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Origin Story

Origin Story

By: Podmasters
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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.Podmasters / Ian Dunt & Dorian Lynskey 2022 Politics & Government Social Sciences World
Episodes
  • Martin Luther King Jr. – Part One – Eyes on the Prize

    Martin Luther King Jr. – Part One – Eyes on the Prize
    Jun 4 2025
    Welcome to the final topic of Origin Story season seven: the extraordinary life and legacy of Dr Martin Luther King. By Origin Story standards, there’s an unusual moral clarity to this story — a genuinely good man up against genuine horrors — but that doesn’t make it a straightforward one. The mainstream caricature of King as a kindly, colour-blind saint is not just a simplification but a cynical misrepresentation, designed to drain his example of its power. Born in Atlanta in 1929, the son of a prominent pastor, King was a brilliant student who developed a sophisticated worldview grounded in both Christianity and philosophy. His Gandhi-inspired belief in nonviolent resistance became central to the civil rights struggle when he was thrust onto the frontlines during the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955-6 and quickly became the most admired black man in America. He was just 27. King’s new role as leader and symbol of the movement was both an honour and a burden. Abused, threatened, assaulted and jailed, he wrestled with his own feelings of inadequacy and guilt as well as the violent forces of white racism and the obsessive attention of the FBI. We follow him through his great triumphs — Montgomery, Birmingham, the March on Washington, Selma — but also his setbacks, his mistakes and his complicated relationships with presidents and fellow activists. What made this previously unknown preacher the unrivalled leader of the civil rights movement for more than 12 years? How did he develop, and evolve, his philosophy of nonviolence? Who were his loyal allies, vicious antagonists and complicated frenemies? How did he play to his strengths and transcend his weaknesses? And what gave him the strength to carry on in the face of both the American South’s barbaric racism and his own ceaseless insecurities? This is an inspiring and often surprising story of moral courage and strategic leadership pitted against terrible odds — one with vital lessons for anybody who seeks to change the world for the better. Plus! Another Origin Story playlist, featuring songs about and inspired by Martin Luther King. It’s sequenced to tell his story chronologically. Reading list • Ralph Abernathy, And the Walls Came Tumbling Down: An Autobiography (1989) • Jonathan Eig, King: The Life of Martin Luther King (2023) • Marshall Frady, Martin Luther King, Jr: A Life (2001) • Martin Luther King Jr, Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story (1958) • Martin Luther King Jr, Why We Can’t Wait (1963) • Martin Luther King Jr, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? (1967) • Dr Martin Luther King Jr, A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches, edited by James Melvin Washington (1986) • Stephen B. Oates, Let the Trumpet Sound: A Life of Martin Luther King, Jr (1982) • Jason Sokol, The Heavens Might Crack: The Death and Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr (2018) Articles • Renata Adler, ‘The Selma March’, The New Yorker (1965) • Jelani Cobb, ‘Martin Luther King, Jr.’s History Lessons’, The New Yorker (2022) • Alex Haley (uncredited), Playboy interview: Martin Luther King (1965) • Howell Raines, ‘Driven to Martyrdom’, New York Times (1986) • Kelefa Sanneh, ‘Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Perilous Power of Respectability’, The New Yorker (2023) • Time, ‘THE SOUTH: Attack on the Conscience’, Time (1957) • Time, ‘America’s Gandhi: Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’, Time (1964) • Calvin Trillin, ‘The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi’, The New Yorker (1964) Video • 60 Minutes interview with Martin Luther King (1966) • BBC Face to Face interview with Martin Luther King (1961) • Martin Luther King, ‘I Have a Dream’ speech (1963) ... Full reading list continues on Patreon Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Produced by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    1 hr and 36 mins
  • Growth – GDP is the Magic Number

    Growth – GDP is the Magic Number
    May 28 2025
    Welcome back to Origin Story, where we’re discussing the concept of economic growth. Growth is the world’s great obsession. When it’s booming, it makes everything easier. When it stagnates or goes into reverse, everybody panics. But what exactly is it, what drives it and what does it cost us? For most of human history economic growth didn’t exist. The average person was no better off than their distant ancestors. Even when the age of growth began with the Industrial Revolution, nobody knew how to measure it or control it until the 1940s. Enter GDP, which quickly became the most important number in the world despite its creators acknowledging from the start that it was both artificial and deeply flawed. We talk about what GDP does and does not measure and how it has adapted to an increasingly complicated global economy. We meet the economists who created it (hello again, John Maynard Keynes) and those who tried to reform or replace it. Robert F Kennedy claimed in 1968 that GDP “measures everything except that which makes life worthwhile”. Is the number that rules the world really fit for purpose? Then we explore our addiction to relentless growth and ask if there is a more sustainable way to thrive: green growth, slow growth or degrowth? Preserving our natural resources without risking economic and political disaster is the great challenge of our times. Is growth essential to the survival of democracy or the cause of many of its problems? What fuelled the miraculous growth of previous eras and why isn’t it working anymore? Can advanced economies escape the low-growth trap or do we need to rethink our whole approach to growth and prosperity? Does GDP still tell us what we need to know? And are we valuing the right things? • Support Origin Story on Patreon • Get the Origin Story books on Fascism, Centrism and Conspiracy Theory Reading list • Donella H. Meadows et al., The Limits to Growth (1972) • Barry Commoner, The Closing Circle: Nature, Man & Technology (1971) • Diane Coyle, GDP: A Brief but Affectionate History (2014) • Diane Coyle, The Measure of Progress: Counting What Really Matters (2025) • Ehsan Masood, GDP: The World’s Most Powerful Formula and Why It Must Now Change (2021) • Jason Hickel, Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World (2020) • John Maynard Keynes, How to Pay for the War (1940) • Kate Raworth, Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist (2017) • Daniel Susskind, Growth: A Reckoning (2024) Articles • John Cassidy, ‘Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth’, The New Yorker (2020) • Herman Daly, ‘The Canary Has Fallen Silent’, New York Times (1970) • Editorial, ‘Pandemic Calls for a New Approach to Growth’, Financial Times (2020) • Editorial, ‘Are there limits to economic growth? It’s time to call time on a 50 year argument’, Nature (2022) • Idrees Kahloon, ‘The World Keeps Getting Richer. Some People Are Worried’, The New Yorker (2024) • Carolyn Kormann, ‘The False Choice Between Economic Growth and Combatting Climate Change’, The New Yorker (2019) • Katy Lederer, ‘The End of G.D.P.?’, The New Yorker (2015) • David Marchese, This Pioneering Economist Says Our Obsession with Growth Must End, New York Times (2022) • Bill McKibben, ‘To Save the Planet, Should We Really Be Moving Slower?’, The New Yorker (2023) • John Merrick, ‘The prophet of the new right’, The New Statesman (2025) • Peter Passell, Marc Roberts and Leonard Ross, ‘The Limits to Growth’, New York Times (1972) Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Produced by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    1 hr and 33 mins
  • Mars – The Next Frontier?

    Mars – The Next Frontier?
    May 21 2025
    Welcome to the first ever episode of Origin Story dedicated to a planet. We’re taking a long look at the place of Mars in the popular imagination, from ancient civilisations to fin de siècle Mars mania to the current techbro obsession with exploration and colonisation. Is there life on Mars? Let’s find out. The ancients associated the red planet with gods of war. With the invention of the telescope in the 17th century, astronomers began to understand Mars better and speculate about its inhabitants. Thanks to the amateur astronomer Percival Lowell, the romance of the red planet, and its alleged “canals”, became a craze in the 1890s. H.G. Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs imagined the Martians as colonisers and colonised respectively, while luminaries like Nikola Tesla and Francis Galton hatched outlandish schemes to contact them. Science played the killjoy. Even as a new wave of Mars mania swept the post-war world, NASA probes unveiled the reality of a cold, dusty, dead planet. But their findings allowed for a new breed of romance: the possibility of actually reaching and settling on Mars. Ray Bradbury compared Mars to a mirror. What does humanity’s fascination with it say about our own dreams and fears over the centuries? How did the fictional Martian turn from a friendly pacifist into a ruthless killing machine? Why is there such a thin line between fact and fiction? Is Elon Musk’s obsession with settlement really possible or just another delusion? And why exactly do so many people want to travel to a planet that makes the least hospitable places on earth look like Center Parcs? It’s a mindboggling tale of scientific discovery and wild fantasy, with an all-star cast including Lord Tennyson, William Herschel, Thomas Edison, David Bowie and Arthur C. Clarke. Plus! Our first ever Origin Story playlist, with 23 songs about Mars. We have lift-off. • Support Origin Story on Patreon • Get the Origin Story books on Fascism, Centrism and Conspiracy Theory Reading list • Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles (1950) • Albert Burneko, ‘Neither Elon Musk nor Anybody Else Will Ever Colonize Mars’ (2025) • Stuart Clark (ed.), The Book of Mars: An Anthology of Fact and Fiction (2022) • Robert Crossley, Imagining Mars: A Literary History (2011) • Marc Hartzman, The Big Book of Mars (2020) • Robert Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) • Walter Isaacson, Elon Musk (2023) • Nicky Jenner, 4 th Rock from the Sun: The Story of Mars (2017) • Dorian Lynskey, Everything Must Go: The Stories We Tell About the End of the World (2024) • Lord Tennyson, ‘Locksley Hall Sixty Years After’ (1886) • Walter Tevis, The Man Who Fell to Earth (1963) • Kelly and Zach Weinersmith, A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? (2023) • H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds (1898) • Robert Zubrin, The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must (1996) Audio and video • Alternative 3, written by David Ambrose and directed by Christopher Miles (1977) • The Bunker: Why Elon Musk’s plan for life on Mars is a terrible idea (2025) • The Martian, written by Drew Goddard and directed by Ridley Scott (2015) • A Trip to Mars, directed by Ashley Miller for the Edison Company (1910) • The War of the Worlds, written and directed by Orson Welles (1938) Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Produced by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    1 hr and 28 mins
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