Origin Story Origin Story

This episode tells the tale of the anti-vaxxers. The word has only been around since 2001 but inoculation has inspired opposition for as long as it has existed in the West. Dorian and Ian chart the life of vaccines and their opponents from the fight against smallpox in the eighteenth century to the vaccine scandals of the post-war decades. Find out why someone threw a bomb through Cotton Mather’s window, why Gandhi changed his mind, and why Leicester became the anti-vaccine capital of the world.

The drama accelerates with Dr Andrew Wakefield and the MMR panic of the 2000s, which swept up everyone for Oprah Winfrey to Private Eye, caused a public health disaster and set the stage for the full-blown mania of the backlash against Covid-19 vaccines. How did a rogue British gastroenterologist launch a global movement? How did vaccine scepticism mutate into a giant conspiracy theory? Is Bill Gates really implanting 5G trackers in our blood? (No.) And what’s the best way to get an anti-vaxxer to think again?

It’s a gripping story of science, journalism, paranoia, superstition and people who should know better.

• Pre-order the forthcoming Origin Stories books on Centrism, Fascism and Conspiracy Theory and get 20% off using the special discount code revealed in the podcast. 

Reading list

• David Aaronovitch – Voodoo Histories: How Conspiracy Theory Has Shaped Modern History (2010)
• Jonathan M. Berman – Anti-Vaxxers: How to Challenge a Misinformed Movement (2020)
• Steve Brotherton – Suspicious Minds: Why We Believe Conspiracy Theories (2016)
• Brian Deer – The Doctor Who Fooled the World: Andrew Wakefield’s War on Vaccines (2020)
• Peter Furtado - Plague, Pestilence and Pandemic: Voices from History (2021)
• Naomi Klein – Doppelganger (2023)
• Anna Merlan – Republic of Lies: American Conspiracy Theorists and Their Surprising Rise to Power (2020)
• Seth Mnookin – The Panic Virus: The True Story Behind the Vaccine-Autism Controversy (2011)
• Tom Phillips and Jonn Elledge - Conspiracy: A History of Bxllocks Theories and How Not to Fall for Them (2022)
• Frank M. Snowden - Epidemics and Society: From the Black Death to the Present (2019)

Podcasts and articles

• You’re Wrong About: The Anti-Vaccine Movement (2021)
• Maintenance Phase: RFK Jr. and the Rise of the Anti-Vaxx Movement (2023)
• Isaac Chotiner, ‘The Influence of the Anti-Vaccine Movement’, The New Yorker (2020)

Written and presented by Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey. Producer: Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production

The war in Gaza has led to accusations of genocide but that word operates on two levels. It’s both a strict legal term that has to be adjudicated by the International Criminal Court and an informal expression of moral outrage. The definition has been contested ever since the word was invented by the lawyer Raphael Lemkin in 1944, in the furnace of the Holocaust. In this two-part episode Dorian and Ian tell the story of genocide as a legal and political category. What exactly does it mean? How is it different from crimes against humanity or ethnic cleansing? Why is it so hard to prove? And how did it become seen as the ultimate crime?
In part two, Ian and Dorian tell the story of Lemkin’s invention of genocide and his efforts to make it an international crime. They explain how legal wrangling during the Nuremberg trials led to the 1948 Genocide Convention, and why it took so long for anybody to be charged with the crime, let alone brought to justice. Why do so many of the twentieth century’s most horrendous offences not qualify as genocide? Why did international condemnation fail to prevent genocides in Rwanda, Darfur and the former Yugoslavia? And why is the case against Israel so contentious?
It’s a disturbing story but a fascinating one, raising essential questions about the rights of the individual versus the rights of the group, the limits of international law, and humankind’s capacity for justifying mass murder.

• See Origin Story live at the King’s Head Theatre, London on Mon 15 July. Tickets here.
• Pre-order the forthcoming Origin Stories books on Centrism, Fascism and Conspiracy Theory and get 20% off using the special discount code revealed in the podcast. 
• Support Origin Story on Patreon

Reading list
• Donald Bloxham and A. Dirk Moses (eds.) - The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies, 2013
• Philip Gourevitch – We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families, 1998
• Ben Kiernan – Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur, 2007
• Norman N. Naimark – Genocide: A World History, 2016
• Samantha Power – A Problem from Hell, 2002
• Philippe Sands – East West Street, 2016
Written and presented by Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey. Producer: 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

The war in Gaza has led to accusations of genocide but that word operates on two levels. It’s both a strict legal term that has to be adjudicated by the International Criminal Court and an informal expression of moral outrage. The definition has been contested ever since the word was invented by the lawyer Raphael Lemkin in 1944, in the furnace of the Holocaust.
In this two-part episode Dorian and Ian tell the story of genocide as a legal and political category. What exactly does it mean? How is it different from crimes against humanity or ethnic cleansing? Why is it so hard to prove? And how did it become seen as the ultimate crime?
In part one, Ian and Dorian chart the prehistory of genocide — the ancient desire of groups to utterly eradicate their enemies. They go from the vengeful massacres of the Old Testament and Greek myth to the destruction of Carthage and the Holy War of the Crusades. Then they enter the age of empire, from the crimes of the Conquistadors to the elimination of the Tasmanians. Modern genocide began with the slaughter of the Herero in East Africa and the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, setting the stage for the Nazis.
It’s a disturbing story but a fascinating one, raising essential questions about the rights of the individual versus the rights of the group, the difference between reckless violence and targeted destruction, and humankind’s capacity for justifying mass murder.

• See Origin Story live at the King’s Head Theatre, London on Mon 15 July. Tickets here.
• Pre-order the forthcoming Origin Stories books on Centrism, Fascism and Conspiracy Theory and get 20% off using the special discount code revealed in the podcast. 
• Support Origin Story on Patreon

Reading list

• Donald Bloxham and A. Dirk Moses (eds.) - The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies,
2013
• Philip Gourevitch – We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our
Families, 1998
• Ben Kiernan – Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta
to Darfur, 2007
• Norman N. Naimark - Genocide: A World History, 2016
• Samantha Power – A Problem from Hell, 2002
• Philippe Sands – East West Street, 2016


Written and presented by Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey. Producer: 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

Back for season five, Origin Story continues to explore the misunderstood ideas and people that shape our politics today. With Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey.
In this two-parter Ian gets seriously into the research by mining his own book for episode ideas and comes up smiling with this tale of love, bravery and feminism. John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor are the mother and father of liberalism, a joint writing team who produced the most seminal books about freedom in the modern era. But while he was worshipped by those who came afterwards, she was mocked, lambasted and then erased from history.
In part two, Ian and Dorian talk about the single most important liberal book ever written, track the ups and downs of the couple's tumultuous affair, and show how Mill became a woke warrior in his old age, fighting against racism and sexism and destroying his carefully-built Victorian reputation in the process.
• See Origin Story live at the King’s Head Theatre, London on Mon 15 July. Tickets here.
• Pre-order the forthcoming Origin Stories books on Centrism, Fascism and Conspiracy Theory and get 20% off using the special discount code revealed in the podcast. 
• Buy The Ministry of Truth through our affiliate bookshop and you’ll help fund Origin Story by earning us a small commission for every sale. Bookshop.org’s fees help support independent bookshops too.
• Support Origin Story on Patreon

Reading list

Ian Dunt – How to be a Liberal (2020) (Has anyone heard of this book? Is it any good?)

Jo Ellen Jacobs (ed) – The Complete Works of Harriet taylor Mill (1998)

John Stuart Mill (and Harriet Taylor Mill) – On Liberty (1859)

John Stuart Mill (and Harriet Taylor Mill) – The Subjection of Women (1869)

John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham – Utilitarianism and Other Essays (1987)

Richard Reeves – John Stuart Mill: Victorian Firebrand (2007)


Written and presented by Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Audio production by Simon Williams. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Back for season five, Origin Story continues to explore the misunderstood ideas and people that shape our politics today. With Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey.
In this two-parter Ian gets seriously into the research by mining his own book for episode ideas and comes up smiling with this tale of love, bravery and feminism. John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor are the mother and father of liberalism, a joint writing team who produced the most seminal books about freedom in the modern era. But while he was worshipped by those who came afterwards, she was mocked, lambasted and then erased from history.
In part one, Ian explains Mill's devastating childhood, Taylor's cutting social commentary, their love affairs which rocked Victorian London, the evidence for her co-authorship of several key liberal books, and how they delivered some of the earliest works of British feminism.

• See Origin Story live at the King’s Head Theatre, London on Mon 15 July. Tickets here.
• Pre-order the forthcoming Origin Stories books on Centrism, Fascism and Conspiracy Theory and get 20% off using the special discount code revealed in the podcast. 
• Buy The Ministry of Truth through our affiliate bookshop and you’ll help fund Origin Story by earning us a small commission for every sale. Bookshop.org’s fees help support independent bookshops too.
• Support Origin Story on Patreon

Reading list
Ian Dunt - How to be a Liberal (2020) (Has anyone heard of this book? Is it any good?)
Jo Ellen Jacobs (ed) - The Complete Works of Harriet taylor Mill (1998)
John Stuart Mill (and Harriet Taylor Mill) - On Liberty (1859)
John Stuart Mill (and Harriet Taylor Mill) - The Subjection of Women (1869)
John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham - Utilitarianism and Other Essays (1987)
Richard Reeves - John Stuart Mill: Victorian Firebrand (2007)

Written and presented by Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey. Producer: 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

Back for season five, Origin Story continues to explore the misunderstood ideas and people that shape our politics today. With Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey.
In part two of George Orwell, Dorian picks up the story in 1941, with Orwell taking a job at the BBC. The war grinds on, and so does George, until his anti-Stalinist fairy tale Animal Farm changes everything. We’re on the road to Nineteen Eighty-Four but it is littered with obstacles: grief, madness, bombs, tuberculosis. After the war, Orwell is writing his finest essays but his life is mayhem so he escapes to the Scottish island of Jura with his baby son to write the novel that, little does he know, will make him a legend.
It's the story of a writer reaching the height of his powers while everything around him seems to be falling to bits. How did a sick man on a lonely island write perhaps the most influential novel of the twentieth century? Why is his strange masterpiece so widely misunderstood? What were Orwell’s blindspots? Would he have been a good hang? And are taking the right lessons from his life and work? All this, plus Nye Bevan, HG Wells, Ernest Hemingway, Aldous Huxley and the atomic bomb.

• Pre-order the forthcoming Origin Stories books on Centrism, Fascism and Conspiracy Theory and get 20% off using the special discount code revealed in the podcast.
• Buy The Ministry of Truth through our affiliate bookshop and you’ll help fund Origin Story by earning us a small commission for every sale. Bookshop.org’s fees help support independent bookshops too.
• Support Origin Story on Patreon

Image: Peter Cushing (Winston Smith) with Yvonne Mitchell (Julia) and André Morrell (O’Brien) in the 1954 BBC production of George Orwell’s 1984. (Getty)

Reading list

Audrey Coppard and Bernard Crick (eds.) — Orwell Remembered (1984)
Bernard Crick – George Orwell: A Life (1982)
Peter Davison (ed.) — The Complete Works of George Orwell (1997-2002)
Peter Davison (ed.) — The Lost Orwell (2006)
Miriam Gross (ed.) — The World of George Orwell (1971)
Dorian Lynskey — The Ministry of Truth: A Biography of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (2019
Jeffrey Meyers (ed.) — George Orwell: The Critical Heritage (1975)
John Rodden — George Orwell: The Politics of Literary Reputation (1989)
William Steinhoff — George Orwell and the Origins of 1984 (1975)
DJ Taylor – Orwell: The Life (2003)
DJ Taylor – Orwell: The New Life (2023)
Sylvia Topp – Eileen: The Making of George Orwell (2020)

Written and presented by Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Audio production by Simon Williams. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices