Origin Story Origin Story

• Join Ian and Dorian for Origin Story Live in London on Tue 7 May. They’ll be looking at how the Conservative Party got addicted to conspiracy theory, and more.
This time: The Illuminati were a group of Enlightenment idealists who existed for just a few years in 1780s Bavaria. Or were they? The Illuminati have since been blamed for everything from the French Revolution to communism to 9/11. How did a powerless club of intellectuals become reimagined as the secret rulers of the world? And how did the myth of the Illuminati become the template for every megaconspiracy theory about plots to put humanity under the heel of a one-world government?
Dorian and Ian unravel this amazing yarn, which takes in America’s Founding Fathers, British fascists, the Knights Templar, David Icke, Jay-Z and the Playboy letters page. The truth is in here.
Written and presented by Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey. 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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• Join Ian and Dorian for Origin Story Live in London on Tue 7 May. They’ll be looking at how the Conservative Party got addicted to conspiracy theory, and more.

https://www.designmynight.com/london/pubs/west-end/the-phoenix/origin-story-live-at-the-phoenix

• Everybody wants to be on the “right side of history” these days, from protesters to presidents. But who gets to decide which side is the right one? And does history have sides anyway? Dorian and Ian unpack the assumption of progress behind an alluring idea which unites Christianity, Marxism, Hegel, Francis Fukuyama, the Whig interpretation of history and – uh oh – Hitler.

Dorian digs in the newspaper archives to track the evolution of the phrase, from a simple description of those who won elections or wars to a consoling thought for those who are losing. Is the right side of history a useful account of events, empty moral posturing or a desperate plea to the future to sort things out? Did Martin Luther King have second thoughts about the moral arc of the universe? And who will end up on the right side of this podcast?

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

For 1800 years, Western conceptions of the end of the world were dominated by the Book of Revelation: Armageddon, the Millennium, Judgement Day. But in 1816, political upheaval, Enlightenment science and the Romantic imagination converged to give birth to a radical idea: the end of the world without God. When Lord Byron, Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley came together beside Lake Geneva that summer, a volcanic eruption was producing endless rain and apocalyptic prophecies.
Drawing on his new book Everything Must Go: The Stories We Tell About the End of the World, Dorian explains how that season of confusion and gloom led to not just Frankenstein but Byron’s revolutionary poem Darkness. And how the deaths of her companions led Mary to write The Last Man, the first ever novel about a world-destroying pandemic.
It’s a story of personal tragedy, temporary climate change, shocking new ideas about the past, present and future of life on earth, and the summer that kicked off two centuries (and counting) of apocalyptic fiction.
Buy Everything Must Go: The Stories We Tell About the End of the World 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.
Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Music by Jade Bailey. Logo art 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

The latest in our exclusive extra editions for supporters… Why are we so addicted to seeing politics in terms of left and right? From the origins of fascism to the rise of conspiracy theories, this binary has often been inadequate, if not actively confusing, but we can’t seem to find an alternative. In this bonus episode, Ian takes the lead and explains how the ad hoc seating arrangements in the French assembly during the Revolution produced the enduring spectrum of left, right and centre. This messy, unplanned process, born out of turmoil, bloodshed and a bewildering series of factional battle lines in 1790s France, spoke to a deep human need to slice the world in two.
It’s a dramatic story of cliques and quarrels, radicals and conservatives, us and them, and the instinctive pull of tribalism. Does the notion of left and right really help us make sense of political disagreements or does it obscure what is actually going on?
Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Audio production by Simon Williams. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production

The latest in our exclusive extra editions for Patreon supporters… The war in Gaza has intensified division and prejudice around the world, as people who can do nothing to stop the killing redirect their horror into a war of words. In this bonus episode for Patreons, Dorian and Ian revisit some of the themes of last year’s two-parter on Zionism to look at the distortion of history and the proliferation of bad faith in a time of crisis, from the Balfour Declaration to “from the river to the sea”. Is there a way of talking about this that doesn’t make things worse?
Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Audio production by Simon Williams. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production

Exclusive to our backers… The Illuminati were a group of Enlightenment idealists who existed for just a few years in 1780s Bavaria. Or were they? The Illuminati have since been blamed for everything from the French Revolution to communism to 9/11. How did a powerless club of intellectuals become reimagined as the secret rulers of the world? And how did the myth of the Illuminati become the template for every megaconspiracy theory about plots to put humanity under the heel of a one-world government?

Dorian and Ian unravel this amazing yarn, which takes in America’s Founding Fathers, British fascists, the Knights Templar, David Icke, Jay-Z and the Playboy letters page. The truth is in here.

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