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Origin Story

Podmasters

What are the real stories behind the most misunderstood and abused ideas in politics? From Conspiracy Theory to Woke to Centrism and beyond, Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey dig into the astonishing secret histories of concepts you thought you knew. Want to support us in making future seasons? There are now two ways you can help out: • Patreon – Get early episodes, live Zooms, merchandise and more from just £5 per month. • Apple Podcasts – Want everything in one place with one easy payment? Subscribe to our premium feed on Apple Podcasts for ad-free shows early and bonus editions too. From Podmasters, the makers of Oh God, What Now?, American Friction and The Bunker.

  1. The British Chinese – Hidden generations

    3 SEPT.

    The British Chinese – Hidden generations

    British Chinese compose nearly one per cent of the British population, but they are culturally and politically ignored with precious little representation in politics or television. In this Origin Story special edition, we trace the history of the British Chinese community, from the days of Roman Britain to the present day. Along the way, we see the construction of the first Chinatown in London's Limehouse, at the height of Empire, when ports function as joining-places for the world. We witness the racism that hit Chinese communities during the wars, when fear of 'Yellow Peril' and miscegenation resulted in deportation programmes against the very people who had helped Britain in the fight against Germany. And we follow the second triumphant wave of immigration in the 20th Century, in the restaurant business, as Chinese food helps democratise the practice of eating out in Britain. We then look at the extraordinary accomplishments of the British Chinese in the modern era, particularly in education, culture and the economy. And we start to tease apart a richer, deeper story about multicultural Britain, one which is much more varied and surprising than people allow for in the barren conversation about immigration we read in the newspapers every day. Support Origin Story on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/originstorypod Reading list • William Poole, The Letters of Shen Fuzong to Thomas Hyde, 1687-88, British Library Journal, volume 2015, article 9 • Earle Gale, Chinese pathfinders paved the way in UK hundreds of years ago, China Daily • Marc Horne, Extraordinary tale of first Chinese Scotsman, The Times • Anonymous, William Macao • Sylvia Hahn, Stanley Nadel (eds) Asian Migrants in Europe: Transcultural Connections • Gregor Benton and Edmund Terence Gomez, The Chinese in Britain, 1800–Present  • Anonymous, Liverpool Chinatown History • Jody-Lan Castle, Looking for my Shanghai father, BBC.co.uk • Anonymous, London by ethnicity: Analysis, The Guardian • Emily Thomas, British Chinese people say racism against them is 'ignored', BBC.co.uk • John Hills et al, An Anatomy of Economic Inequality in the UK: Report of the National Equality Panel, Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, LSE.  • Tze Ming Mok and Lucinda Platt, All look the same? Diversity of labour market outcomes of Chinese ethnic group populations in the UK, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies • Zain Mohyuddin and Sophie Stowers, Minorities Report: The Attitudes of Britain's Ethnic Minority Population, UK in a Changing Europe • Anon, Chinese ethnic group: facts and figures, Gov.uk • Anonymous, Ethnicity pay gaps, UK: 2012 to 2022, ONS• Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume One 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

    1 h 5 min
  2. Rivers of Blood – How Enoch Powell poisoned Britain

    20 AOÛT

    Rivers of Blood – How Enoch Powell poisoned Britain

    Welcome back to Origin Story. In this bonus episode Dorian tells the unnervingly relevant story of Enoch Powell’s so-called “Rivers of Blood” speech. On 20 April 1968, the Conservative MP for Wolverhampton South West delivered probably the most explosive political speech in British peacetime history, bringing into the mainstream opinions previously confined to the far right. As Keir Starmer discovered, even the faintest echo of the speech is toxic on the left, yet on the right newspaper columnists and politicians like Robert Jenrick are reviving Powell’s rhetoric with impunity. We start by examining Powell’s youth as a brilliant scholar, war hero and ardent imperialist who developed an idiosyncratic version of nationalism. As a junior minister and pioneering neoliberal  in the 1950s, he barely mentioned race or immigration but he became increasingly obsessed during the 1960s, and increasingly vocal. Powell contrived his speech to have the biggest possible impact and he succeeded. While he was sacked by Tory leader Ted Heath and denounced as an evil race-baiter by the establishment (even The Beatles took a shot), he became the most popular politician in Britain almost overnight. It was the first eruption of what we now know as right-wing populism and its aftershocks extended from Rock Against Racism and no-platforming to the Great Replacement Theory and Brexit. How did one speech poison British politics? What led Powell to deliver it? What can it teach us about the timeless tricks of anti-immigrant oratory? Did he merely activate the British public’s latent racism or actively feed it? What lessons have politicians failed to learn about how to deal with anti-immigrant sentiment? And why are Britain’s elites more tolerant of overt racism in 2025 than they were in 1968? Support Origin Story on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/originstorypod Reading list • Anonymous, ‘An Evil Speech’, The Times (22 April 1968) • Anonymous, ‘Coloured Family Attacked’, The Times (1 May 1968) • Paul Foot, The Rise of Enoch Powell (1969) • Simon Heffer, Like the Roman: The Life of Enoch Powell (1998) • Tom McTague, Between the Waves: The Hidden History of a Very British Revolution 1945-2016 (2025) • Sarfraz Manzoor, ‘Black Britain’s Darkest Hour’, The Guardian (2008) • Caroline Moorhead, ‘A Would-Be Leader Deserted by Destiny’, The Times (12 May 1975) • Enoch Powell, the ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, 20 April 1968 • J. Enoch Powell, Freedom and Reality, edited by John Wood (1969) • Andrew Roth, Enoch Powell: Tory Tribune (1970) • Michael Savage, ‘Fifty years on, what is the legacy of Enoch Powell’s “rivers of blood” speech?’, The Observer (2018) • Douglas E. Schoen, Enoch Powell and the Powellites (1977) • Robert Shepherd, Enoch Powell (1996) • Evan Smith, No Platform: A History of Anti-Fascism, Universities and the Limits of Free Speech (2020) • Bill Smithies and Peter Fiddick, Enoch Powell on Immigration (1969)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

    1 h 26 min
  3. Shostakovich and Stalin – The Composer and the Dictator

    6 AOÛT

    Shostakovich and Stalin – The Composer and the Dictator

    Welcome back to Origin Story. This bonus episode is something a bit different: a story about the power of music and the music of power.  Tortured genius? Stalinist stooge? Undercover dissident? Perhaps no musician better represents the competing demands of art and politics than Dmitri Shostakovich, who died 50 years ago this week. He has been called the most brilliant symphonist of his age and the most controversial composer since Wagner. Shostakovich’s career began with Lenin and ended with Brezhnev but his great antagonist was Stalin, a self-styled music buff and maestro in the art of fear. From symphony to symphony, Shostakovich danced on the edge of a knife. Sometimes he was the Soviet Union’s favourite composer, bathing in privilege and acclaim. At other times he was an “enemy of the people”, bullied into silence and terrified for his life. Nobody knew what Shostakovich’s music was really saying until the posthumous publication of his memoir Testimony made an extraordinary claim that turned all assumptions on their head. But was this just a dying man’s attempt to save his reputation and was Testimony even his words or a brilliant forgery? His admirers and detractors have been fighting the “Shostakovich wars” ever since. How did Shostakovich and contemporaries like Prokofiev manage to produce great art in a dictatorship, and what did it cost them? Why did his Leningrad Symphony transfix the world? How did he inspire the most consequential review in the history of music criticism? And can we ever truly know what his music meant or is it all in the ear of the beholder? Listen closely. Support Origin Story on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/originstorypod Reading list • Anonymous, ‘Muddle Instead of Music’, Pravda (28 January 1936) • Anonymous, ‘Shostakovich and the Guns’, Time (20 July 1942) • Julian Barnes, The Noise of Time (2016) • James Devlin, Shostakovich (1983) • Jeremy Eichler, ‘The Composer and the Dictator’, New York Times (2004) • Laurel E. Fay, Shostakovich: A Life (2000) • Michel Krielaars, The Sound of Utopia: Musicians in the Time of Stalin (2025) • Dorian Lynskey, ‘Settling a Soviet Score’, Jewish Renaissance (Spring 2025) • Brian Morton, Shostakovich: His Life and Music (2006) • Alex Ross, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century (2007) • Nikil Saval, ‘Julian Barnes and the Shostakovich Wars’, The New Yorker (2016) • Dmitri Shostakovich, Testimony: The Memoirs of Shostakovich, as related to and edited by Solomon Volkov (1979) • Elizabeth Wilson, Shostakovich: A Life Remembered (1994) 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

    55 min
  4. ICE – How Trump built an American Gestapo

    23 JUIL.

    ICE – How Trump built an American Gestapo

    What is ICE? Who are these men we see gathered around students and politicians in the US, with their faces covered, wearing unmarked clothing, often throwing people into unmarked cars? Where did this organisation originate? How did it turn into what looks like a militia? And where will its loyalties lie in future if there is a threat to Trump's hold on power? This special edition of Origin Story looks into US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a body which was once responsible for tracking undocumented immigrants who were a threat to national security, but has now metastasised into a group which seems to target all immigrants and many US citizens. We track its birth under George Bush Jr, its actions under Barack Obama and then its radicalisation and expansion under Donald Trump. Then we peer into the alarming evidence about its behaviour and its part in Trump's broader agenda, before listing the comparisons with Nazi Germany. Everything you need to know about one of modern America's most disturbing developments. Support Origin Story on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/originstorypod 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

    55 min
  5. Season 7 Q&A #2

    8 JUIL. • ORIGIN STORY + UNIQUEMENT

    Season 7 Q&A #2

    Welcome to another Q&A episode. Thanks for all your questions and for helping us to make Origin Story, especially between seasons. In this episode… Are we suckers for witty rhetoric and sick burns and can clever patter lead us astray? What great writing do we turn to for inspiration? Are liberalism and capitalism truly compatible? What’s the difference between a personality-led movement and a cult? What gives us hope in difficult times? And how much would Dorian need to be paid to do a podcast with Liz Truss? Thanks again and see you soon

    51 min
  6. Season 7 Q&A #1

    24 JUIN • ORIGIN STORY + UNIQUEMENT

    Season 7 Q&A #1

    It’s Q&A season once again, when we tackle some of your excellent questions on the Patreon page. Thanks for those, for your suggestions for future episodes and for the essential support that helps us crack on with season eight. In this episode, we dig into some really juicy conundrums. Why are politicians so bad at learning from history (apart from not listening to Origin Story), and are history’s lessons as clear as we would like to think? What is that makes political figures like Gandhi and Martin Luther King achieve a kind of sainthood? What are the cultural drivers behind political assassinations? Which previous topics would we like to revisit in light of subsequent events and have we changed our minds about Keir Starmer? And do we have an editorial policy or are we just winging it? Thanks again and see you soon.

    55 min
  7. Martin Luther King Jr. – Part Two – Owning the dream

    11 JUIN

    Martin Luther King Jr. – Part Two – Owning the dream

    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

    1 h 23 min
  8. Martin Luther King Jr. – Part One – Eyes on the Prize

    4 JUIN

    Martin Luther King Jr. – Part One – Eyes on the Prize

    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

    1 h 32 min
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À propos

What are the real stories behind the most misunderstood and abused ideas in politics? From Conspiracy Theory to Woke to Centrism and beyond, Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey dig into the astonishing secret histories of concepts you thought you knew. Want to support us in making future seasons? There are now two ways you can help out: • Patreon – Get early episodes, live Zooms, merchandise and more from just £5 per month. • Apple Podcasts – Want everything in one place with one easy payment? Subscribe to our premium feed on Apple Podcasts for ad-free shows early and bonus editions too. From Podmasters, the makers of Oh God, What Now?, American Friction and The Bunker.

Informations

  • Création
    Podmasters
  • Années d’activité
    2022 - 2025
  • Épisodes
    117
  • Classification
    Contenu explicite
  • Copyright
    © Podmasters / Ian Dunt & Dorian Lynskey 2022
  • Fournisseur
    Anmama Ltd

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