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Origin Story

Podmasters
  • 4.7 (94)
  • SOCIETY & CULTURE
  • UPDATED WEEKLY

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. Blue Labour: We Need to Talk About Maurice

    3D AGO

    Blue Labour: We Need to Talk About Maurice

    Origin Story is live at the Bloomsbury Theatre, London on Weds 15th April 2026 - tickets selling fast, get yours here Welcome to a between-season bonus episode of Origin Story. We’ve missed you! This one emerged from our three-parter on the history of the Labour Party and one of the burning obsessions of British politics: the faction known as Blue Labour and its ubiquitous founder Maurice Glasman. As Keir Starmer’s government continues to alienate its base in order to chase the same socially conservative voters as Reform UK, fingers are pointing at chief of staff Morgan McSweeney and his connections to Blue Labour, turning Glasman into the party’s eminence grise. But how influential is Glasman really? And where did Blue Labour come from? The story begins in 2008, when the financial crisis coincides with the death of Glasman’s mother. The jazz-loving, City-hating, chain-smoking academic and community organiser invents Blue Labour: blue as in sad and blue as in “conservative socialism”. As New Labour falls to pieces, Glasman’s maverick vision of Labour’s long history and possible future intrigues heavyweights from across the party. He’s elevated from obscurity to the House of Lords by Ed Miliband but explodes on the launchpad after some provocative statements about immigration and Europe. Amid accusations of racism, misogyny and toxic nostalgia, Blue Labour Mark 1 burns out. When Blue Labour resurfaces with a vengeance in 2025, it has been thoroughly radicalised by a decade of Brexit and right-wing populism. Having been JD Vance’s personal guest at the second inauguration of Donald Trump, Glasman is now praising MAGA while waging all-out war on immigrants, liberals and the so-called “lanyard class”. Original Blue Labourite Marc Stears calls Blue Labour Mark 2 “a clear and present danger to our politics”. How did Blue Labour lurch from the party’s soft left to its hard right? Why do so many of the people who once found Glasman’s ideas stimulating now find them horrifying? Is Blue Labour, then and now, a symptom of a party in intellectual crisis? What exactly is Glasman’s connection to Morgan McSweeney and Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood? And is the rogue peer really as significant as he, and his enemies, like to make out? Reading list Books Rowenna Davis – Tangled Up in Blue (2011) Ian Geary and Adrian Pabst – Blue Labour: Forging a New Politics (2015) Maurice Glasman, Jonathan Rutherford, Marc Stears and Stuart White – The Labour Tradition and the Politics of Paradox (2011) Maurice Glasman – Blue Labour: The Politics of the Common Good (2022) Gabriel Pogrund and Patrick Maguire – Get In: The Inside Story of Labour Under Starmer (2025) Articles • Philip Collins – ‘Maurice Glasman and the origins of Blue Labour’, Prospect (24 February 2025) • Julian Coman – ‘Maurice Glasman, architect of Blue Labour: “Labour needs to be itself again”’, The Observer (25 September 2022) • Rachel Cooke – ‘Maurice Glasman: Labour’s Trump Card’, The Observer (25 April 2025) • Ethan Croft – ‘Blue Labour is fighting for its future’, The New Statesman (26 November 2025) • Annabel Denham - Lord Glasman: ‘Shabana is like Elizabeth I – devoted to her job. She’s utterly unique’, The Telegraph (23 November 2025) • Jonathan Derbyshire – ‘Voice of the Heartlands’, The New Statesman (7 April 2011) • Maurice Glasman - Maurice Glasman: my Blue Labour vision can defeat the coalition, The Guardian (24 April 2011) • Toby Helm and Julian Coman – ‘Maurice Glasman – the peer plotting Labour’s new strategy from his flat’, The Observer (16 January 2011) • Preet Kaur Gill, ‘Labour Must Go Blue’, The Telegraph (6 January 2026) • Dan Hodges – ‘Exclusive: the end of Blue Labour’, The New Statesman (20 July 2011) ... Reading list continues on Patreon Written and presented by Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey. Producer: Chris Jones and 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

    1h 30m
  2. Socialism: The Finale – What’s Left?

    12/20/2025

    Socialism: The Finale – What’s Left?

    Welcome to the finale of Origin Story season eight: the story of socialism. Thanks to everybody who has followed our most ambitious season yet, especially those whose support has enabled us to make it. We left the narrative in 1991, with the collapse of the USSR and the so- called “end of history”. This week we’re not telling a new story but looking back on the whole season to reflect on the evolution of socialism over the last two centuries and where it might go from here. We begin by catching up with socialism since 1991, as China embraced “market socialism”, Latin America’s ‘Pink Wave’ rose and fell, and the Western left all but gave up on its dream of building a new economic model. Was the left forced to fight for small victories because the possibility of bringing down capitalism had slipped away? We then return to the beginning of the season and ask if all the most important strands of socialism, from violent revolution to utopian communes, existed in some form by the time Marx and Engels published The Communist Manifesto in 1848. Can socialism be strictly defined or is it a broad tradition encompassing multiple different visions? And how does it relate to communism, left-wing populism or social democracy? We explore some of the obstacles that repeatedly prevent socialists from achieving their goals, including factions, personality cults, cranks, authoritarians and the romance of defeat — most of which were recently illustrated by the fiasco of Your Party. Finally, we take stock of socialism’s achievements, including many of the rights we now take for granted. Has socialism been more successful as a means of critiquing and moderating capitalism than replacing it? So, what is socialism? Can one word really describe Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un, Zarah Sultana and Zohran Mamdani? How has a creed dedicated to solidarity and collective liberation produced so much rancour and oppression? Why are “temporary” dictatorships never temporary? Is social democracy really socialism? Will we ever see another socialist revolution or will that energy be sucked up by the populist right? And is socialism’s tremendous optimism about human nature both its greatest strength and its greatest flaw? Thanks again for listening to the story of socialism. It’s been a journey. We’ll see you in 2026 for some bonus episodes while we start work on season nine. • Get 25% off our highest tier annual Patreon subscription at ⁠https://www.patreon.com/originstorypod/membership⁠ • New Origin Story merch! ​​https://podmarket.co.uk/collections/origin-story • Head to⁠ nakedwines.co.uk/origin to get a £30 voucher and 6 top-rated wines from our sponsor Naked Wines for £39.99, delivery included. • Use code ORIGINSTORY at the link below to get an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan: https://incogni.com/originstory • Support Origin Story on Patreon • See Origin Story live at the Bloomsbury Theatre on 15th April 2026: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bloomsbury-theatre/events/2026/apr/origin-story-live • Buy the Origin Stories books on Centrism, Fascism and Conspiracy Theory  • Subscribe to Origin Story on YouTube 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

    1h 40m
  3. The Fall of the USSR – End Game

    12/17/2025

    The Fall of the USSR – End Game

    Welcome to the penultimate episode of Origin story season eight: the story of socialism. We close the book on Soviet communism with the story of how it all came crashing down — what has been called the most unexpected event of the twentieth century. Mikhail Gorbachev’s desire to change his country was a product of the secret speech in 1956 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. As he climbed the ladder to power, he witnessed the Soviet Union flinch from reform and slide into stagnation and decline. So when he became General Secretary of the Communist Party in 1985 he sought to rejuvenate the regime with three audacious innovations: perestroika (restructuring), glasnost (openness) and democratisation. It was a punishing task. Old hardliners in the Politburo thought Gorbachev was too radical while his populist arch-rival Boris Yeltsin thought him not daring enough. Gorbachev wanted to end the Cold War and open his country to the world but he did not foresee the fall of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact in 1989. He certainly didn’t want the USSR itself to come undone two years later. But the desire for change that he had unleashed could not be tamed. By 1991, Gorbachev was lionised abroad and loathed at home. A failed coup attempt set off a rapid chain of events that ended not just his leadership but the Communist Party and the USSR itself. In trying to save his country, he ended up enabling its destruction. The era of world history that began in 1917 was over. Why did the Soviet Union prove impossible to reform? Did Gorbachev move too fast or too slowly? How significant was his vicious feud with Yeltsin? Did the US bungle the USSR’s transition to a capitalist democracy and misread the collapse of its rival superpower? What did this do to the hopes of socialists around the world? And how do the tumultuous events of 1985-91 still shape the world today? • Get 25% off our highest tier annual Patreon subscription at ⁠https://www.patreon.com/originstorypod/membership⁠ • New Origin Story merch! ​​https://podmarket.co.uk/collections/origin-story • Head to⁠ nakedwines.co.uk/origin to get a £30 voucher and 6 top-rated wines from our sponsor Naked Wines for £39.99, delivery included. • Use code ORIGINSTORY at the link below to get an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan: https://incogni.com/originstory • Support Origin Story on Patreon • See Origin Story live at the Bloomsbury Theatre on 15th April 2026: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bloomsbury-theatre/events/2026/apr/origin-story-live • Buy the Origin Stories books on Centrism, Fascism and Conspiracy Theory  • Subscribe to Origin Story on YouTube Reading list • Sven Beckert – Capitalism: A Global History (2025) • Francis Fukuyama – ‘The End of History?’, The National Interest (Summer 1989) • Anna Funder – Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall (2004) • Masha Gessen – The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia (2017) • Mikhail Gorbachev – Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World (1987) • Leslie Holmes – Communism: A Very Short Introduction (2009) • Stephen Kotkin – Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse 1970-2000 (2001) • Serhii Plokhy – The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union (2014) • Robert Service – Comrades: Communism: A World History (2007) • Tom Stoppard – Rock’n’Roll (2006) • William Taubman – Gorbachev: His Life and Times (2017) • Mikhail Zygar – The Dark Side of the Earth: How the Soviet Union Collapsed but Remained (2025) 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

    1h 35m
  4. Che Guevara – Guerrilla in the Mist

    12/10/2025

    Che Guevara – Guerrilla in the Mist

    Welcome back to Origin Story season eight: The Story of Socialism. This time, we take a look at hands-down the sexiest revolutionary of socialist history: Che Guevara. Born in Argentina to wealthy but unhappy parents, Ernesto Guevara travelled around Latin America during his youth until he met Fidel Castro in Mexico City. From then on his path was set, following the Cuban nationalist leader into a guerilla campaign in the Sierra Maestra and then into government. He concocted a rare form of socialism which combined Maoist peasant rebellion with pan-Latin American nationalism and Jack Kerouac’s drifter idealism. His fame lies not so much in his actions or his thoughts but his image, specifically the iconic Che photograph, taken by Alberto Korda on March 5th 1960. For decades, it has been put up in student bedrooms and raised above protest marches as an encapsulation of youthful idealism, resistance and social justice. We look at the man behind the image and find a strange, intoxicating bundle of seemingly contradictory elements: a poet executioner, a cold-hearted idealist, a sociopath bohemian, and much more besides.  • Use code ORIGINSTORY at the link below to get an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan: ⁠https://incogni.com/originstory⁠ • Head to⁠ ⁠nakedwines.co.uk/origin⁠ to get a £30 voucher and 6 top-rated wines from our sponsor Naked Wines for £39.99, delivery included. • Get 25% off our highest tier annual Patreon subscription at https://www.patreon.com/originstorypod/membership • New Origin Story merch! ​​https://podmarket.co.uk/collections/origin-story • Subscribe to Origin Story on ⁠YouTube • See Origin Story live at the Bloomsbury Theatre on 15th April 2026. Reading list Jon Lee Anderson – Che Guevara, a Revolutionary Life Che Guevara – Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War, 1956-58 (1963) https://www.marxists.org/archive/guevara/1963/reminiscences/index.htm Che Guevara and Fidel Castro – Socialism and Man in Cuba (1965) https://www.marxists.org/archive/guevara/1965/03/man-socialism.htm Che Guevara – The Motorcycle Diaries Che Guevara – Guerrilla Warfare Mark Kurlansky – 1968: The Year That Rocked the World (2004) Michael Newman – Socialism: A Very Short Introduction (2020) Andrew Sinclair – Che Guevara (1998) FiIm club Evita, directed by Alan Parker The Motorcycle Diaries, directed by Walter Salles  Che Part One and Part Two, directed by Steven Soderbergh 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 www.podmasters.co.uk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

    1h 32m
  5. The New Left – Part Two – Children of the Revolution

    12/06/2025

    The New Left – Part Two – Children of the Revolution

    Welcome to the second episode of the week as we conclude the story of the New Left. In part one, we explained the various groups and thinkersthat fed into the New Left’s attempts to reimagine socialism during the 1960s. It all comes to a head in 1968 with a chain reaction of youth-driven street protests and occupations: Paris, London, New York, Rome, Mexico City, Tokyo. It’s 1848 all over again, only this time its global and its televised, turning leading activists into overnight celebrities. Everywhere, though, these rebellions end in defeat and fragmentation. In its wake, figures as prominent as John Lennon convince themselves that revolution is imminent even as it becomes vanishingly improbable. The New Left splinters in the 1970s. Some “68ers” enter mainstream politics. Others turn to terrorism. A few plunge into the factional jungle of Maoist and Trotskyist sects. But many more redirect their idealism towards new liberation movements: second-wave feminism, gay rights, racial justice, Third World solidarity. We explain how the theories of the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci became a lodestar for the left decades after his death — a new approach to changing society. The New Left may have failed to mount a political revolt but it succeeded in redrawing the parameters of socialism beyond class struggle. The left of today is its legacy. Why did the thrilling upheavals of 1968 fall so short? What led so many people to expect a revolution? How did Gramsci become the most important socialist thinker of the modern era? Was toxic disunity inevitable? And how did the New Left ultimately succeed, despite backlashes, setbacks and self-imposed wounds, in changing the world? • Use code ORIGINSTORY at the link below to get an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan: ⁠⁠https://incogni.com/originstory⁠⁠ • Head to⁠ ⁠⁠nakedwines.co.uk/origin⁠⁠ to get a £30 voucher and 6 top-rated wines from our sponsor Naked Wines for £39.99, delivery included. • Get 25% off our highest tier annual Patreon subscription at ⁠https://www.patreon.com/originstorypod/membership⁠ • New Origin Story merch! ​​⁠https://podmarket.co.uk/collections/origin-story⁠ • Subscribe to Origin Story on ⁠⁠YouTube⁠ • See Origin Story ⁠live at the Bloomsbury Theatre⁠ on 15th April 2026. Reading list Histories • Andy Beckett – The Searchers: Five Rebels, Their Dream of a Different Britain, and Their Many Enemies (2024) • Bryan Burrough – Days of Rage: America’s Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence (2015) • Max Elbaum – Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che (2002) • Todd Gitlin – The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage: Revised Edition (1993) • Vivian Gornick – The Romance of American Communism (1977) • Joachim C. Häberlen – Beauty Is in the Street: Protest and Counter-Culture in Post-War Europe (2023) • Michael Kazin – American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation (2011) • Mark Kurlansky – 1968: The Year That Rocked the World (2004) • Dorian Lynskey – 33 Revolutions Per Minute: A History of Protest Songs (2011) • William L. O’Neill – The New Left: A History (2001) • Rick Perlstein – Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (2008) • Terence Renaud – New Lefts: The Making of a Radical Tradition (2021) • Sheila Rowbotham, Lynne Segal and Hilary Wainwright – Beyond the Fragments: Feminism and the Making of Socialism (1979) • Roger Simon – Gramsci’s Political Thought: An Introduction: Third Edition (2015) ... reading list continues on Patreon 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

    1h 13m
  6. The New Left – Part One – Generation Next

    12/03/2025

    The New Left – Part One – Generation Next

    Welcome back to Origin Story season eight: The Story of Socialism. This time, we’re explaining the New Left, the messy constellation of ideas and movements that came out of the discrediting of Soviet communism 70 years ago and made the left what it is today. The big bang was 1956. Nikita Khrushchev’s secret speech made Stalin’s crimes undeniable while the invasion of Hungary disgraced the new regime too. The first New Left was an intellectual effort by disillusioned British ex-communists to develop a new “socialist humanism”: neither Washington nor Moscow nor mainstream social democracy but a revival of socialism’s highest ideals in the post-war world. The New Left was reborn as an international youth movement in the 1960s as the baby boomers came of age and rallied around new issues: the civil rights movement, the Vietnam war, the end of imperialism and the hollow conformity of the affluent society. From London to Paris and Berkeley to Berlin, students were in the vanguard. “We don’t trust anybody over 30,” they joked, but we take a look at three older thinkers whose ideas shaped the movement. The Frankfurt School philosopher Herbert Marcuse diagnosed the West as rotten and called for a new alliance of outsiders — students, minorities, Third World revolutionaries — to redeem it. The radical French psychiatrist Frantz Fanon sought the decolonisation of not just countries but minds, by any means necessary. And China’s Mao Zedong, the pioneer of guerrilla warfare, positioned himself at the epicentre of the movement for global revolution, even as his own crimes at home rivalled Stalin’s. By the end of 1967, the student movement was turning from protest to resistance, with a view to overturning the whole system, but it was also beginning to splinter. The upheavals of 1968 would be the making, and the breaking, of the New Left. Was the New Left ever a coherent socialist project or just a fragile dissident coalition? How did the first New Left pave the way for the movement that swept the world? What fuelled its accelerating radicalism in the mid-60s? How did students who loathed Stalin end up venerating dictators like Mao and Ho Chi Minh? And in rejecting the fatal errors of the Old Left, did the New Left create their own? For scheduling reasons we’re releasing both parts this week — part two will be with you on Saturday. • Head to⁠ ⁠⁠⁠nakedwines.co.uk/origin⁠⁠⁠ to get a £30 voucher and 6 top-rated wines from our sponsor Naked Wines for £39.99, delivery included. • Use code ORIGINSTORY at the link below to get an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan: ⁠⁠https://incogni.com/originstory⁠⁠ • Get 25% off our highest tier annual Patreon subscription at ⁠https://www.patreon.com/originstorypod/membership⁠ • New Origin Story merch! ​​⁠https://podmarket.co.uk/collections/origin-story⁠ • Subscribe to Origin Story on ⁠⁠YouTube⁠ • See Origin Story ⁠live at the Bloomsbury Theatre⁠ on 15th April 2026. Reading list Histories • David Aaronovitch – Party Animals: My Family and Other Communists (2016) • Bryan Burrough – Days of Rage: America’s Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence (2015) • David Caute – Fanon (1970) • Max Elbaum – Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che (2002) • Todd Gitlin – The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage: Revised Edition (1993) • Vivian Gornick – The Romance of American Communism (1977) • Joachim C. Häberlen – Beauty Is in the Street: Protest and Counter-Culture in Post-War Europe (2023) • Stuart Jeffries – Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School (2016) • Michael Kazin – American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation (2011) ... reading list continues on Patreon 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

    1h 5m
  7. Origin Story – Live at the Tabernacle, 13th Nov 2025

    11/26/2025

    Origin Story – Live at the Tabernacle, 13th Nov 2025

    This week’s episode is an edited version of Origin Story Live at the Tabernacle in London on Thursday 13 November. The theme is political insurgents: the politicians and thinkers who are reshaping politics in 2025. In part one we profile two of the most significant intellectuals on the radical right. The Cambridge academic James Orr is senior adviser to Reform UK, friend to JD Vance and networker extraordinaire. Curtis Yarvin is a far-right blogger whose extreme views on race, democracy and “techno-monarchy” are required reading in the Trump administration. Who are they? How did they become so influential? And — yikes! — what do they actually think? In part two we take a look at two young socialist politicians who have shaken up the left this year: the next mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, and the new “eco-populist” leader of the UK Green Party, Zack Polanski. How have they risen so fast? What are they proposing? And could they be the future of socialism? We also take an axe to some of the buzzphrases that are making political discourse dumber, from “optics” to the “woke right”. And we answer some questions from the audience. If you missed the show and the livestream, or if you just want to relive the “magic”, dive in. • Use code ORIGINSTORY at the link below to get an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan: ⁠⁠https://incogni.com/originstory⁠⁠ • Head to⁠ ⁠⁠nakedwines.co.uk/origin⁠⁠ to get a £30 voucher and 6 top-rated wines from our sponsor Naked Wines for £39.99, delivery included. • Get 25% off our highest tier annual Patreon subscription at ⁠https://www.patreon.com/originstorypod/membership⁠ • New Origin Story merch! ​​⁠https://podmarket.co.uk/collections/origin-story⁠ • Subscribe to Origin Story on ⁠⁠YouTube⁠ • See Origin Story ⁠live at the Bloomsbury Theatre⁠ on 15th April 2026. Reading list James Orr • Nafeez Ahmed – ‘Cambridge Faculty of Divinity Ignores Demands for Inquiry Into Peter Thiel’s Far-Right Influence’, Byline Times (23 December 2021) • Robert Crampton – ‘James Orr: JD Vance is just a normal guy who likes his beers’, The Times (15 August 2025) • Zoltán Kottász – ‘“No civilisation has invited invaders in and put them up in four-star hotels”: James Orr’, European Conservative (13 August 2025) • Marie Le Conte – ‘James Orr: Reform’s polished extremist’, The New World (27 October 2025) • Charles Moore – ‘Perverted liberalism has left to neo-Marxism, perverted patriotism may yet lead to neo-fascism’, Daily Telegraph (15 August 2025) • James Orr – ‘Faith, Family, Flag, Freedom’ (2023) • Radical with Amol Rajan, Britain’s New Right: Could Reform Replace the Tories? (Dr James Orr), BBC (2 August 2025) • Noah Vickers – ‘James Orr: “This New Nation That’s Emerging Is Really No Nation At All’, The House (4 September 2025) Curtis Yarvin • Sam Adler-Bell – ‘The Radical Young Intellectuals Who Want to Take Over the American Right’, The New Republic (2 December 2021) • David Brooks – ‘The Terrifying Future of the American Right’, The Atlantic (18 November 2021) • Ava Kafman – ‘Curtis Yarvin’s Plot Against America’, The New Yorker (2 June 2025) • Jemima Kelly – ‘Sunday at the garden party for Curtis Yarvin and the new, new right’, Financial Times (8 August 2025) • Matt McManus – ‘Yarvin’s Case Against Democracy’, Commonweal (27 January 2023) • David Marchese – ‘The Interview: Curtis Yarvin Says Democracy Is Done. Powerful Conservatives Are Listening’, The New York Times (18 January 2025) • Corey Pein – ‘The Moldbug Variations’, The Baffler (9 October 2017) ... reading list continues on Patreon 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

    2h 3m

  8. 11/19/2025

    The Labour Party – Part Three – One Battle After Another

    Welcome to the third and final part of the story of the Labour Party, from Keir Hardie to Keir Starmer. Margaret Thatcher’s first election victory in 1979 initiates Labour’s longest period in opposition and its deepest identity crisis: Bennites to the left, SDP defectors to the right. After Michael Foot leads Labour to its worst vote share since 1918, Neil Kinnock takes on the long and painful job of rebuilding the party in the face of Thatcherism. Following another two defeats, the task of modernisation passes to John Smith but his sudden death enables Tony Blair and Gordon Brown to go even further, determined to transform the party and erase the trauma of 1983. Labour’s spectacular 1997 landslide seems to confirm the agenda of New Labour and the nebulous political project known as the Third Way. But its many achievements are limited by its caution, duelling egos and ideological vagueness. Is Labour still a socialist party in any meaningful way or has it disowned too much of its heritage? By the time Brown becomes PM in 2007, New Labour is exhausted and rudderless. History repeats itself: another heavy defeat, another pivot to the left. When Jeremy Corbyn replaces Ed Miliband, the left is in charge for the first time in 80 years — the revenge of the Bennites — but Labour’s fortunes are hostage to the chaos of Brexit. An impressive advance in 2017 turns into a crushing humiliation in 2019. New leader Keir Starmer mounts a speedy recovery but soon finds himself desperately unpopular: accused of squandering a remarkable comeback by lacking vision and waging an unprecedented war against the left. With new challengers to the left and Nigel Farage’s Reform UK threatening to form the most right-wing government in British history, the stakes are once again existentially high. How did Thatcherism cast Labour into the wilderness? How did Neil Kinnock make the party viable again? Did Tony Blair ever develop a coherent theory of progressive politics? Could Jeremy Corbyn ever have succeeded? Why do Labour’s left and right keep making the same mistakes? What can Labour’s history tell us about Keir Starmer’s current problems? And is it still a party of democratic socialism? • Use code ORIGINSTORY at the link below to get an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan: ⁠⁠https://incogni.com/originstory⁠⁠ • Head to⁠ ⁠⁠nakedwines.co.uk/origin⁠⁠ to get a £30 voucher and 6 top-rated wines from our sponsor Naked Wines for £39.99, delivery included. • Get 25% off our highest tier annual Patreon subscription at ⁠https://www.patreon.com/originstorypod/membership⁠ • New Origin Story merch! ​​⁠https://podmarket.co.uk/collections/origin-story⁠ • Subscribe to Origin Story on ⁠⁠YouTube⁠ • See Origin Story ⁠live at the Bloomsbury Theatre⁠ on 15th April 2026. Reading list Histories • Andy Beckett – The Searchers: Five Rebels, Their Dream of a Different Britain, and Their Many Enemies (2024) • Jon Cruddas – A Century of Labour (2024) • Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey – Centrism: The Story of an Idea (2024) • Simon Hannah – A Party with Socialists in It: A History of the Labour Left: Second Edition (2022) • Owen Jones – This Land: The Struggle for the Left (2020) • David Marquand – The Progressive Dilemma: From Lloyd George to Blair: Second Edition (1999) • John O’Farrell – Things Can Only Get Better: Eighteen Miserable Years in the Life of a Labour Supporter (1998) • Gabriel Pogrund and Patrick Maguire - Left Out: The Inside Story of Labour Under Corbyn (2020) • Martin Pugh – Speak for Britain! A New History of the Labour Party (2010) • Andrew Rawnsley – Servants of the People: The Inside Story of New Labour (2001) ... Reading list continues on Patreon 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

    1h 34m
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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.

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    Podmasters
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2026
  • Episodes
    133
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Podmasters / Ian Dunt & Dorian Lynskey 2022
  • Provider
    Anmama Ltd

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