Episodes

  • The Daily Mail – Part two – Paper Tigers

    The Daily Mail – Part two – Paper Tigers
    Dec 18 2024
    • 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. 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. • 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    1 hr and 21 mins
  • The Daily Mail – Part one – Barons and Blackshirts

    The Daily Mail – Part one – Barons and Blackshirts
    Dec 18 2024
    • 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. 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    1 hr
  • The BBC – Part two – Balancing act

    The BBC – Part two – Balancing act
    Dec 11 2024
    • 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. 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    1 hr and 26 mins
  • The BBC – Part one – Inform, educate, entertain

    The BBC – Part one – Inform, educate, entertain
    Dec 4 2024
    • 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. 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    1 hr and 21 mins
  • Benjamin Netanyahu – Part two – Divide and conquer

    Benjamin Netanyahu – Part two – Divide and conquer
    Nov 27 2024
    • 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    1 hr and 22 mins
  • Benjamin Netanyahu – Part one – Making enemies

    Benjamin Netanyahu – Part one – Making enemies
    Nov 20 2024
    • 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 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    1 hr and 3 mins
  • US Post-Election Live Show – Part Two

    US Post-Election Live Show – Part Two
    Nov 16 2024
    • 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    1 hr and 12 mins
  • US Post-Election Live Show – Part One

    US Post-Election Live Show – Part One
    Nov 16 2024
    • 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 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    55 mins