White SupremacyHenry Louis Gates Jr — Let Them TalkGeorge Orwell — Freedom of the ParkHerbert Marcuse — Repressive ToleranceWritten 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

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

“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.Help Ian and Dorian develop Origin Story by backing us on Patreon. You’ll get the show early and without ads, plus extra good stuff too. “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, BBCWritten 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

A new series of the podcast that explains the most misused ideas in politics. This time: In a rage against her impoverished Soviet childhood, writer Ayn Rand evangelised for radical selfishness and the glories of unfettered capitalism. Is the most influential political novelist of the 20th Century just the darling of the “neoliberal theatre of cruelty”, a benzedrine-addled monster whose books licence toxic egoism, a creator of thick-skinned heroes for a cult of thin-skinned losers… or is there more to her?Will Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey be won over to Rand’s theory of Objectivism by her surprisingly strong writing? Who enjoyed The Fountainhead? Is Rand a fascist? Think for yourself. No-one can make up your mind except YOU.Get next week’s episode right now and help moochers Ian and Dorian develop the series when you back Origin Story on Patreon: www.Patreon.com/originstorypod “When you look at the ruins of Rand’s life, it’s a moral parable of the danger of believing in complete systems.” – Ian Dunt “You can see why millionaires like her, but there’s also a huge appeal to losers… to people who want to be Howard Roarke and never will.” – Dorian Lynskey “Her version of capitalism is exactly what you’d expect from a young old girl trapped in Communist Russia, watching Hollywood movies.” – Ian Dunt “For Rand the idea that the world is complex is a scam that the second-handers pull on you.” – Dorian Lynskey “Atlas Shrugged reads like the novel Lex Luthor would have written.” – 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices