Origin Story

By: Podmasters
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  • Summary

  • 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
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Politics & Government Social Sciences World
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Episodes
  • Partition – Part One – Before Midnight

    Partition – Part One – Before Midnight
    Apr 16 2025
    Welcome back to Origin Story. This week we begin the immense story of the partition of India and Pakistan at midnight on 14-15 August 1947. In a stroke, 340 million people gained independence from the British Empire but a day of celebration came in the midst of horrific ethnic violence which left between 1 and 2 million people dead and more than 15 million displaced in the largest ever movement of people. Historians have argued ever since about whether this traumatic bloodshed, and partition itself, could have been avoided if different politicians had made different decisions. We start by introducing the key players in India, all of them British-educated lawyers: Mahatma Gandhi, the spiritual leader who became an international icon through his use of nonviolent protest to demand independence; Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the Muslim leader who rebounded from numerous defeats to become the father of Pakistan; and Jawaharlal Nehru, who wanted nothing more than to hold India together as a secular, multicultural state. On the British side, Clement Attlee was determined to bring the Raj to a peaceful conclusion, Winston Churchill was equally obsessed with preserving it, and viceroys Lord Linlithgow and Archibald Wavell took very different approaches to Indian nationalism. The story takes us from late Victorian London to the Amritsar massacre, and from Gandhi’s triumphant Salt March to the disaster of the Quit India campaign during the Second World War. We see Pakistan go from a utopian fantasy to a plausible reality while believers in a united India do everything they can to prevent it. And as negotiations falter, riots and pogroms begin to inflame the country. We end on the cusp of 1947 as Lord Mountbatten becomes the last viceroy and partition looks almost inevitable. To what extent did the personalities of a handful of politicians in India and Britain dictate the course of world history? How did Jinnah bring Pakistan to life? Does Gandhi deserve his saintly reputation? And why don't we like to talk about it? • Support Origin Story on Patreon • Get the Origin Story books on Fascism, Centrism and Conspiracy Theory Reading list • John Bew, Citizen Clem: A Biography of Attlee (2016) • William Dalrymple, ‘The Great Divide’, The New Yorker (2015) • Patrick French, ‘The Brutal “Great Migration” That Followed India’s Independence and Partition’, Life.com (2016) • Sarvepalli Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography: Volume One: 1889-1947 (1975) • Sarvepalli Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography: Volume Two: 1947-1965 (1979) • Ramachandra Guha, Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World 1915-1948 (2018) • Gandhi, written by John Briley and directed by Richard Attenborough (1982) • Nisid Hajari, Midnight’s Furies: The Deadly Legacy of India’s Partition (2015) • Ayesha Jalal, The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan (1985) • George Orwell, ‘Reflections on Gandhi’, Partisan Review (1949) • Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children (1981) • Alex von Tunzelmann, Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire (2007) Audio • Empire: Mahatma Gandhi (2022) • Empire: Muhammad Ali Jinnah (2022) • Empire: The Last Viceroy of India (2022) • Empire: Partition (2022) • Jawaharlal Nehru, Independence Day speech (1947) 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 20 mins
  • Thatcherism – Part Two – Imperial phase

    Thatcherism – Part Two – Imperial phase
    Apr 9 2025
    In part two of Thatcherism, Margaret Thatcher has survived a grim first term and her political and economic bets have paid off. She’s ready to wage war on everything she considers socialism: trade unions, local councils, nationalised industries, the BBC, you name it. The Britain she leads is wealthier and more dynamic yet more divided and unequal — a land bisected into winners and losers, where her beloved free-market economics rips through the families and communities she claims to value. Success has turned Thatcher into a harsh, unbending autocrat, hated by half the country and increasingly alienated from her own ministers. Her stubborn belief in her own instincts leads to catastrophic hubris over Europe and the poll tax, turning allies into assassins. On 22 November 1990, she is forced to resign as prime minister. We wrap up by discussing Thatcher’s record and legacy, both of which are far messier than her acolytes claim. Where did Thatcher succeed and fail in fundamentally changing Britain? Why did her strengths become fatal flaws? How did she sow the seeds of Brexit and Tory civil war? And what were Thatcherism’s unacknowledged contradictions? Is it just another world for neoliberalism or a far more eccentric bundle of beliefs, prejudices and mannerisms? Are her disciples in today’s Tory Party learning all the wrong lessons? Join us as we explode some myths and tell the real story of Thatcherism. • Support Origin Story on Patreon • Get the Origin Story books on Fascism, Centrism and Conspiracy Theory Reading list • Andy Beckett, Pinochet in Piccadilly: Britain and Chile’s Hidden History (2002) • Andy Beckett, When the Lights Went Out: Britain in the Seventies (2009) • Andy Beckett, Promised You a Miracle: Why 1980-82 Made Modern Britain (2015) • Brian and Maggie, written by James Graham and directed by Stephen Frears (2025) • Ronald Butt, Interview with Margaret Thatcher, Sunday Times (1981) • Conservative Central Office, ‘The Right Approach’ (1976) • Iain Dale (ed.), Memories of Margaret Thatcher (2013) • Patrick Dunleavy, ‘The lasting achievement of Thatcherism as a political project is that Britain now has three political parties of the right, instead of one’, LSE (2013) • Ian Gilmour, Dancing with Dogma: Britain Under Thatcherism (1992) • Ipsos polling on the Falklands War, Ipsos (1982) • John Harris, ‘Spare a thought for the late unlamented one nation Tory’, The Guardian (2013) • John Hoskyns and Norman Strauss, ‘Stepping Stones’ (1977) • Geoffrey Howe’s resignation speech (1990) • Geoffrey Howe, Conflict of Loyalty (1994) • The Iron Lady, written by Abi Morgan and directed by Phyllida Lloyd (2011) • Sir Keith Joseph, ‘Notes Towards the Definition of Policy’, Conservative Research Department (1975) • Kwasi Kwarteng et al, Britannia Unchained: Global Lessons for Growth and Posterity (2012) • Kenneth Minogue and Michael Biddiss (eds.), Thatcherism: Personality and Politics (1987) • Charles Moore, Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography: Volume One (2013) • Mollie Panter-Downes, ‘Letter from London’, New Yorker (1982) • Robert Saunders, Yes! To Europe: The 1975 Referendum and Seventies Britain (2018) • Margaret Thatcher, ‘Speech to Conservative Party Conference’ (1975) • Margaret Thatcher, ‘Speech to Conservative Rally in Bolton’ (1979) • Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (1993) • Margaret Thatcher, The Path to Power (1995) • Phil Tinline, The Death of Consensus: 100 Years of Political Nightmares (2022) • D.R. Valentine, ‘Margaret Thatcher on History, Economics & Political Consensus’, University of Oxford (2013) • Brian Walden, Interview with Margaret Thatcher after Nigel Lawson’s resignation (1989) ... 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 37 mins
  • Thatcherism – Part One – Birth of a Notion

    Thatcherism – Part One – Birth of a Notion
    Apr 2 2025
    Hello and welcome to season seven of Origin Story, where Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey continue to explore the misunderstood ideas and people that shape our politics today. We hope you’ve enjoyed all the bonus episodes. We’re starting with a topic that’s been on our shortlist since the very beginning, and it’s a big one: Thatcherism. By that we mean Margaret Thatcher herself, born 100 years ago, and the evolution of the rather nebulous idea that bears her name. Is it a coherent ideology or the expression of a very unusual personality? In part one we follow Thatcher from her birth in Grantham in 1925 to her triumph in the Falklands War 57 years later. We investigate the influence of her father, the Methodist grocer and local celebrity Arthur Roberts; her entry into the reformist wing of the Conservative Party at Oxford University; and her journey to becoming MP for Finchley in 1959. It’s only in the 1970s that Thatcherism really takes shape. Scarred by her vilification as the “Milk Snatcher”, and repelled by Ted Heath and the post-war consensus, she follows the likes of Enoch Powell and Keith Joseph to the right, finding intellectual ideas to match her instinctive beliefs. The Thatcher who becomes Tory leader in 1975 and prime minister in 1979 is more “Cautious Margaret” than “Iron Lady”, not yet allergic to advice and compromise. She even has nice things to say about Europe. But before long, she’s the most unpopular prime minister since polling began. As her radical monetarist experiment leads to recession, mass unemployment and civil unrest, she appears doomed but once she’s defeated both the Tory “wets” and Argentina’s General Galtieri, Thatcherism is unchained. What were Thatcher’s formative influences? How did she grow to hate consensus politics and see herself as the antidote? Who were the other architects of Thatcherism? How close did she come to disaster and was it really the Falklands that saved her? And can Keir Starmer learn anything from her chaotic and unpopular first term? Next week the story continues with the 1983 election, the miners’ strike and the Thatcherite revolution, before it all goes horribly wrong for Maggie. If you’re a Patreon, you don’t have to wait: you can hear it right now. • Support Origin Story on Patreon • Get the Origin Story books on Fascism, Centrism and Conspiracy Theory Reading list • Andy Beckett, Pinochet in Piccadilly: Britain and Chile’s Hidden History (2002) • Andy Beckett, When the Lights Went Out: Britain in the Seventies (2009) • Andy Beckett, Promised You a Miracle: Why 1980-82 Made Modern Britain (2015) • Brian and Maggie, written by James Graham and directed by Stephen Frears (2025) • Ronald Butt, Interview with Margaret Thatcher, Sunday Times (1981) • Conservative Central Office, ‘The Right Approach’ (1976) • Iain Dale (ed.), Memories of Margaret Thatcher (2013) • Patrick Dunleavy, ‘The lasting achievement of Thatcherism as a political project is that Britain now has three political parties of the right, instead of one’, LSE (2013) • Ian Gilmour, Dancing with Dogma: Britain Under Thatcherism (1992) • Ipsos polling on the Falklands War, Ipsos (1982) • John Harris, ‘Spare a thought for the late unlamented one nation Tory’, The Guardian (2013) • John Hoskyns and Norman Strauss, ‘Stepping Stones’ (1977) • Geoffrey Howe’s resignation speech (1990) • Geoffrey Howe, Conflict of Loyalty (1994) • The Iron Lady, written by Abi Morgan and directed by Phyllida Lloyd (2011) • Sir Keith Joseph, ‘Notes Towards the Definition of Policy’, Conservative Research Department (1975) • Kwasi Kwarteng et al, Britannia Unchained: Global Lessons for Growth and Posterity (2012) ... 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 35 mins

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