Avsnitt

  • In the last episode of season four, Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey discuss effective altruism. Last month the US entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted on multiple counts of fraud and conspiracy related to the dramatic collapse of his cryptocurrency exchange FTX. Bankman-Fried was also a prominent advocate of effective altruism, a philanthropic movement based on utilitarian philosophy, and the scandal has thrown the EA community into crisis.
    Dorian and Ian explain how two maverick young Oxford philosophers ended up creating a multi-billion-dollar movement, explore the ideas behind it, and track its journey towards long termism: the philosophy of safeguarding the future of the human race from threats such as hostile AI. Are the principles of EA sound? Did the influx of billionaires and the obsession with existential risk knock it off course? Was Bankman-Fried a true believer who blew it or just a grifter who took the idealists for a ride? And can EA survive one of the biggest financial scandals of this century? When big ideas collide with big money and big tech, things get messy.
    Support Origin Story on Patreon for exclusive benefits www.Patreon.com/originstorypod 
    Reading list
    Books:
    Carol J.Adams, Alice Crary, Lori Gruen, (eds.) — The Good it Promises, the Harm it Does: Critical Essays on Effective Alturism, (2023)
    Nick Bostrom and Milan M. Ćirković (eds.) — Global Catastrophic Risks
    (2008)
    Nick Bostrom — Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (2014)
    Zeke Faux — Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering
    Fall (2023)
    John Leslie — The End of the World: The Science and Ethics of Human
    Extinction (1996)
    Michael Lewis — Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon (2023)
    William MacAskill — Doing Good Better: Effective Altruism and How You
    Can Make a Difference (2015)
    William MacAskill — What We Owe the Future (2022)
    Toby Ord — The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity
    (2020)
    Online:
    Core EA Principles, Centre for Effective Altruism
    Peter Singer — Famine, Affluence and Morality, 1971
    Peter Singer — TED talk, 2013
    William MacAskill — The history of the term ‘effective altruism’, Effective
    Altruism Forum, 2014
    Raffi Khatchadourian — The Doomsday Invention, New Yorker, 2015
    Gideon-Lewis Krauss — The Reluctant Prophet of Effective Altruism, New
    Yorker, 2022
    Charlotte Alter — Effective Altruist Leaders Were Repeatedly Warned
    About Sam Bankman-Fried Years Before FTX Collapsed, Time, 2023
    Sophie McBain — Sam Bankman-Fried and the effective altruism delusion,
    New Statesman, 2023
    Podcasts:
    80,000 Hours: Sam Bankman-Fried, 2022
    80,000 Hours: Toby Ord, 2023
    Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Lead Producer is Anne-Marie Luff. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production.
    Twitter
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  • In part two of the history of eugenics, Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey explain how the pseudo-science of “racial hygiene” seduced everyone from feminist birth-control pioneers and social democrats to the ardent white supremacists whose screeds shaped US immigration laws and influenced Hitler. Then they turn to the rise of eugenics in Germany and how it enabled the Nazis to introduce massive programs of sterilisation and extermination.
    After the Second World War, the name of eugenics was discredited but many of its leading thinkers and institutions kept going under the more acceptable guise of genetics. How was eugenics quietly rehabilitated by IQ fetishists and population-control advocates? Why has it become so popular in Silicon Valley? And does it even make scientific sense or is it really a pseudo-science designed to formalise bigotry? Despite its association with historic atrocities, the belief that biology is destiny and procreation is political has not gone away.
    Support Origin Story on Patreon for exclusive benefits including an extended version of the podcast. www.Patreon.com/originstorypod 
    Reading list:
    Alison Bashford and Philippa Levine (eds) - The Oxford Handbook of the History of Eugenics (2010)
    Edwin Black — War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race (2003)
    Elof Axel Carlson — The Unfit: A History of a Bad Idea (2001)
    GK Chesterton — Eugenics and Other Evils (1922)
    Charles Darwin — The Descent of Man (1871)
    Lyndsay Andrew Farrall — The Origins and Growth of the English Eugenics Movement 1865-1925 (1969)
    Francis Galton – Hereditary Genius (1869)
    Henry H Goddard – The Kallikak Family (1912)
    Stephen Jay Gould — The Mismeasure of Man (1981/1996)
    Madison Grant – The Passing of the Great Race (1916)
    Philippa Levine — Eugenics: A Very Short Introduction (2017)
    Gina Maranto — Quest for Perfection: The Drive to Breed Better Human Beings (1996)
    Adam Rutherford — Control: The Dark History and Troubling Present of Eugenics (2022)
    Lothrop Stoddard – The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy (1920)
    HG Wells – Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought (1901) 
    Online:
    Quinn Slobodian — ‘The rise of the new tech right’, The New Statesman (2023)
    Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Lead Producer is Anne-Marie Luff. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production.
    Twitter
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  • This week, Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey get started on the history of eugenics, the idea of finding biological solutions to social problems. Say the word now and it calls to mind skull-measuring cranks or Nazi death camps but for decades it was a mainstream project in many parts of the world, attracting not just white supremacists and elitist snobs but liberals, socialists and feminists. Winston Churchill, HG Wells, Nikola Tesla and John Maynard Keynes all expressed an interest. How did bad science and dangerous politics become so popular?
    Dorian and Ian explore how Francis Galton and Herbert Spencer’s fascination with inherited characteristics was supercharged by Victorian science, from Darwin’s theory of evolution to early breakthroughs in genetics. They talk about how Galton’s voluntary “positive eugenics” led to the authoritarian “negative eugenics” of compulsory sterilisation, and how hardcore American eugenicists drew up a blueprint for Hitler. Also: the birth of scientific racism, the sinister history of IQ tests, how GK Chesterton helped save Britain from eugenics laws, and, yes, the people who thought you could identify criminals by the shape of their skulls. It’s a disturbing and complicated story which mangles your political preconceptions.
    Support Origin Story on Patreon for exclusive benefits.
    Reading list
    Alison Bashford and Philippa Levine (eds) - The Oxford Handbook of the History of Eugenics (2010)
    Edwin Black — War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race (2003)
    Elof Axel Carlson — The Unfit: A History of a Bad Idea (2001)
    GK Chesterton — Eugenics and Other Evils (1922)
    Charles Darwin — The Descent of Man (1871)
    Lyndsay Andrew Farrall — The Origins and Growth of the English Eugenics Movement 1865-1925 (1969)
    Francis Galton – Hereditary Genius (1869)
    Henry H Goddard – The Kallikak Family (1912)
    Stephen Jay Gould — The Mismeasure of Man (1981/1996)
    Madison Grant – The Passing of the Great Race (1916)
    Philippa Levine — Eugenics: A Very Short Introduction (2017)
    Gina Maranto — Quest for Perfection: The Drive to Breed Better Human Beings (1996)
    Adam Rutherford — Control: The Dark History and Troubling Present of Eugenics (2022)
    Lothrop Stoddard – The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy (1920)
    HG Wells – Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought (1901) 
    Online:
    Quinn Slobodian — ‘The rise of the new tech right’, The New Statesman (2023)
    Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Lead Producer is Anne-Marie Luff. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production.
    Follow Origin Story on X
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  • Born in Haitian folklore and inadvertently reinvented by director George A. Romero, the zombie is the most flexible metaphor in horror fiction, if not all of popular culture. It can represent a war, a virus, a natural disaster, terrorism, capitalism, climate change and much more. In fact, it’s hard to tell a zombie story that isn’t political in one way or another.
    Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey follow the trail of the walking dead from the Caribbean to Night of the Living Dead and the global outbreak of zombiemania in the 21st century. What does the zombie tell us about life, death and civilisation? How can it contain so many different meanings? And why do the living dead remain uniquely disturbing after all these years?

    Support Origin Story on Patreon for exclusive benefits including bonus chat about how Ian and Dorian make each episode: www.Patreon.com/originstorypod 

    Resources:
    Books
    Kyle William Bishop — American Zombie Gothic: The Rise and Fall (and Rise) of the Walking Dead in Popular Culture, 2012
    Kyle William Bishop — How Zombies Conquered Popular Culture: The Multifarious Walking Dead in the 21st Century, 2015
    Max Brooks — World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, 2006
    Greg Garrett — Living with the Living Dead: The Wisdom of the Zombie Apocalypse, 2017
    Zachary Graves — Zombies: The Complete Guide to the World of the Living Dead, 2011
    Peter Haining, ed. — Zombie!: Stories of the Walking Dead, 1985
    Richard Matheson – I Am Legend, 1954
    Kim Paffenroth — Gospel of the Living Dead: George Romero’s Visions of Hell on Earth, 2006
    George Romero & Susanna Sparrow — Dawn of the Dead, 1979
    Jamie Russell — Book of the Dead: The Complete History of Zombie Cinema, 2014
    Colson Whitehead — Zone One, 2012
    Tony Williams — The Cinema of George A. Romero: Knight of the Living Dead, 2015

    Films, TV and games
    White Zombie, 1932
    I Walked with a Zombie, 1943
    The Last Man on Earth, 1964
    Night of the Living Dead, 1968
    Dawn of the Dead, 1978
    Day of the Dead, 1985
    Resident Evil, 1996
    28 Days Later, 2002
    Shaun of the Dead, 2004
    28 Weeks Later, 2007
    I Am Legend, 2007
    Dead Set, 2008
    The Walking Dead, 2010-22
    The Last of Us, 2022

    Online
    Doug Gross, Why we love those rotting, hungry, putrid zombies, CNN, 2009
    https://edition.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/10/02/zombie.love/index.html

    Torie Bosch, First Eat All the Lawyers, Slate, 2011
    https://slate.com/culture/2011/10/zombies-the-zombie-boom-is-inspired-by-the-economy.html

    Thomas Jones, Les zombies, c’est vous, London Review of Books, 2012
    https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v34/n02/thomas-jones/les-zombies-c-est-vous

    Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Max Brooks Is Not Kidding About the Zombie Apocalypse, New York Times, 2013
    https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/magazine/max-brooks-is-not-kidding-about-the-zombie-apocalypse.html

    Interview with Alex Garland, 2015
    https://www.huffpost.com/entry/interview-director-alex-g_b_7038618

    Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Lead Producer is Anne-Marie Luff. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production.

    https://twitter.com/OriginStorycast 
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  • In Part Two of John Maynard Keynes, Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt reconnect with Keynes in the 1930s, as he slowly pulls together his magnum opus, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. This book changed everything for Keynes, and the rest of us, by establishing Keynesianism as a new way to understand both the economy and society. Ian and Dorian discuss the last decade of Keynes’ life, from the New Deal to the Second World War to the Bretton Woods conference which established the post-war order. When Keynes died suddenly in 1946, his ardent disciples had just begun remaking the world. Did Keynes save capitalism from itself?

    “We are all Keynesians now,” declared Time magazine in 1965, but 10 years later a global economic crisis was opening the door to the neoliberal counter-revolution, led by Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. Were the Keynesians more Keynesian than Keynes himself? Should he be credited with the post-war boom and blamed for its dramatic implosion? Is the relationship between Keynesian and neoliberal visions more complex than it appears? And are Joe Biden and Keir Starmer taking us into a new age of Keynes?

    Reading list for both episodes
    Books
    Roger E. Backhouse and Bradley W. Bateman — Capitalist Revolutionary: John Maynard Keynes, 2011
    Bradley W. Bateman, Toshiaki Hirai and Maria Cristina Marcuzzo, eds. — The Return to Keynes, 2010
    Zach Carter — The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes, 2020
    Peter Clarke — Keynes: The Twentieth Century’s Most Influential Economist, 2010
    Roy Harrod — The Life of John Maynard Keynes, 1951
    John Maynard Keynes — The Essential Keynes, 2015
    Robert Skidelsky — John Maynard Keynes 1883-1946: Economist, Philosopher, Statesman, 2004
    Nicholas Wapshott — Keynes Hayek: The Clash That Defined Modern Economics, 2011

    Online:
    John Maynard Keynes, ‘Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren’, 1930
    https://www.economicsnetwork.ac.uk/archive/keynes_persuasion/Economic_Possibilities_for_our_Grandchildren.htm
    We Are All Keynesians Now, Time, 1965
    https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,842353,00.html
    Tides of History podcast with Zach Carter
    https://podcasts.apple.com/bg/podcast/john-maynard-keynes-and-his-legacies-interview-with/id1257202425?i=1000476041925

    Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Lead Producer is Anne-Marie Luff. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production.

    https://twitter.com/OriginStorycast  
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  • Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey discuss perhaps the most extraordinary individual they have encountered so far: John Maynard Keynes. The most significant economist since Adam Smith rewrote our understanding of the relationship between the state and the market. But Keynes was also a philosopher, a statesman, an aesthete and a hell of a writer: a one-man advertisement for the virtues of refusing to stay in your lane.
    In part one Dorian and Ian track Keynes’ remarkable life in the fifty years leading up to his game changing “general theory” in the 1930s. They talk about his gilded youth at Eton and Cambridge, his complicated friendship with the Bloomsbury Group, his sensational journalism, his rivalries with classical economists, and his rise to wealth and influence. But for all his achievements, his policy prescriptions were usually ignored, from the Treaty of Versailles to the Great Depression. His failures made him Mister Told-you-so. Why was Keynes such a remarkable figure and why wouldn’t politicians listen to him? Was he an arch-centrist in an age of extremes? Along the way we meet Virginia Woolf, Winston Churchill, Bertrand Russell, Oswald Mosley and zingers galore. Next week: the rise and fall (and rise again) of Keynesianism.

    Reading list for both episodes
    Books:
    Roger E. Backhouse and Bradley W. Bateman — Capitalist Revolutionary: John Maynard Keynes, 2011
    Bradley W. Bateman, Toshiaki Hirai and Maria Cristina Marcuzzo, eds. — The Return to Keynes, 2010
    Zach Carter — The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes, 2020
    Peter Clarke — Keynes: The Twentieth Century’s Most Influential Economist, 2010
    Roy Harrod — The Life of John Maynard Keynes, 1951
    John Maynard Keynes — The Essential Keynes, 2015
    Robert Skidelsky — John Maynard Keynes 1883-1946: Economist, Philosopher, Statesman, 2004
    Nicholas Wapshott — Keynes Hayek: The Clash That Defined Modern Economics, 2011
    Online:
    John Maynard Keynes, ‘Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren’, 1930
    https://www.economicsnetwork.ac.uk/archive/keynes_persuasion/Economic_Possibilities_for_our_Grandchildren.htm
    We Are All Keynesians Now, Time, 1965
    https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,842353,00.html
    Tides of History podcast with Zach Carter
    https://podcasts.apple.com/bg/podcast/john-maynard-keynes-and-his-legacies-interview-with/id1257202425?i=1000476041925

    Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Lead Producer is Anne-Marie Luff. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production.

    https://twitter.com/OriginStorycast 
    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

  • This week, Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt look at the most powerful and divisive generational cohort of them all: boomers. The people born between 1946 and 1964 have been credited, and blamed, for creating the world we live in. They’re the 60s generation, the Me generation, the Reagan generation and the Third Way generation. Where they lead, the world follows. Now that most of them have passed the age of 60, they are allegedly at war with millennials over their legacy: OK, boomer.
    But does it really make sense to generalise about a cohort which extends from Dolly Parton to Donald Trump, and Theresa May to Prince? And what is a generation anyway? Ian (early millennial) and Dorian (late Gen X) discuss the roots of generation theory, track the boomers’ rise to power and assess the charges that boomers and millennials throw at each other across the divide. Is the generation gap bigger than ever or a phoney war cooked up by politicians and the media?

    Reading list
    Books:
    Helen Andrews — Boomers: The Men and Women Who Promised Freedom and Delivered Disaster, 2020
    Jennie Bristow — Baby Boomers and Generational Conflict, 2015
    Bobby Duffy — The Generation Divide: Why We Can’t Agree and Why We Should, 2021
    Jill Filipovic — OK Boomer, Let’s Talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind, 2020
    Bruce Cannon Gibney — A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America, 2017
    Landon Y Jones — Great Expectations: America and the Baby Boom Generation, 1980
    Joseph Sternberg — Theft of a Decade: Baby Boomers, Millennials, and the Distortion of Our Economy, 2019
    William Strauss and Neil Howe — Generations: The History of America’s Future 1584 to 2069, 1991
    Jean M Twenge — Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silent — and What They Mean for the Future, 2023
    David Willetts — The Pinch: How the Baby Boomers Took Their Children's Future — And Why They Should Give It Back, 2010

    Online:
    Karl Mannheim — ‘The Problem of Generations’, 1928
    https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjln8-IiteBAxU2XUEAHcSICu4QFnoECA4QAw&url=https%3A%2F%2Fmarcuse.faculty.history.ucsb.edu%2Fclasses%2F201%2Farticles%2F27MannheimGenerations.pdf&usg=AOvVaw37Wl_dRsSZ_rDdODQ0fMbd&opi=89978449
    Richard Lorber and Ernest Fladell — ‘The Generation Gap’, Life, 1968
    https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=BVUEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA81&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false
    Neil Howe and William Strauss, ‘The New Generation Gap’, The Atlantic, 1992
    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1992/12/the-new-generation-gap/536934/
    Louis Menand — ‘It’s Time to Stop Talking about “Generations”’, The New Yorker, 2021
    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/10/18/its-time-to-stop-talking-about-generations
    Justin E Smith — ‘My Generation’, Harper’s, 2023
    https://harpers.org/archive/2023/09/my-generation/

    Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Lead Producer is Anne-Marie Luff. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production.

    https://twitter.com/OriginStorycast  
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  • This week, it’s part two of the riddle of Jordan B Peterson, the bestselling author and culture warrior. Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey dig into his two megasellers, 12 Rules for Life and Beyond Order, and try to understand why these very strange cocktails of self-help advice, comparative mythology and biological essentialism resonated with millions of readers, especially men and boys. 
    Do his ideas add up to a coherent view of how to live? How does he reconcile mythology with zoology? What on earth is “postmodern neo-Marxism”? And what is it with Peterson and Pinocchio? 
    Dorian and Ian discuss how the man with so many rules for life wound up at the end of his tether in a Russian hospital, and how to reconcile his books with his increasingly eccentric and extreme social media presence. Is he really an intellectual at all?

    Support Origin Story on Patreon for exclusive benefits: www.Patreon.com/originstorypod

    Reading list for both episodes:
    Books:
    Ben Burgis, Conrad Hamilton, Matthew McManus and Marion Trejo — Myth and Mayhem: A Leftist Critique of Jordan Peterson, 2020
    Jordan B Peterson — Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief, 1999
    Jordan B Peterson — 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, 2018
    Jordan B Peterson — Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life, 2021
    Sandra Woien, ed. — Critical Responses to Jordan Peterson, 2022
    Online:
    Jason McBride — ‘The Pronoun Warrior’, Toronto Life, 2017
    https://torontolife.com/city/u-t-professor-sparked-vicious-battle-gender-neutral-pronouns/
    David Brooks — ‘The Jordan Peterson Moment’, The New York Times, 2018
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/25/opinion/jordan-peterson-moment.html
    Dorian Lynskey — ‘How dangerous is Jordan Peterson, the rightwing professor who “hit a hornets’ nest”?’, The Guardian, 2018
    https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/07/how-dangerous-is-jordan-b-peterson-the-rightwing-professor-who-hit-a-hornets-nest
    Kelefa Sanneh — ‘Jordan Peterson’s Gospel of Masculinity’, The New Yorker, 2018
    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/05/jordan-petersons-gospel-of-masculinity
    Pankaj Mishra — ‘Jordan Peterson & Fascist Mysticism’, The New York Review of Books, 2018
    https://www.nybooks.com/online/2018/03/19/jordan-peterson-and-fascist-mysticism/
    Nellie Bowles — ‘Jordan Peterson, Custodian of the Patriarchy’, The New York Times, 2018
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/18/style/jordan-peterson-12-rules-for-life.html
    Vinay Menon — ‘Jordan Peterson is trying to make sense of the world — including his own strange journey’, Toronto Star, 2018
    https://web.archive.org/web/20191219104703/https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2018/03/16/jordan-peterson-is-trying-to-make-sense-of-the-world-including-his-own-strange-journey.html
    Bernard Schiff — ‘I was Jordan Peterson’s strongest supporter. Now I think he’s dangerous’, Toronto Star, 2018
    https://web.archive.org/web/20200115120600/https:/www.thestar.com/opinion/2018/05/25/i-was-jordan-petersons-strongest-supporter-now-i-think-hes-dangerous.html
    Johanna Thomas-Corr — ‘Jordan Peterson, Agent of Chaos’, The New Statesman, 2021
    https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2023/02/jordan-peterson-agent-chaos-psychology
    James Marriott — ‘Beyond Order by Jordan Peterson review’, The Times, 2021
    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/beyond-order-by-jordan-b-peterson-review-qnhtgs2zj
    Helen Lewis — ‘What Happened to Jordan Peterson?’, The Atlantic, 2021
    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/04/what-happened-to-jordan-peterson/618082/

    Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Lead Producer is Anne-Marie Luff. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production.

    https://twitter.com/OriginStorycast
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  • Origin Story is back. The critically-acclaimed podcast uncovering the hidden histories of concepts, people and events you thought you knew. 

    To kick off Series 4 Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey turn their sights on Jordan B Peterson, the bestselling author, diehard culture warrior and, allegedly, the most influential intellectual in the western world. In part one they discuss Peterson’s life up to the publication of 12 Rules for Life in 2018, from his childhood in rural Canada to his first book, Maps of Meaning, his role as a star professor at the University of Toronto and his first taste of public controversy. 
    How did an obscure academic come to the brink of global celebrity? Why did a young left-leaning activist grow into a ferocious conservative? And what ideas led him to his multi-million-dollar 12 rules? Featuring Nietzsche, Karl Jung, the absence of God and nightmares about the end of the world. Buckle up, bucko.

    Support Origin Story on Patreon for exclusive benefits: www.Patreon.com/originstorypod 

    Reading list:
    Books:
    Ben Burgis, Conrad Hamilton, Matthew McManus and Marion Trejo — Myth and Mayhem: A Leftist Critique of Jordan Peterson, 2020
    Jordan B Peterson — Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief, 1999
    Jordan B Peterson — 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, 2018
    Jordan B Peterson — Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life, 2021
    Sandra Woien, ed. — Critical Responses to Jordan Peterson, 2022
    Online:
    Jason McBride — ‘The Pronoun Warrior’, Toronto Life, 2017
    https://torontolife.com/city/u-t-professor-sparked-vicious-battle-gender-neutral-pronouns/
    David Brooks — ‘The Jordan Peterson Moment’, The New York Times, 2018
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/25/opinion/jordan-peterson-moment.html
    Dorian Lynskey — ‘How dangerous is Jordan Peterson, the rightwing professor who “hit a hornets’ nest”?’, The Guardian, 2018
    https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/07/how-dangerous-is-jordan-b-peterson-the-rightwing-professor-who-hit-a-hornets-nest
    Kelefa Sanneh — ‘Jordan Peterson’s Gospel of Masculinity’, The New Yorker, 2018
    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/05/jordan-petersons-gospel-of-masculinity
    Pankaj Mishra — ‘Jordan Peterson & Fascist Mysticism’, The New York Review of Books, 2018
    https://www.nybooks.com/online/2018/03/19/jordan-peterson-and-fascist-mysticism/
    Nellie Bowles — ‘Jordan Peterson, Custodian of the Patriarchy’, The New York Times, 2018
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/18/style/jordan-peterson-12-rules-for-life.html
    Vinay Menon — ‘Jordan Peterson is trying to make sense of the world — including his own strange journey’, Toronto Star, 2018
    https://web.archive.org/web/20191219104703/https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2018/03/16/jordan-peterson-is-trying-to-make-sense-of-the-world-including-his-own-strange-journey.html
    Bernard Schiff — ‘I was Jordan Peterson’s strongest supporter. Now I think he’s dangerous’, Toronto Star, 2018
    https://web.archive.org/web/20200115120600/https:/www.thestar.com/opinion/2018/05/25/i-was-jordan-petersons-strongest-supporter-now-i-think-hes-dangerous.html
    Johanna Thomas-Corr — ‘Jordan Peterson, Agent of Chaos’, The New Statesman, 2021
    https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2023/02/jordan-peterson-agent-chaos-psychology
    James Marriott — ‘Beyond Order by Jordan Peterson review’, The Times, 2021
    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/beyond-order-by-jordan-b-peterson-review-qnhtgs2zj
    Helen Lewis — ‘What Happened to Jordan Peterson?’, The Atlantic, 2021
    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/04/what-happened-to-jordan-peterson/618082/

    Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Lead Producer is Anne-Marie Luff. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production.

    https://twitter.com/OriginStorycast  
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  • Christopher Nolan has been generous enough to put together a full-on Origin Story film, combining key elements from the Nuclear War and McCarthyism episodes. So Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt put on their Oppenheimer cosplay outfits including suit trousers waisted up to the chest, and set off to the cinema to watch it. 
    Here's what they had to say…

    Support Origin Story on Patreon for more bonus episodes: www.Patreon.com/originstorypod 

    Reading List: 
    Luis Alvarez – Alvarez: Adventures of a Physicist 
    Martin Amis – Einstein’s Monsters 
    Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin – American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer 
    David C. Cassidy – J. Robert Oppenheimer and the American Century 
    Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi – The Worlds of Herman Kahn 
    Herman Kahn – On Thermonuclear War 
    William Lanouette – Genius in the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilard 
    William L. Laurence – Dawn Over Zero: The Story of the Atomic Bomb 
    Robert Jay Lifton and Richard Falk - Indefensible Weapons 
    Ronald Reagan – An American Life 
    Jonathan Schell – The Fate of the Earth 
    P.D. Smith – Doomsday Men: The Real Dr Strangelove and the Dream of the Superweapon 
    H.G. Wells – The World Set Free 
    The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, by Lawrence Freedman and Jeffrey Michaels
    The Ascent of Man by Jacob Bronowski

    Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production by Alex Rees, music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Lead Producer is Anne-Marie Luff. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production.

    https://twitter.com/OriginStorycast 
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  • Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey host an evening of storytelling, debate, gallows humour and intense irritation recorded with an audience on a balmy evening in Soho, London.
    They look at the idea of The Elite. What the hell does it mean? Where did it come from? How has it changed over the years? And why does it always seem to refer to whoever you happen to disagree with? 
    For their sins Dorian and Ian read Values, Voice and Virtue: The New British Politics by Matthew Goodwin and pick apart the case against the so-called “new elite".

    Reading list:
    Matthew Goodwin - Values, Voice and Virtue: The New British Politics
    Charles Wright Mills - The Power Elite

    Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production and music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Lead Producer is Anne-Marie Luff. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production.
    https://twitter.com/OriginStorycast
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  • Uncovering the hidden histories of concepts, people and events you thought you knew. 
    In a first for Origin Story, Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt focus on a living figure: the ubiquitous and divisive richest man in the world, Elon Musk.
    In the past two years the public perception of Musk has changed dramatically, from Time's Man of the Year and “real-life Iron Man" to radicalised right-wing troll and destroyer of Twitter. Ian and Dorian trace his journey from sci-fi obsessed child prodigy in Apartheid-era South Africa to dotcom entrepreneur to the self-appointed techno-messiah at the helm of SpaceX and Tesla, and ask what happened to the man who said he wanted to save the world. They discuss what his career says about the arc of Silicon Valley and 21st-century capitalism, the cult of technocracy and the dangers of believing your own hype.

    Support Origin Story on Patreon for exclusive benefits: www.Patreon.com/originstorypod 



    “He doesn’t seem that interested in money. The choices he’s made have not been your regular ‘rich guy’ choices.” – Dorian Lynskey



    “On Twitter some of the disinformation has been morally abysmal. You think, how could you be a person who would even write these words?” – Ian Dunt



    "He said it was the duty of the educated to reproduce so ‘we don’t devolve into a not very literate, theocratic and unenlightened future.’ It’s low-level eugenics.” — Dorian Lynskey



    Reading list:
    Eric Berger – Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX
    Agustin Ferrari Braun – The Elon Musk Experience: Celebrity Management in Financialised Capitalism
    David S. Kidder – The Startup Playbook
    Hamish McKenzie – Insane Mode: How Elon Musk’s Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil
    Ashlee Vance – Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Is Shaping Our Future
    Douglas Coupland, ‘The smartest person in any room anywhere:’ in defence of Elon Musk, The Observer, 2021
    Tad Friend, Plugged In, The New Yorker, 2009
    Jordan Liles – What We Know About Elon Musk and the Emerald Mine Rumor, Snopes, 2022
    Linette Lopez, Elon Musk Doesn’t Care About You, Business Insider, 2018
    David J Roth, Burning Down the House, Defector, 2023
    Neil Strauss – Elon Musk: The Architect of Tomorrow, Rolling Stone, 2017
    Matthew Sweet, Why Jeff Bezos and Elon’s Musk real business inspiration is science-fiction, The Times, 2021
    The Elon Musk Show, BBC documentary, 2022
    I Do Not like Elon Musk Very Much, Behind the Bastards podcast
    Elon Musk: The Techno Shaman, Decoding the Gurus podcast

    Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production and music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Lead Producer is Anne-Marie Luff. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production.

    https://twitter.com/OriginStorycast 
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  • Explaining the most misunderstood ideas and people in politics
    In another two-parter, Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt break down the long, THORNY history of Zionism. In part two, the horror of the Holocaust persuades the international community to mandate a Jewish state in Palestine, with the surprising endorsement of Stalin, but Zionism remains divided. 
    In the year of Israel’s 75th anniversary, Ian and Dorian discuss how successive governments lost the left and courted the right, what happened to Theodor Herzl’s utopian vision, and what people really mean when they say they are anti-Zionist.

    Hear the next episode right now when you support Origin Story on Patreon: www.Patreon.com/originstorypod 



    "In 1948 Israel is one of the most popular countries in the world, perhaps the only country supported by both sides of the Cold War." – Dorian Lynskey



    "Ultimately if you restrict Zionism to the oldest idea of a homeland for Jews for safety and identity, that is a really provocative, radical and interesting idea.” – Ian Dunt



    Reading list:
    Steven Beller – Herzl
    Lenni Brenner – Zionism in the Age of Dictators
    Walter Laqueur – A History of Zionism
    Alex Ryvchin – Zionism: The Concise History
    Avi Shlaim – The Iron Wall
    Michael Stanislawski – Zionism: A Very Short Introduction
    Melvin J. Urofsky – American Zionism from Herzl to the Holocaust
    Jeff Walker – The Revisionists and the Rise of Right-Wing Zionism
    Geoffrey Wheatcroft – Churchill’s Shadow
    Paul Bogdanor’s critique of Lenni Brenner
    https://fathomjournal.org/an-antisemitic-hoax-lenni-brenner-on-zionist-collaboration-with-the-nazis/
    The Making of Modern Zionism: The Intellectual Origins of the Jewish State, by Shlomo Avineri


    Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production and music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Lead Producer is Anne-Marie Luff. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production.

    https://twitter.com/OriginStorycast  
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  • Explaining the most misunderstood ideas and people in politics.
    In another two-parter, Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt break down the long thorny history of Zionism. 
    In part one, covering the 1890s to the 1930s, they explain how Theodor Herzl single handedly created a movement for a Jewish nation, Chaim Weizmann won over Churchill and Balfour, and Ze’ev Jabotinsky sowed the seeds of Likud. Utopian dreams wrestle with hard-nosed pragmatism as the Zionists clash with the world’s great powers, and each other, about what a Jewish nation should be. 

    Hear Part Two right now when you support Origin Story on Patreon: www.Patreon.com/originstorypod 



    “Herzl didn’t see the Holocaust coming but he was a realist about the durability of antisemitism.” — Dorian Lynskey



    It’s a very communistic, very socialistic, very politically radical community that ends up in Palestine.” — Ian Dunt



    “At the time of Herzl’s death, only about one per cent of the world’s Jews were Zionists.” — Dorian Lynskey



    Reading list:
    Steven Beller – Herzl
    Lenni Brenner – Zionism in the Age of Dictators
    Walter Laqueur – A History of Zionism
    Alex Ryvchin – Zionism: The Concise History
    Avi Shlaim – The Iron Wall
    Michael Stanislawski – Zionism: A Very Short Introduction
    Melvin J. Urofsky – American Zionism from Herzl to the Holocaust
    Jeff Walker – The Revisionists and the Rise of Right-Wing Zionism
    Geoffrey Wheatcroft – Churchill’s Shadow
    Paul Bogdanor’s critique of Lenni Brenner:
    https://fathomjournal.org/an-antisemitic-hoax-lenni-brenner-on-zionist-collaboration-with-the-nazis/
    The Making of Modern Zionism: The Intellectual Origins of the Jewish State, by Shlomo Avineri

    Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production and music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Lead Producer is Anne-Marie Luff. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production.

    https://twitter.com/OriginStorycast 
    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

  • Uncovering the hidden histories of concepts, people and events you thought you knew.
    In part two of the story of climate change denial Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey take a closer look at the techniques of the “merchants of doubt" who took the denial of man made global warming into the mainstream. Ian tells the real story behind 2009’s phoney scandal “Climategate”, while Dorian reads Michael Crichton’s crank thriller State of Fear and watches the controversial Channel 4 documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle to explain how denial became a kind of conspiracy theory.
    A tale of wild claims, false balance, scientists under siege and the giant mess that the deniers have left behind.

    Hear the next episode right now when you support Origin Story on Patreon: www.Patreon.com/originstorypod 



    “It’s the most malicious, cynical, unrepresentative assault on good science that you can imagine” – Ian Dunt



    "It’s apparently a conspiracy between corrupt scientists, hippies, neo-Marxists and Margaret Thatcher. I would love to have been at the meetings." – Dorian Lynskey



    “Science operates within doubt, that’s how it moves forward” – Ian Dunt



    Reading List: 
    Michael Crichton – State of Fear
    Ross Gelbspan – The Heat Is On: The High Stakes Battle Over Earth’s Threatened Climate
    Clive Hamilton – Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change
    Bjorn Lomborg – The Skeptical Environmentalist
    Chris Mooney – The Republican War on Science
    Thomas Gale Moore – Climate of Fear: Why We Shouldn’t Worry About Global Warming
    Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway – Merchants of Doubt
    Nathaniel Rich – Losing Earth: The Decade We Could Have Stopped Climate Change
    Peter Stott – Hot Air: The Inside Story of the Battle Against Climate Change Denial
    The Great Global Warming Swindle (Channel 4)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYhCQv5tNsQ
    Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production and music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Lead Producer is Anne-Marie Luff. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production.

    https://twitter.com/OriginStorycast  


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  • Uncovering the hidden histories of concepts, people and events you thought you knew. 
    This time: Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey try to cool their tempers as they take on climate change denial. They trace denial’s journey from fossil-fuel lobbyists and neoliberal think tanks into the heart of the mainstream media and lay out the dire consequences.
    In this first part Ian and Dorian discuss how global warming grew from a minor nineteenth-century hypothesis into the consensus scientific position by the eco-conscious 1970s. Jimmy Carter installed solar panels on the White House and even Margaret Thatcher was worried about carbon emissions. Starting in 1988, though, contrarian scientists, lobbyists and right-wing politicians weaponised scepticism to ensure that nothing was done about it. Also: how discredited panics about overpopulation and a new ice age helped to fuel the politics of denial.

    Conspiracy theories, culture wars, pseudo-science and media credulity come together in the story of one of the greatest scandals of modern times.

    Hear Part Two right now when you support Origin Story on Patreon: www.Patreon.com/originstorypod 
    Tickets for the Origin Story live show are available now: https://www.tickettext.co.uk/ZwCihZbENZ


    “It is extraordinary how far back this goes…there’s cross-party recognition of man-made climate change in the 1960’s.” – Ian Dunt



    “It’s incredible that the Clean Air Act actually makes global warming worse.” – Dorian Lynskey



    “It’s the same technique as McCarthy, used again and again.” – Ian Dunt



    Reading List: 
    Michael Crichton – State of Fear
    Ross Gelbspan – The Heat Is On: The High Stakes Battle Over Earth’s Threatened Climate
    Clive Hamilton – Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change
    Bjorn Lomborg – The Skeptical Environmentalist
    Chris Mooney – The Republican War on Science
    Thomas Gale Moore – Climate of Fear: Why We Shouldn’t Worry About Global Warming
    Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway – Merchants of Doubt
    Nathaniel Rich – Losing Earth: The Decade We Could Have Stopped Climate Change
    Peter Stott – Hot Air: The Inside Story of the Battle Against Climate Change Denial
    The Great Global Warming Swindle (Channel 4)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYhCQv5tNsQ

    Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production and music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Lead Producer is Anne-Marie Luff. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production.

    https://twitter.com/OriginStorycast 
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  • Uncovering the hidden histories of concepts you thought you knew.
    Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey pick up the story of nuclear war in the 1950s with the arrival of the H-bomb, and travel from the deadly face-off the Cuban Missile Crisis to the theory of nuclear winter and the place of nuclear weapons in a post-Cold War world.
    Kennedy and Khrushchev contemplate the abyss, Ronald Reagan frets about Armageddon, and Dr Strangelove brings the twisted psychology of nuclear deterrence to the screen. Plus the dark allure of the Cobalt Bomb, the Doomsday Machine that never existed.
    It’s a story of threats, war games and hair-raising close shaves. Did the strategists get it right in the end or were we just very lucky?
    Listen to next week’s episode right now when you support Origin Story on Patreon: www.Patreon.com/originstorypod



    “In the US there was a recognition over and over by presidents stating…we know that if we fire, we get fired back on.” – Ian Dunt



    “(the Cuban Missile Crisis) brought the world to the abyss of destruction and the end of mankind.” – Robert Kennedy



    “Distrust almost destroyed the world” – Dorian Lynskey



    Reading List: 
    Luis Alvarez – Alvarez: Adventures of a Physicist 
    Martin Amis – Einstein’s Monsters 
    Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin – American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer 
    David C. Cassidy – J. Robert Oppenheimer and the American Century 
    Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi – The Worlds of Herman Kahn 
    Herman Kahn – On Thermonuclear War 
    William Lanouette – Genius in the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilard 
    William L. Laurence – Dawn Over Zero: The Story of the Atomic Bomb 
    Robert Jay Lifton and Richard Falk - Indefensible Weapons 
    Ronald Reagan – An American Life 
    Jonathan Schell – The Fate of the Earth 
    P.D. Smith – Doomsday Men: The Real Dr Strangelove and the Dream of the Superweapon 
    H.G. Wells – The World Set Free 
    The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, by Lawrence Freedman and Jeffrey Michaels
    The Ascent of Man by Jacob Bronowski

    Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production and music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Lead Producer is Anne-Marie Luff. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production.
    https://twitter.com/OriginStorycast 
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  • Uncovering the hidden histories of concepts you thought you knew. 

    This time: the ‘genocide machine’ – nuclear war. With Christopher Nolan’s biopic of the father of the atomic bomb J. Robert Oppenheimer on its way and anxieties about Putin’s nuclear arsenal in the air, Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey take us through how the human race learned to live with the first weapon that could potentially spell global annihilation.

    From the invention of the atomic bomb in a novel by HG Wells to the triumph of the Manhattan Project and the horror of Hiroshima, a modern Pandora’s Box opens. Einstein calls his role in the story his “one great mistake”, Oppenheimer says he has blood on his hands, and an anxious world wonders if it will be blown up tomorrow.

    This one has the lot: fear, guilt, paranoia and a glimpse of the end of the world.

    Listen to Part 2 right now when you support Origin Story on Patreon: www.Patreon.com/originstorypod 



    “It wasn’t just a weapon. It’s an angry god. It’s Godzilla.” – Dorian Lynskey



    “The peoples of this world must unite or they will perish… The atomic bomb has spelled [these words] out for all to understand.” – J Robert Oppenheimer   



    “There should be a statue of Vasili Arkhipov in every town in the world. His refusal to fire stopped a nuclear war.” – Ian Dunt



    Reading List: 
    Luis Alvarez – Alvarez: Adventures of a Physicist 
    Martin Amis – Einstein’s Monsters 
    Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin – American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer 
    David C. Cassidy – J. Robert Oppenheimer and the American Century 
    Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi – The Worlds of Herman Kahn 
    Herman Kahn – On Thermonuclear War 
    William Lanouette – Genius in the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilard 
    William L. Laurence – Dawn Over Zero: The Story of the Atomic Bomb 
    Robert Jay Lifton and Richard Falk - Indefensible Weapons 
    Ronald Reagan – An American Life 
    Jonathan Schell – The Fate of the Earth 
    P.D. Smith – Doomsday Men: The Real Dr Strangelove and the Dream of the Superweapon 
    H.G. Wells – The World Set Free 
    The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, by Lawrence Freedman and Jeffrey Michaels
    The Ascent of Man by Jacob Bronowski

    Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production and music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Lead Producer is Anne-Marie Luff. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production.

    https://twitter.com/OriginStorycast  
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  • This time: the tumultuous history of Atheism. The concept has been around since the ancient world but for centuries it was demonised and suppressed. Who could believe such a thing? Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey track the ultimate heresy from the earliest days of western civilisation to the freethinkers of the Enlightenment and the bare-knuckle oratory of the New Atheists.
    What’s the difference between atheism, agnosticism, secularism and deism? What does it stand for? Can it explain the world while also satisfying the need for meaning and community? Was totalitarianism the monstrous zenith of atheism or just a substitute religion?
    Thomas Paine, Bertrand Russell, Percy Shelley, Albert Camus, Richard Dawkins and more feature in the story of the fight for the right not to believe in God.
    Listen to next week’s episode right now when you support Origin Story on Patreon: www.Patreon.com/originstorypod 


    “Every day around the world it is incalculable the amount of damage done by religions saying; you can’t go there, you can’t marry them, you can’t say that.” – Ian Dunt



    “Declaring oneself an atheist is still a bold claim.” – Dorian Lynskey



    “It’s quite a humbling experience to think it’s taken us 1,500 years to get back to the position we were in in 300AD.” – Ian Dunt



    Reading List:  
    Julian Baggini – Atheism: A Very Short Introduction 
    David Berman – A History of Atheism in Britain: From Hobbes to Russell 
    Albert Camus – The Myth of Sisyphus 
    John Gray – Seven Types of Atheism 
    Christopher Hitchens – God Is Not Great 
    Christopher Hitchens (ed.) – The Portable Atheist 
    Susan Jacoby – Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism 
    Percy Bysshe Shelley – The Necessity of Atheism 
    James Thrower – A Short History of Western Atheism 
    Tim Whitmarsh – Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World
    Richard Dawkins – The God Delusion

    Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production and music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Episode art by James Parrett. Lead Producer is Anne-Marie Luff. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production.

    https://twitter.com/OriginStorycast  


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  • Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt explain the most misunderstood ideas and people in politics.
    This time: part 2 of their Winston Churchill deconstruction. The pair chronicle the turbulent decade that defined Churchill's political legacy. From Munich and his unexpected elevation to power, from the Bengal Famine to victory over Hitler, his surprise defeat in the 1945 election and his long, gloomy decline, they look at a life which still casts a shadow over Britain. And they even read Boris Johnson’s Churchill book, so you don’t have to.
    Churchill craved greatness. Did he live up to his ideal? There’s only one way to find out…
    Listen to next week’s episode right now when you support Origin Story on Patreon: www.Patreon.com/originstorypod 


    “I think what he did was primarily journalism, rather than being a prime minister.” – Ian Dunt



    “People think they can look at Churchill like a lifestyle guru they can replicate without the nuance.” – Dorian Lynskey 



    “Churchill personifies the European confusion that has lasted in this country to the present day” – Ian Dunt



    Reading List:
    Churchill by Roy Jenkins
    The Churchill Factor by Boris Johnson
    Churchill: Military Genius or Menace? By Stephen Napier
    Churchill and Orwell: The Fight for Freedom by Thomas E. Ricks
    Churchill: Walking with Destiny by Andrew Roberts
    Oblivion or Glory: 1921 and the Making of Winston Churchill by David Stafford
    Churchill’s Shadow by Geoffrey Wheatcroft
    Free Thinking: Churchill's Reputation – BBC Radio 3

    Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production and music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Lead Producer is Anne-Marie Luff. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production.

    https://twitter.com/OriginStorycast 
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