A between-seasons special: The Lineker Affair didn’t just expose the BBC’s fear of the Government. It triggered a flood of bad takes on whether it’s ever permissible to compare contemporary politics to 1930s Germany; BBC employees’ rights to speak their minds; the limits of Twitter; and even whether the Nazis were in fact left-wing. Spoiler: they weren’t.

Seasoned spotters of bad faith arguments Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt examine a gala week of political nonsense, obfuscation, straw-manning and plain old bullshit.

Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production and music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production

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New series preview: How much do we really know about the people who make the headlines? In a provocative new series the acclaimed journalist Michael Crick, formerly of BBC, C4 and Newsnight, delves into the backgrounds of the powerful and the influential.

In this first episode: Few newspaper editors wield as much power as the Daily Mail’s Paul Dacre. Feared and courted by politicians, he’s imposed his singular vision of Britain on successive governments – while sometimes stretching the law in pursuit of justice. But what makes Dacre tick? What does he want? And how might this epic career end?

Like this excerpt? Hear the complete episode on all platforms right now here. And subscribe for new episodes every Monday.

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A taster of our new series. Search for Jam Tomorrow in your favourite podcast app or visit https://kite.link/JTS1

Episode One: Every Day Is Like D-Day. How did Britain’s dreams of a new postwar world go unfulfilled? And what does that mean for us today? In the first of a new documentary series from the makers of Oh God, What Now?, Ros Taylor looks at the legacy of the War itself. Ιdeals of the Blitz Spirit and dreams of wartime heroism still shape everything from pop culture and entertainment to the Brexit debate. But the truth of the War is more complex and less comforting. What will it take for us to see the Second World War – and ourselves – clearly?

•  “If you’re going to have a foundation myth it might as well be one where you destroy Nazism.” – Al Murray

•  “If the response to air raid wasn’t stoicism there was a fear that morale would break down.” – Lucy Noakes

•  “The Keep Calm And Carry On poster was designed for a type of war that never arrived.” – Henry Irvine

•  “Britain went into the war not alone but at the head of the world’s biggest empire… When Britain went to war, so did vast part of the world.” – Lucy Noakes

Written and presented by Ros Taylor. Produced by Jade Bailey. Voiceovers by Imogen Robertson. Original music by Dubstar. Lead producer: Jacob Jarvis. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Jam Tomorrow is a Podmasters production.

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“We surely live in the stupidest possible era of debate about free speech,” says Ian Dunt. When a key arbiter of free expression is the smirking tech bro who owns Twitter, he might be right. How did the right to express yourself freely get hijacked by reactionaries? Are progressives really a threat to freedom of speech?

Dorian Lynskey and Ian delve back in time from the printing press and its early “paper bullets” via the surprisingly racy life of John Stuart Mill right up to the First Amendment of the US Constitution and our current panics over woke, hate speech and cancel culture. How did shouting “free speech” become an instant way to shut down debate?

Support Origin Story to get extra episodes and more at https://www.patreon.com/originstorypod

Reading List

From Ian

Jacob Mchangama – Free Speech: A Global History From Socrates To Social Media

John Rees – The Leveller Revolution

John Stuart Milll – On Liberty

The Complete Works Of Harriet Taylor Mill – Editor Jo Ellen Jacobs

Richard Reeve – John Stuart Mill: Victorian Firebrand

From Dorian

Anthony Lewis — Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment

Suzanne Nossel — Dare to Speak: Defending Free Speech for All

Nat Hentoff – Free Speech for Me But Not for Thee: How the American Left and Right Relentlessly Censor Each Other

Stanley Fish — There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech

Samuel P Nelson — Beyond the First Amendment: The Politics of Free Speech and Pluralism

Karl Popper — The Open Society and Its Enemies

Flemming Rose — Tyranny of Silence

PE Moskowitz — The Case Against Free Speech

Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic — Must We Defend Nazis?: Why the First Amendment Should Not Protect Hate Speech and White Supremacy

Henry Louis Gates Jr — Let Them Talk

George Orwell — Freedom of the Park

Herbert Marcuse — Repressive Tolerance

Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production and music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production

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Drugs won the War on Drugs decades ago, so why are governments still squandering billions on this unwinnable battle? Where did the idea come from? Can we even agree on what drugs are? Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt delve into the tortuous evolution of the futile battle against narcotics. From morphine users Jules Verne and Bismarck and cocaine fan Sigmund Freud to the Opium Wars, the Red Scares, the Jazz Panic, Richard Nixon’s declaration of war on narcotics in 1971 up to Nancy Reagan’s “Just say no”, the War on Drugs becomes a justification for racism, a proxy assault on the ’60s – and an immovable block on evidence-based policy.

Support Origin Story to get extra episodes and more at https://www.patreon.com/originstorypod

Thank you to drugs expert Steve Rolles for his assistance with this episode.

Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production and music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production

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Few terms are thrown about as freely now as “Fascist” but what does the ultimate political condemnation really mean? Where did Fascism come from? Are all Fascists Nazis, and were the Nazis even Fascists themselves? From Mussolini and Nietszche to Adolf Hitler, Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey delve into fascism’s primordial stew of violence, racism, antisemitism, mysticism, anti-intellectualism and bizarrely modern aesthetics. They discover a brutal, anti-rational creed that is equally obsessed with futurist technology and ancient myth – and which inevitably drives itself towards war.

Get next week’s episode right now when you back us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/originstorypod

Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production and music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production

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“But it’s satire!” says every Twitter lout, demagogue or disinformationist to justify their abuse, pile-ons or straight-up lies. But what IS satire? How does it work? What distinguishes it from bullying? Does it even have to be funny? Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey go in search of the truth of satire on a journey that takes in The Thick Of It, Basil Fawlty, Jonathan Swift, Succession, Lenny Bruce, trickster gods, Boris Johnson, Peter Cook and Beyond The Fringe, Spitting Image and more… all the way back to the origin 1.4 million years ago of laughter itself.

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.

Picture: The Thick Of It, BBC

Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production and music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production

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Culture war: it’s been around way longer than Fox News raging against drag queens or The Last Jedi. Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt trace the history of the hatreds that split societies from Bismarck’s original German kulturkampf up to climate denial, gun fetishism, the demonisation of liberal Hollywood, and our modern hellscape of permanent outrage. The secret weapon of culture warriors? Permanent grievance in a battle they can never win.

Get next week’s episode right now, and help Ian and Dorian develop the series, when you back Origin Story on Patreon: www.Patreon.com/originstorypod

Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production and music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production

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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

Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production and music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production

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Neoliberalism has become an all-purpose insult, but what does it actually mean? In the final episode of Series 1, Dorian and Ian tell the extraordinary story of how a friendless group of outsider economists started a decades-long campaign to turn their fringe ideas into mainstream orthodoxy – and succeeded. 

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Neoliberalism: A Reading List

From Ian:

Wealth of Nations and Theory of Moral Sentiment by Adam Smith. Both of these can be read in their own right, they're not as tough-going as you think

History of Economic Thought by Lionel Robbins. One of the greatest economics books ever written. Or spoken rather, given that they're basically transcripts of Robbins’ lectures at the LSE. Masterful. 

The Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayek. Quite completely insane. Rather fun.

Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crisis Changed the World by Adam Tooze. Arguably the best single account of the financial crash. Can be tough going, but it’s worth it.

From Dorian:

Masters of the Universe: Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics by Daniel Stedman Jones. It gets a little dry towards the end but it’s still a valuable attempt to ground an intellectual history of a movement in the combative personalities of the people who created it.

A Brief History of Neoliberalism by David Harvey. Does what it says on the tin from a left-wing perspective. He’s not a fan.

The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein. Her thesis might be overstated but Klein shows how the economists of the Chicago School teamed up with authoritarian leaders such as Pinochet to turn entire countries into experimental laboratories for neoliberalism.

A reading list and whistle-stop history from the academic and author of The Limits of Neoliberalism, William Davies. 

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Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production and music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production

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