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Welcome to part two of the story of the Daily Mail. We pick things up with the disastrous reign of Esmond Harmsworth and his wife Ann, aka “the Monster”. The paper loses direction, readers and money until, in 1971, Esmond’s eccentric son Vere proves his doubters wrong by relaunching the Mail as a tabloid under editor David English. English is young, brilliant and unpredictable: a charming bully with a flexible relationship to the truth. He perfects the winning formula of gravitas, fun and permanent outrage while getting so close to Margaret Thatcher that the Mail effectively becomes an arm of the Conservative campaign machine.
Enter Paul Dacre in 1992 — the Mail’s most long-lasting and divisive editor. Socially awkward and writhing with prejudice, he sees himself as the vessel for the aspirations and phobias of the middle classes — the voice of the ordinary man and woman despite his giant salary, multiple homes and Etonian sons. For 26 years, he terrorises staff, persecutes minorities, intimidates politicians and rails against institutions like the EU and the BBC. (Be warned: this episode contains a record number of beeped obscenities.) We close by talking about Dacre’s toxic legacy and how his peculiar ideas about Britain continue to shape the direction of the country even under his successors. But the Mail’s circulation is plummeting and even its cursed website has lost momentum. Almost 130 years after Alfred Harmsworth founded it, why does it remain the most venomously powerful newspaper in Britain?
How did the Mail reverse its decline and become what it is today? Do the editors or the readers decide its preoccupations? How did it influence both James Bond and the Beatles? What do Paul Dacre’s shoes tell us about this self-proclaimed voice of the people? And is the Mail really as plugged in as it thinks it is? Join us for the dramatic story of the newspaper that reveals Britain’s dark heart.
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Reading list
Books
Adrian Addison – Mail Men: The Unauthorized Story of the Daily Mail, the Paper That Divided and Conquered Britain (2017)
Richard Bourne – Lords of Fleet Street: The Harmsworth Dynasty (1990)
William E Carson – Northcliffe: Britain’s Man of Power (1918)
Tom Clarke – My Northcliffe Diary (1931)
James Curran and Jean Seaton - Power Without Responsibility: The Press and Broadcasting in Britain (1998)
Nick Davies – Flat Earth News (2008)
Stephen Dorril – Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley and British Fascism (2006)
Roy Greenslade – Press Gang: How Newspapers Make Profits from Propaganda (2003)
Reginald Pound and Geoffrey Harmsworth – Northcliffe (1960)
Martin Pugh – ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts!’: Fascists and Fascism in Britain Between the Wars (2005)
... Full reading list can be found on Patreon
Journalism
Paul Dacre on Desert Island Discs (2004)
Paul Dacre – Cudlipp Lecture (2007)
Paul Dacre – Speech to the Society of Editors (2008)
Lauren Collins – ‘The Mail Supremacy’, New Yorker (2012)
... Full reading list can be found 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
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Welcome to the season finale of Origin Story. We put it to the vote and Patreon supporters chose the Daily Mail — the newspaper that loves to hate, and be hated. We thought this would be just one episode but the story is so juicy that it ended up as two, so we’re releasing both parts on the same day as a festive bonus.
In part one we chart the rise of the Harmsworth dynasty. Alfred ‘Sunny’ Harmsworth (aka Lord Northcliffe) is a dynamic visionary whose understanding of the British public enables him to build the world’s biggest magazine empire while still in his 20s. In 1896 he launches the Daily Mail to give the newly literate and enfranchised middle classes exactly what they want: gossip, jingoism, punchy headlines and making stuff up. Snapping up venerable institutions like the Times and the Observer, Northcliffe soon owns half the market and uses it to promote his own views on issues like rearmament (good) and women’s suffrage (bad).
By the First World War, he’s a formidable power-broker with the muscle to bring down a prime minister and bag himself a place in the war cabinet. But his mental health collapses and he dies in 1922, paranoid and lonely.
Alfred’s brother Harold ‘Bunny’ Harmsworth is the money man who dreams of becoming the richest man in the land and almost gets there. He’s also a right-wing zealot who boasts of toppling the Labour government with the infamous Zinoviev letter and considers Stanley Baldwin’s Tories “semi-socialist”. Inevitably, he is drawn to fascism. It’s not just his support for Oswald Mosley and that notorious headline, ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts!’ Enthralled by Mussolini and Hitler, Rothermere becomes Britain’s loudest cheerleader for fascism and appeasement. Hitler, in return, declares that the Mail is “doing an immense amount of good”. We pause the story in 1940, with Rothermere dead, his unremarkable son Esmond taking the reins and Lord Beaverbrook’s Daily Express determined to steal the Mail’s thunder.
How did Northcliffe revolutionise British newspapers? Was his hatred of Germany really one of the drivers of the First World War? Which politician denounced his “diseased vanity”? And what led Rothermere to turn the Mail into a vehicle for fascist propaganda? It’s a tale of power, money, madness and extremism.
• Get the Origin Story books on Fascism, Centrism and Conspiracy Theory
Reading list
Books
Adrian Addison – Mail Men: The Unauthorized Story of the Daily Mail, the Paper That Divided and Conquered Britain (2017)
Richard Bourne – Lords of Fleet Street: The Harmsworth Dynasty (1990)
William E Carson – Northcliffe: Britain’s Man of Power (1918)
Tom Clarke – My Northcliffe Diary (1931)
James Curran and Jean Seaton - Power Without Responsibility: The Press and Broadcasting in Britain (1998)
Nick Davies – Flat Earth News (2008)
Stephen Dorril – Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley and British Fascism (2006)
Roy Greenslade – Press Gang: How Newspapers Make Profits from Propaganda (2003)
Reginald Pound and Geoffrey Harmsworth – Northcliffe (1960)
Martin Pugh – ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts!’: Fascists and Fascism in Britain Between the Wars (2005)
... Full reading list can be found on Patreon
Journalism
Paul Dacre on Desert Island Discs (2004)
Paul Dacre – Cudlipp Lecture (2007)
Paul Dacre – Speech to the Society of Editors (2008)
Lauren Collins – ‘The Mail Supremacy’, New Yorker (2012)
... Full reading list can be found 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
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Welcome to part two of the story of the BBC. The Second World War is over, radio is booming and television is back. The BBC is stronger than ever, with new talent, new formats and new opportunities. But there are new challenges too: stormy waters over the Suez crisis and a brash new competitor in the form of ITV.
Under director general Hugh Carleton Greene, the BBC plugs into the revolutionary energy of the 1960s: Radio 1, Doctor Who, Cathy Come Home, That Was the Week That Was. Meanwhile, David Attenborough’s highbrow upstart BBC2 introduces the nation to colour TV and landmark documentaries. The 70s and 80s are a golden age for ratings, from Morecambe and Wise to Live Aid to EastEnders. Yet there’s also a looming existential crisis thanks to Margaret Thatcher, who loathes the corporation as the embodiment of the bloated state and centre-left groupthink. After the defenestration of DG Alasdair Milne, John Birt gives the BBC a Thatcherite makeover that fends off the Tory assault, but at what cost?
In the 21st century, the BBC has lived under the shadow of scandals, cuts and relentless salvos from the right — every blunder, from the Iraq War to Jimmy Savile, becomes another cudgel for its enemies to beat it with. Too successful and it’s accused of stifling competition. Not successful enough and it’s not worth the license fee. The crisis never ends. Yet more than nine in ten of us use it every week and would be devastated to lose it.
How has the BBC lived up to the Reithian imperative to inform, educate and entertain, and why did Reith himself end up hating it? How can an organisation so powerful be so vulnerable? Is its unruly pluralism a blessing or a curse? Is it really politically biased — and if so, in which direction? And who did Mary Whitehouse personally blame for Britain’s “moral collapse”? Tune in.
Reading list
Patrick Barwise and Peter York – The War Against the BBC (2020)
John Birt – The Harder Path: The Autobiography (2002)
Bill Cotton – Double Bill: 80 Years of Entertainment (2000)
Desert Island Discs with Sir Hugh Greene (1983)
Simon Elmes – And Now on Radio 4: A Celebration of the World’s Best Radio Station (2007)
Lionel Fielden – The Natural Bent (1960)
Grace Wyndham Goldie – Facing the Nation: Television and Politics 1936-1976 (1977)
David Hendy – The BBC: A People’s History (2022)
Charlotte Higgins – This New Noise: The Extraordinary Birth and Troubled Life of the BBC (2015)
Sam Knight – ‘Can the BBC Survive the British Government?’, New Yorker (2022)
Ian McIntyre – The Expense of Glory: A Life of John Reith (1993)
Eric Maschwitz – No Chip on My Shoulder (1957)
Hilda Matheson – Broadcasting (1933)
Joe Moran – Armchair Nation: An Intimate History of Britain in Front of the TV (2014)
JCW Reith – Broadcast Over Britain (1924)
JCW Reith – Into the Wind (1949)
Jean Seaton – Pinkoes and Traitors: The BBC and the Nation 1974-1987 (2015)
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
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So far this season we’ve had to deal with Russell Brand and Benjamin Netanyahu, and we’ve got the Daily Mail coming up, so we all deserve a more uplifting tale. This week we commence the epic story of the British Broadcasting Corporation — the BBC.
“Hullo, hullo, 2LO calling. 2LO calling. This is the British Broadcasting Company. Stand by for one minute please!” With those words, at 6pm on Tuesday 14 November 1922, the amiable wireless wizard Arthur Burrows introduced just tens of thousands of listeners to Britain’s first national broadcaster. Its founding director general, John Reith, defined its mission in three words: “Inform, educate, entertain.”
When Reith and his team set up shop in Savoy Hill in 1923, the BBC’s staff numbered just 31, including the cleaner. A century later, the BBC is the world’s most popular public broadcaster and most trusted news source. It is the heart of the UK’s soft power and one of our most beloved national institutions. It is the mirror of our tastes and concerns and the background to our lives. Yet it has always been a battleground, too, tormented by newspaper barons, rival broadcasters, suspicious politicians and its own internal tensions. As 1960s director general Hugh Carleton Greene observed, it is “the universal Aunt Sally of our day”.
The story begins with the utopian dreams of the wireless pioneers, and Reith’s own paternalistic idealism about the power of radio to elevate the nation. We meet such gamechanging talents as Hilda Matheson and Cecil Lewis as they develop the art of broadcasting — including one, inevitably, who becomes a fascist. In 1926, the BBC faced its first major crisis, the General Strike, and made its first sworn enemy, Winston Churchill. By
1939, the BBC had 34 million radio listeners and was pioneering the new medium of television. During the Second World War, it proved its worth as a morale-boosting, unifying force at home and an advertisement for democratic British values abroad. One French broadcaster called it “a torch in the darkness.” We end part one with the BBC preparing to enter the radically transformed post-war world and the age of television.
What are the origins of the BBC’s values and structures? Who were the shellshocked misfits who got it off the ground and why did they think it would change the world? Why did the General Strike almost bring it to its knees? How did it help win the war? Oh, and what did Reith have against television?
It’s a saga of bohemians, bureaucrats and bust-ups, with walk-on parts for George Orwell, HG Wells, the Bloomsbury set, JB Priestley, Ewan MacColl, Lord Haw-Haw and Mickey Mouse. And at the centre of it all is the prickly, domineering, inspirational figure of John Reith. Stand by for one minute please!
Reading list
Patrick Barwise and Peter York – The War Against the BBC (2020)
John Birt – The Harder Path: The Autobiography (2002)
Bill Cotton – Double Bill: 80 Years of Entertainment (2000)
Desert Island Discs with Sir Hugh Greene (1983)
Simon Elmes – And Now on Radio 4: A Celebration of the World’s Best Radio Station (2007)
Lionel Fielden – The Natural Bent (1960)
Grace Wyndham Goldie – Facing the Nation: Television and Politics 1936-1976 (1977)
David Hendy – The BBC: A People’s History (2022)
Charlotte Higgins – This New Noise: The Extraordinary Birth and Troubled Life of the BBC (2015)
Sam Knight – ‘Can the BBC Survive the British Government?’, New Yorker (2022)
Ian McIntyre – The Expense of Glory: A Life of John Reith (1993)
... Full reading list available 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
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• Give or get 20% off annual Patreon backing for Origin Story in our Black Friday sale.
•Fill in our listener survey for a chance to win an exclusive Origin Story t-shirt.
This week we complete the story of Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s most politically successful prime minister — and its most divisive.
We pick up the story in 1996, with Netanyahu’s first term in office, clashing with both President Clinton and his hard-right coalition partners over the future of the Oslo peace process. We follow his subsequent decade in opposition, as the dwindling of hope and the misfortunes of his rivals enabled him to make yet another unlikely comeback in 2009.
Apart from 18 months of political chaos, he has been in power ever since, growing more hostile towards the Palestinians and Iran and more authoritarian at home — some say Netanyahu was Trump before Trump. The Israel that suffered the blow of October 7 was outwardly strong and prosperous yet more divided, corrupt and unpopular than ever. Its conduct of the subsequent wars demonstrates the costs of Netanyahu’s self-serving machinations, his embrace of the far right and his unforgivingly bleak worldview. Even as a majority of voters want him to step down, he hangs on.
Is Netanyahu just an extraordinarily canny operator or the true representative of a new Israel, a long way from its founders’ intentions? How did peace with the Palestinians go from a real possibility to a broken dream? Why does everyone from foreign leaders to members of his own cabinet have such contempt for Netanyahu? And how can Israel recover from his ruinous leadership? To understand where the country is now, you need to understand the man.
• Get the Origin Story books on Fascism, Centrism and Conspiracy Theory
• Get exclusive extras like supporter-only Q&A editions when you back Origin Story on Patreon.
Reading List
Books
Neill Lochery - The Resistible Rise of Benjamin Netanyahu (Bloomsbury, 2016)
Benjamin Netanyahu - A Place Among the Nations: Israel and the World (1993)
Benjamin Netanyahu - Bibi: My Story (2022)
Anshel Pfeffer - Bibi: The Turbulent Life and Times of Benjamin Netanyahu (2020)
Ari Shavit - My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel: Updated edition (2015)
Avi Shlaim - The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (2000)
Articles
David Margolick - ‘Star of Zion’, Vanity Fair (1996)
David Remnick - ‘The Outsider’, New Yorker (1998)
Joshua Leifer - ‘The Netanyahu doctrine’, Guardian (2023)
David Remnick - ‘The Price of Netanyahu’s Ambition’, New Yorker (2024)
Donald McIntyre - ‘How Netanyahu gambled with the Fate of Israel’, Tortoise (2024)
John Jenkins - ‘Netanyahu’s all-out war’, New Statesman (2024)
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
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This week we commence the story of Benjamin Netanyahu. The 75-year-old has become Israel’s longest serving prime minister despite never winning the love of his people, his international allies or even his political colleagues. Now he is accused of prolonging Israel’s horrific wars in Gaza and Lebanon to preserve his own power and save himself from prosecution for corruption. How did the man known even to his foes as Bibi rebound from so many scandals and defeats to become the dominant force in Israeli politics, and what does that say about the country Israel has become? If you haven’t heard our two-parter on Zionism, now is a good time – Apple / Spotify – because these episodes are a kind of sequel.
We begin with the influence of Bibi’s father and grandfather and the flinty, paranoid doctrine of revisionist Zionism. Netanyahu’s aggressive, ultra-conservative worldview was also shaped by his studies in the US, his combat experience in Israel’s wars of survival, and the dramatic loss of his beloved older brother Yoni during the 1976 raid on Entebbe Airport. After the revisionist party Likud ended Labor’s three-decade hegemony, he found his calling as a great communicator, bullishly promoting Israel’s interests, from television to the United Nations, throughout the 1980s.
Netanyahu’s first eight years in the Knesset coincided with the First Intifada and the Oslo peace process. In a time of hope for a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians, he offered cynicism and fear. When peacemaking prime minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in 1995, Netanyahu was blamed for stoking the far right and he seemed finished politically. Yet within a few months, he was Israel’s youngest ever prime minister.
What has influenced Netanyahu’s bleak and spiky understanding of Jewish history and his role in it? How did such a widely disliked character achieve such surprising success? And how did Israel itself change during those tumultuous decades of frequent wars and elusive peace? To understand where the country is now, you need to understand the man.
• Get the Origin Story books on Fascism, Centrism and Conspiracy Theory
• Get exclusive extras like supporter-only Q&A editions when you back Origin Story on Patreon.
Reading List
Books
Neill Lochery - The Resistible Rise of Benjamin Netanyahu (Bloomsbury, 2016)
Benjamin Netanyahu - A Place Among the Nations: Israel and the World (1993)
Benjamin Netanyahu - Bibi: My Story (2022)
Anshel Pfeffer - Bibi: The Turbulent Life and Times of Benjamin Netanyahu (2020)
Ari Shavit - My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel: Updated edition (2015)
Avi Shlaim - The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (2000)
Articles
David Margolick - ‘Star of Zion’, Vanity Fair (1996)
David Remnick - ‘The Outsider’, New Yorker (1998)
Joshua Leifer - ‘The Netanyahu doctrine’, Guardian (2023)
David Remnick - ‘The Price of Netanyahu’s Ambition’, New Yorker (2024)
Donald McIntyre - ‘How Netanyahu gambled with the Fate of Israel’, Tortoise (2024)
John Jenkins - ‘Netanyahu’s all-out war’, New Statesman (2024)
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
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• Give or get 20% off annual Patreon backing for Origin Story in our Black Friday sale.
•Fill in our listener survey for a chance to win an exclusive Origin Story t-shirt.
Part two of Ian and Dorian’s post-Presidential Election show at the Tabernacle in West London, recorded on the 7th of November. After signing books (have we mentioned there are Origin Story books out?) Dorian and Ian returned to continue the analysis of what the hell just happened. They also considered what a Trump win means for the UK and answered some excellent audience questions.
• Get the Origin Story books on Fascism, Centrism and Conspiracy Theory
• Get exclusive extras like supporter-only Q&A editions when you back Origin Story on Patreon.
Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Produced by Simon Williams and Chris Jones. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production
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Part one of Ian and Dorian’s post-Presidential Election show at the Tabernacle in West London, recorded on the 7th of November. The show turned into a group therapy session, after Trump won to become the first convicted felon to be elected to the highest office in America. Listen back to Dorian and Ian beginning the process of coming to terms with this world-changing outcome and its implications for global politics.
• Get the Origin Story books on Fascism, Centrism and Conspiracy Theory
• Get exclusive extras like supporter-only Q&A editions when you back Origin Story on Patreon.
Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Produced by Simon Williams and Chris Jones. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production
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•Fill in our listener survey for a chance to win an exclusive Origin Story t-shirt.
The final episode of our two-part story of Artificial Intelligence. Having looked at the emergence and development of AI in part one we now turn to the future and assess the dangers and possibilities it raises.
We weigh up two arguments concerning existential risk. Some AI theorists believe the technology has the possibility of becoming sentient and then behaving against humanity's interests. Others worry that it will simply deliver disastrous outcomes on the basis of badly established requests. For instance, if you ask a highly advanced machine to create paperclips, with no additional restrictions, it might end up killing everyone in its relentless pursuit of its task. Are either of these ideas remotely believable? Are they remotely likely?
Then we look at the possible repercussions of more modest outcomes. What happens when everyone on earth is equipped with their own genius machine, which can assess global corporate law in seconds, or make millions on Amazon Marketplace? Will we use it for good or ill? (Spoilers: It'll be bad)
How confidently can we accept the predictions of AI theorists? Are they really right that this is all inevitable? Or is history, and technological development, far more chaotic and unpredictable than their models allow?
Finally, we look at the impact on humanity as we are all suddenly enveloped in AI art. Will an AI song ever move us to tears? And if so, what does that say about who we are and what we look for in the world?
Get the Origin Story books on Fascism, Centrism and Conspiracy Theory
Get exclusive extras like supporter-only Q&A editions when you back Origin Story on Patreon.
Reading List
Books
Susie Alegre - Human Rights, Robot Wrongs: Being human in the age of AI (2024)
Nick Bostrom – Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (2014)
Daniel Crevier – AI: The Tumultuous History of the Search for Artificial Intelligence (1993)
Pedro Domingos - The Master Algorithm: How the quest for the ultimate learning machine will remake the world (2015)
Max Fisher - The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World (2022)
Walter Isaacson – The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution (2014)
Dorian Lynskey – Everything Must Go: The Stories We Tell About the End of the World (2024)
John Markoff - Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground Between Humans and Robots (2015)
David G. Stork (ed.) – HAL’s Legacy: 2001’s Computer as Dream and Reality (1997)
Mustafa Suleyman with Michael Bhaskar – The Coming Wave: AI, Power and Our Future (2023)
Michael Woolridge – The Road to Conscious Machines: The Story of AI (2021)
Articles
Alan Turing – ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence’, Mind (1950)
Brad Darrach – ‘Meet Shaky, the First Electronic Person’, Life (1970)
Jeremy Bernstein – ‘A.I.’, New Yorker (1981)
Raffi Khatchadourian – ‘The Doomsday Invention’, New Yorker (2015)
For the full reading list join our 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
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•Fill in our listener survey for a chance to win an exclusive Origin Story t-shirt.
It can seem like conspiracy theories have travelled at warp speed from the eccentric margins to the heart of modern politics. But in fact conspiracism has always been one of history’s darkest forces, from the witch hunts to the Holocaust. In this exclusive audiobook extract from the prologue to Conspiracy Theory: The Story of an Idea, Ian explains how conspiracy theories exploit the human brain’s craving for simple explanations in a chaotic and unpredictable world to spin bogus narratives of evil cliques, shadowy plots and do-or-die conflicts between Us and Them.
Why are conspiracy theories so alluring, how have they shaped history and how can liberal democracy survive if its citizens no longer inhabit a shared reality? Featuring JFK, David Icke, Princess Diana and the Wu-Tang Clan, this is our introduction to a weird and wild story. You can listen to Ian and Dorian read Conspiracy Theory: The Story of an Idea, along with its sister Origin Story publications Fascism and Centrism, on Audible, Spotify or your favourite audiobook platform. Or buy the physical books on Fascism, Centrism and Conspiracy Theory.
Get exclusive extras like supporter-only Q&A editions when you back Origin Story on Patreon.
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•Fill in our listener survey for a chance to win an exclusive Origin Story t-shirt.
This week we begin the story of Artificial Intelligence. Since the launch of Chat-GPT in late 2022, we have been more excited, and anxious, about AI than ever before. It’s become a daily obsession. But the key question we are grappling with is the same as ever: can machines really ever develop human-style intelligence or merely imitate it? And what is human intelligence anyway?
In part two we’ll be exploring the possible ramifications of AI, from the utopian to the dystopian and all points in between. But first, we explain how humanity’s long, ambivalent fascination with artificial life has brought us here.
We start with premonitions of AI, from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics, and Ada Lovelace, the original AI sceptic, to Alan Turing and his famous test. Artificial Intelligence itself — the term and the field of study — began in 1956, at a summer school at Dartmouth University. While most computer scientists were working on ways for machines to partner with human intelligence — the personal computer, the internet — AI researchers dreamt of replacing it.
For decades, AI development was a cycle of boom and bust. Extravagant claims attracted funding, talent and media attention, then their failure to materialise caused all three to collapse. AI became tarnished by its broken promises. But in the 21st century, the availability of vast troves of data and powerful new processors finally solved such stubborn challenges as image recognition and automatic translation, leading to the current AI gold rush. Along the way, we meet gamechanging scientists like Marvin Minsky and Geoffrey Hinton as well as landmark machines like ELIZA, the first chatbot, Shakey the robot and AlexNet, deep learning’s great leap forward.
Why does the prospect of machine intelligence enthral and unnerve us? Why has AI proved so much more difficult than its pioneers imagined? How have fictional AIs like HAL and Skynet shaped the mythology of AI? And are Large Language Models like Chat-GPT just glorified autocomplete or a historic turning point in our relationship with machines?
Get the Origin Story books on Fascism, Centrism and Conspiracy Theory
Get exclusive extras like supporter-only Q&A editions when you back Origin Story on Patreon.
Reading List
Books
Susie Alegre - Human Rights, Robot Wrongs: Being human in the age of AI (2024)
Nick Bostrom – Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (2014)
Daniel Crevier – AI: The Tumultuous History of the Search for Artificial Intelligence (1993)
Pedro Domingos - The Master Algorithm: How the quest for the ultimate learning machine will remake the world (2015)
Max Fisher - The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World (2022)
Walter Isaacson – The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution (2014)
Dorian Lynskey – Everything Must Go: The Stories We Tell About the End of the World (2024)
John Markoff - Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground Between Humans and Robots (2015)
David G. Stork (ed.) – HAL’s Legacy: 2001’s Computer as Dream and Reality (1997)
Mustafa Suleyman with Michael Bhaskar – The Coming Wave: AI, Power and Our Future (2023)
Michael Woolridge – The Road to Conscious Machines: The Story of AI (2021)
Articles
Alan Turing – ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence’, Mind (1950)
Brad Darrach – ‘Meet Shaky, the First Electronic Person’, Life (1970)
Jeremy Bernstein – ‘A.I.’, New Yorker (1981)
For the full reading list join our 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
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•Fill in our listener survey for a chance to win an exclusive Origin Story t-shirt.
This week we finish the story of the suffragettes. We pick up the narrative in 1912, when parliament’s failure to deliver women’s suffrage triggered a new phase of violent escalation. No suffragette was more extreme than Emily Wilding Davison, whose death at the hooves of the King’s horse turned a liability into a martyr. Meanwhile, the whole country was convulsed by arson and bomb plots and the Pankhursts’ autocratic leadership was alienating some of their closest allies, including members of their own family. It took the First World War to stop the “reign of terror” and ultimately give women the vote.
Was violence morally justified when peaceful solutions failed? Did it hasten suffrage or threaten to derail it? What might have happened if the war had not intervened? What do the strange and divergent afterlives of the suffragettes tell us about the movement? And what can modern activists like Just Stop Oil learn from the suffragettes?
Behind the sanitised, sentimentalised version of the story lies a thorny tale of the validity and efficacy of violence in a just cause, taking Edwardian Britain to the edge of chaos.
Origin Story will be live at the Tabernacle in London on the 7th of November for a special post-US election show. Tickets here.
Get the Origin Story books on Fascism, Centrism and Conspiracy Theory
Get exclusive extras like supporter-only Q&A editions when you back Origin Story on Patreon.
Reading List
Diane Atkinson – Rise Up Women!: The Remarkable Lives of the Suffragettes (2018)
Helen Lewis – Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights (2020)
Joyce Marlow (editor) – Suffragettes: The Fight for Votes for Women (2015)
Glenda Norquay (editor) – Voices and Votes: A Literary Anthology of the Women’s Suffrage Campaign (1995)
Christabel Pankhurst – Pressing Problems of the Coming Age (1924)
Christabel Pankhurst – Unshackled: The Story of How We Won the Vote (1959)
Sylvia Pankhurst – The Suffragette: The History of the Women’s Militant Suffrage Movement 1905-10 (1911)
Sylvia Pankhurst – The Suffragette Movement: An Intimate Account of Persons and Ideals (1931)
Mary R. Richardson – Laugh a Defiance (1953)
Fern Riddell – ‘Sanitising the Suffragettes’ (2018)
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
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This week we begin the tumultuous story of the suffragettes. In 1903, Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst founded the Women’s Social and Political Union. Sick of waiting in vain for women’s suffrage, they decided to secure it by hook or by crook. By 1906, the so-called suffragettes were the most exciting, audacious activists in the land, with their banners of purple, white and green. They then took on the might of the British state with ingenious protests and hunger strikes before agreeing to an uneasy two-year ceasefire while parliament wrestled over whether to give women the vote. We conclude part one at the end of 1911, with political failure and the dawn of a new phase of militancy.
Who were the Pankhursts and their inner circle? How did they interact with Millicent Fawcett’s moderate suffragists? Why were Liberal politicians so determined to deny women the vote? And could it all have worked out very differently?
It’s a fiery story of courage, conflict and missed chances, as British women found their political voice for the first time.
Origin Story will be live at the Tabernacle in London on the 7th of November for a special post-US election show. Tickets here.
Get the Origin Story books on Fascism, Centrism and Conspiracy Theory
Get exclusive extras like supporter-only Q&A editions when you back Origin Story on Patreon.
Reading List
Diane Atkinson – Rise Up Women!: The Remarkable Lives of the Suffragettes (2018)
Helen Lewis – Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights (2020)
Joyce Marlow (editor) – Suffragettes: The Fight for Votes for Women (2015)
Glenda Norquay (editor) – Voices and Votes: A Literary Anthology of the Women’s Suffrage Campaign (1995)
Christabel Pankhurst – Pressing Problems of the Coming Age (1924)
Christabel Pankhurst – Unshackled: The Story of How We Won the Vote (1959)
Sylvia Pankhurst – The Suffragette: The History of the Women’s Militant Suffrage Movement 1905-10 (1911)
Sylvia Pankhurst – The Suffragette Movement: An Intimate Account of Persons and Ideals (1931)
Mary R. Richardson – Laugh a Defiance (1953)
Fern Riddell – ‘Sanitising the Suffragettes’ (2018)
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
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•Fill in our listener survey for a chance to win an exclusive Origin Story t-shirt.
What the hell happened to Russell Brand? Ten years ago, the comedian and actor was the loudest voice on the British left as his florid calls for spiritual and political revolution won him the support of politicians and journalists. Now he is a full-time conspiracy theorist and disgraced exile from mainstream culture, conducting prayer meetings with Jordan Peterson and flirting with Donald Trump. The fall of a celebrity is not usually Origin Story material but Brand’s transformation epitomises the political chaos of the last decade: how populism and paranoia scramble conventional notions of right and left to create a volatile third category.
In the first episode of season six, Dorian and Ian reassess Brand’s extraordinary rise to fame in the 2000s in light of recent allegations of sexual misconduct and explore how British culture gave him a free pass. In 2013 Brand swapped sex and fame for a new compulsion, reinventing himself as a flamboyant agitator to great acclaim. In the void between Occupy and Corbynism, his verbose mishmash of self-help and socialism briefly made him a lion of the left. During the pandemic Brand embraced a darker shade of politics, promoting conspiracy theories about Covid-19, Ukraine and much more besides. After the allegations broke last year he went full crank, aligning himself with Robert F Kennedy Jr, Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones in the paranoid space.
What does Brand’s journey to the fringes tell us about the shifting political landscape? Did he really switch sides or were the red flags flying all along? What can the left learn from its haste to turn a motormouth comedian into a radical icon? Is Brand’s latest incarnation sincere or opportunistic, and does it really matter? And which of his tomes makes for the most painful reading today: Revolution or My Booky Wook?
This is a bizarre story of celebrity and conspiracy, addiction and attention, which says a great deal about where we are now.
Get the Origin Story books on Fascism, Centrism and Conspiracy Theory – out 17th Oct
Origin Story will be live at the Tabernacle in London on the 7th of November for a special post-US election show. Tickets here.
Get exclusive extras like supporter-only Q&A editions when you back Origin Story on Patreon.
Reading List
Books
Russell Brand - My Booky Wook (2007)
Russell Brand - Revolution (2014)
Anna Merlan - Republic of Lies: American Conspiracy Theorists and Their Surprising Rise to Power (2019)
Naomi Klein - Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World (2023)
Video and audio
Russell Brand at parliamentary select committee on drug addiction (2012)
Newsnight debate on drug addiction with Peter Hitchens (2012)
Newsnight interview with Jeremy Paxman (2013)
Newsnight interview with Evan Davis (2014)
Brand: A Second Coming, directed by Ondi Timoner (2015)
Russell Brand: In Plain Sight: Dispatches (2023)
Russell Brand podcast archive
Articles
Michael Kelly, ‘The Road to Paranoia’, New Yorker (1995)
Piers Morgan, ‘Russell Brand’, GQ (2006)
Miranda Sawyer, Brand on the run, The Guardian (2008)
Russell Brand on Margaret Thatcher: “I always felt sorry for her children”, The Guardian (2013)
Russell Brand on revolution: “We no longer have the luxury of tradition”, New Statesman (2013)
Brian Logan, ‘Messiah Complex – review’, Guardian (2013)
Mark Fisher, ‘Exiting the Vampire Castle’, Open Democracy (2013)
Justin Gray, ‘The Sneaky Smarts of Russell Brand’, Vulture (2013)
David Runciman, ‘Revolution by Russell Brand review’, Guardian (2014)
For complete article list see Patreon
Written and presented by Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey. 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
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Sex! Violence! Censorship! These days the British Board of Film Classification rarely makes headlines but it was on the cultural frontlines throughout the 20 th century, from Herbert Asquith and the dawn of British cinema to Mary Whitehouse and “video nasties”. Through the turbulent life of one institution, Ian takes Dorian through a century of moral panics, censorship and furious debates about cinema’s influence on the life of the nation. This (literally) cinematic tale ranges from The Birth of a Nation and Nosferatu to Cannibal Holocaust and The Life of Brian, and has an unusually uplifting ending. Won’t somebody think of the children?!
Origin Story will be live at the Tabernacle in London on the 7th of November for a special post-US election show. Tickets here.
Get exclusive extras like supporter-only Q&A editions when you back Origin Story on Patreon.
Reading List
The Miracle Of The Movies by Leslie Wood, Burke Publishing 1915
Obscenity and Film Censorship: An Abridgement of the Williams Report edited by Bernard Williams
The British Board of Film Censors: film censorship in Britain, 1896-1950 by James Robertson, Dover, N.H. 1985
Censoring the moving image by Phillip French Seagull Books, 2007
See no evil: Banned films and video controversy by David Kerekes, Headpress 2000
Ban The Sadist Videos: 2005 Documentary
ScreenOnline: Duval, Robin
Mark Kermode interview with Robin Duval: Guardian 2004
Written and presented by Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey. 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
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Emmanuel Macron is one of the most fascinating and infuriating figures in 21st century politics. Seven years ago, the philosopher-statesman shredded France’s status quo by seizing the presidency at the helm of a brand new centrist party. But his achievements, at home and abroad, have not lived up to his grand visions and his summer election gamble has left him weaker than ever. Ian tells Dorian a dramatic story of idealism, ambition and hubris, explaining what Macron’s strengths and flaws reveal about the changing face of centrism, the battle with the far right and what makes French politics so very French. Sacre bleu!
Origin Story will be live at the Tabernacle in London on the 7th of November for a special post-US election show. Tickets here.
Get exclusive extras like supporter-only Q&A editions when you back Origin Story on Patreon.
Reading List
Revolution by Emmanuel Macron, Scribe 2017
Emmanuel Macron: Revolution Francais by Sophie Pedder, Bloomsbury 2018
Written and presented by Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey. 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
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Over the past eight years, the word “gaslighting” has transformed from an obscure term in psychiatric literature into a ubiquitous buzzword to describe the kind of deceit that makes you feel like you’re losing your mind. But are we using it correctly? What explains its sudden popularity? And is it entirely wise to import a psychological term into the world of politics? Dorian tells Ian how the title of Patrick Hamilton’s hit 1938 play Gaslight gradually became a verb and eventually went viral during Trump’s first presidential campaign in 2016. The story ranges from Ingrid Bergman and I Love Lucy to George Orwell and the Stasi before landing amid the current election dust-up between Trump and Kamala Harris. Strictly facts, no gaslighting, we promise.
Get exclusive extras like supporter-only Q&A editions when you back Origin Story on Patreon.
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
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The Battle of Cable Street on 4 October 1936 has been described as “the greatest anti-fascist victory on British soil”. It is certainly the most mythologised, most recently inspiring massive anti-fascist protests in British cities. But what actually happened that day? Who exactly was doing the battling? And did this display of working-class solidarity in London’s East End really stop Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists in its tracks?
Dorian tells Ian the story of that landmark Sunday and its aftermath, from the points of view of protesters, police and politicians, and finds some surprising answers.
Get exclusive extras like supporter-only Q&A editions (first one coming next week) when you back Origin Story on Patreon.
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.
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Racist violence has inflamed several British cities this past week. Should we call the events protests, riots or pogroms? Are the participants actual fascists or ordinary citizens with “legitimate concerns”? And how did the fiction of “two-tier policing” go from extremists to broadcasters in a couple of days? Ian and Dorian analyse how the language of the far right and its mainstream enablers obscures what is really going on and ask if Britain’s worst street violence since 2011 will change anything.
https://www.patreon.com/originstorypod
Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Produced by Jade Bailey. Origin Story is a Podmasters production.
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Couldn’t make it to the Origin Story live show in London on Monday 15 July? Don’t worry, we’ve got audio for you. Listen up as Dorian and Ian take one last wallow in the glory of Election Night ’24… think about what might be in store for some of our favourite bad losers… see how the events of the campaign relate to the subjects of our past series… and of course answer your questions.
Written and presented by Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Audio and video by Simon Williams, Chris Jones and Kieron Leslie. Live events co-ordinator Jill Pearson. Audio production by Simon Williams. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production.
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