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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 Two – Owning the dream

    Martin Luther King Jr. – Part Two – Owning the dream
    Jun 11 2025
    Welcome to the grand finale of Origin Story season seven, as we conclude the remarkable story of Martin Luther King Jr. With the march from Selma to Montgomery and the passing of the Voting Rights Act, 1965 marked the zenith of the civil rights movement as a unified, effective force under King’s leadership. The decade-long fight to desegregate the South had given it strategic clarity and mainstream support. After that, things got much trickier as King switched his attention to economic injustice in cities like Chicago and came out against the war in Vietnam. Estranged from President Johnson, challenged by the young firebrands of Black Power, hounded by the FBI and horrified by the despair that fuelled urban riots, King spent the rest of his life on the back foot. In 1968, he staked everything on an ambitious Poor People’s Campaign but his movement had fragmented and public opinion had turned against him. On 4 April, he was shot dead in Memphis. The assassination simplified King into a martyr. We track the explosive unrest in the days after his death, the long struggle to make Martin Luther King Day a national holiday, and the way his philosophy has been caricatured and neutered by those who believe that civil rights have gone far enough. Finally, we unpack some of King’s most famous quotes to separate the myth from the reality. Why did the movement unravel after Selma? Did King pick the wrong battles or were the forces ranged against him too powerful to vanquish? What happens when a human being becomes a symbol? How has his message been whitewashed by the right? Does President Trump’s backlash politics prove that King was right to lose faith in white America’s willingness to reject racism? And what can today’s activists learn from King’s victories and defeats? Thanks for listening to season seven of Origin Story, and for supporting our work. We’ll be back soon with bonus episodes and Q&As. 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 27 mins
  • 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
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