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Hello Origin Story listeners. This week we conclude the story of libertarianism as a diffuse tradition coalesces into a distinctly American movement of the right. With Ayn Rand in decline and Hayek back in Europe, the “anarcho-capitalist” Murray Rothbard raises the stakes in the 1960s. Whereas most libertarians want a minimal “night watchman” state, Rothbard wants to privatise the lot, including law, order and defence. Rothbard’s hatred of the Cold War drives him away from the conservatives and towards an unlikely alliance with the New Left. It’s a heady period: young libertarians dream of separatism and survivalism while Robert Nozick takes on John Rawls’ theory of justice in Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Charles and David Koch, more than anyone, turn libertarianism into a political force. The Kansas billionaires bankroll think tanks, publications and the new Libertarian Party in order to put their free-market extremism into practice. With Ronald Reagan in the White House, the libertarians’ wilderness years seem to be over. But like Christian fundamentalists, their excitement soon turns to bitter disappointment. It’s never enough. The end of the Cold War throws libertarians into disarray once more. Rothbard proposes a new “paleolibertarian” alliance with the right: nationalist, isolationist, socially conservative. This sows the seeds of MAGA and explains how so many self-proclaimed champions of liberty end up supporting an authoritarian president who loves tariffs and war. Meanwhile Silicon Valley libertarians dream of escaping the state altogether through AI, cryptocurrency and hi-tech survivalism. How did Murray Rothbard travel from the New Left to the far right while insisting he hadn’t changed his mind? How did libertarianism change the Republican Party, and vice versa? Has there ever been mass support for libertarianism or is it always the project of a radicalised minority? What’s missing from the libertarian vision of freedom? And is it ultimately based on a delusional view of human nature and society? Reading list Books by libertarians • Frédéric Bastiat – The Law (1850) • Milton Friedman – Capitalism and Freedom (1962) • Milton and Rose Friedman – Free to Choose: A Personal Statement (1980) • F. A. Hayek – The Road to Serfdom (1944) • F. A. Hayek – The Constitution of Liberty (1960) • Rose Wilder Lane – The Discovery of Freedom: Man’s Struggle Against Authority (1943) • John Locke – Two Treatises of Government (1689) • Ludwig von Mises – Liberalism (1927/1962) • Ludwig von Mises – Human Action: A Treatise on Economics (1949) • Albert Jay Nock – Our Enemy the State (1935) • Robert Nozick – Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974) • Isabel Paterson – The God of the Machine (1943) • Ayn Rand – The Fountainhead (1943) • Ayn Rand – Atlas Shrugged (1957) • Murray N. Rothbard – Man, Economy, and State: A Treatise on Economic Principles (1962) • Murray N. Rothbard – For a New Liberty (1973) • Murray N. Rothbard – Egalitarianism As a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays (1974) • Herbert Spencer – Social Statics (1851) Books about libertarians • Brian Doherty – Radicalisms for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern • American Libertarian Movement (2007) • John Ganz – When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists and How America • Cracked Up in the Early 1990s (2025) • Anne C. Heller – Ayn Rand and the World She Made (2009) • Andrew Koppelman — Burning Down the House: How Libertarian Philosophy Was Corrupted by Delusion and Greed (2022) • Will Kymlicka, Contemporary Political Philosophy - An Introduction (OUP, 2002) • Jane Mayer – Dark Money: How a Secretive Group of Billionaires Is Trying to Buy Political Control in the US (2016) • Justin Raimondo – An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (2000) • Wendt, F. ‘Introduction: Rereading Nozick’, Cri

Hello Origin Story listeners. This week we begin the long, strange tale of libertarianism and what it means to base your politics on individual freedom. To put it roughly, libertarians believe that the state is at best a necessary evil and individual sovereignty is king. These days libertarianism is largely associated with the political right but it wasn’t always like that. Starting with John Locke, the thinkers who inspired it included liberals, conservatives, anarchists and socialists. In this story, we meet French revolutionaries, British intellectuals, American abolitionists, free-trade liberals and utopian socialists, all with strong, unorthodox ideas about what the state should and should not do. Modern libertarianism begins in America after the First World War, with a loose network of malcontents later known as the Old Right. Horrified by the rise of big government in the Progressive Era and the New Deal, they want to get back to America’s first principles. In the 1940s, a slew of books from novelists and economists seed a movement committed to freedom through capitalism, forming new societies and think tanks in order to upend the status quo. You might think a fledgling crusade of mavericks with minimal political influence would stick together but libertarians do love to argue. Ayn Rand and Friedrich Hayek represent two very different visions of human nature and society. One person’s radical is another person’s sellout. We close part one with the arrival of Murray N. Rothbard, the hardcore “anarcho-capitalist” who will take libertarianism to extremes. Is libertarianism just the radicalised child of liberalism or something else? Why did the right to private property become seen as the cornerstone of human freedom? How did Hayek’s sober Austrian economics and Ayn Rand’s fire-breathing “individualism” come together to inspire a generation of libertarians in America? And why is it such a fractious, spiky scene? • Support Origin Story on Patreon to help the podcast AND get merch and extra material too.  Reading list Books by libertarians • Frédéric Bastiat – The Law (1850) • Milton Friedman – Capitalism and Freedom (1962) • Milton and Rose Friedman – Free to Choose: A Personal Statement (1980) • F. A. Hayek – The Road to Serfdom (1944) • F. A. Hayek – The Constitution of Liberty (1960) • Rose Wilder Lane – The Discovery of Freedom: Man’s Struggle Against Authority (1943) • John Locke – Two Treatises of Government (1689) • Ludwig von Mises – Liberalism (1927/1962) • Ludwig von Mises – Human Action: A Treatise on Economics (1949) • Albert Jay Nock – Our Enemy the State (1935) • Robert Nozick – Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974) • Isabel Paterson – The God of the Machine (1943) • Ayn Rand – The Fountainhead (1943) • Ayn Rand – Atlas Shrugged (1957) • Murray N. Rothbard – Man, Economy, and State: A Treatise on Economic Principles (1962) • Murray N. Rothbard – For a New Liberty (1973) • Murray N. Rothbard – Egalitarianism As a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays (1974) • Herbert Spencer – Social Statics (1851) Books about libertarians • Brian Doherty – Radicalisms for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern • American Libertarian Movement (2007) • John Ganz – When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists and How America • Cracked Up in the Early 1990s (2025) • Anne C. Heller – Ayn Rand and the World She Made (2009) • Andrew Koppelman — Burning Down the House: How Libertarian Philosophy Was Corrupted by Delusion and Greed (2022) • Will Kymlicka, Contemporary Political Philosophy - An Introduction (OUP, 2002) • Jane Mayer – Dark Money: How a Secretive Group of Billionaires Is Trying to Buy Political Control in the US (2016) • Justin Raimondo – An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (2000) • Wendt, F. ‘Introduction: Rereading Nozick’, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy (2026) • Jonathan Wolff, Robert Nozick: Property, Justice, and the Minimal State (Stanford University Press, 1991) • Matt Zwolinski and John Tomasi – The Individualists: Radicals, Reactionaries, and the Struggle for the Soul of Libertarianism (2023) Articles and podcasts • David Boaz – ‘A History of Libertarianism’, Libertarianism.org (15 January 1997) • Tames Boyd – ‘From Far Right to Far Left’, New York Times (6 December 1970) •Dan Falk - The Complicated Legacy of Herbert Spencer, the Man Who Coined ‘Survival of the Fittest’ • Karl Hess – ‘The Death of Politics’, Playboy (March 1969) • Rose Wilder Lane – ‘Credo’, Saturday Evening Post (7 March 1936) • Stan Lehr and Louis Rossetto – ‘The New Right Credo — Libertarianism’, New York Times (10 January 1971) • Brink Lindsey – ‘Liberaltarians’, Cato Institute (4 December, 2006) • Ryan McMaken - Five Myths about the History of Political Thought (2025) • Ellen Paul - Herbert Spencer: Radical Antistatist • Leonard Read – I, Pencil, The Freeman (December 1958) • Murray N. Rothbard – ‘Confessions of a Right-Wing Liberal’, Ramparts (15 June 1968) • Murray N. Rothbard – ‘The New Libertarian Creed’, New York Times (9 February 1971) • Murray N. Rothbard – ‘The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult’ (1972) • Murray N. Rothbard – ‘Right-Wing Populism: A Strategy for the Paleo Movement’, Rothbard-Rockwell Report (January 1992) • Stanford Encyclopedia: Herbert Spencer • This Guy Sucked: Murray Rothbard, presented by Claire E. Aubin with Quinn Slobodian, podcast (20 March 2026) • Benjamin Wallace-Wells, ‘The Long Afterlife of Libertarianism’, New Yorker (29 May 2023) Written and presented by Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey. Producer: Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production www.podmasters.co.uk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to season 10 of Origin Story. This week we conclude the story of Rupert Murdoch, the media titan people love to hate. After a brush with bankruptcy in 1990, Murdoch came roaring back with a new focus on television around the world. In 1996, he launched Fox News under the baleful command of Roger Ailes, which became a key driver of the polarisation of America. For a period, his celebrity-loving new wife Wendi Deng and attraction to New Labour seemed to pull Murdoch himself in a more liberal direction but his innate conservatism, and the profit monster of Fox News, won out. In the 2010s, Murdoch looked truly vulnerable for the first time. Damaged by the phone-hacking crisis at his British tabloids and multiple scandals at the increasingly extreme Fox News, he downsized his empire and wrestled with a succession psychodrama of his own making. After pitting three of his children — Lachlan, Elisabeth and James — against each other for years, he finally chose an heir but the bitterness he generated in the process has had seismic ramifications for his business. Murdoch is 95 and the global edifice he has spent seven decades building looks shakier than ever. Along the way, we dig into Murdoch’s strange personality, his pugilistic deal-making, his unique parenting style, and his subtle way of exerting political influence over his outlets even when he’s half a world away. Why did one bank in Pittsburgh almost ruin Murdoch? How did Fox News go from laughing stock to kingmaker, and what has it done to America? How did the question of inheritance come to tear Murdoch’s family apart? In what ways have the personality and prejudices of one man changed the shape of the world we live in? And what happens to his kingdom after he’s gone? • Support Origin Story on Patreon to help the podcast AND get merch and extra material too.  Reading list • Neil Chenoweth – Rupert Murdoch: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Media Wizard (2001) • Peter Chippindale and Chris Horrie – Stick It Up Your Punter! The Uncut Story of the Sun Newspaper (2013) • Harold Evans – Good Times, Bad Times (1983) • Robert Harris – Selling Hitler (1986) • Simon Jenkins – The Market for Glory: Fleet Street Ownership in the Twentieth Century (1986) • Andrew Marr – My Trade: A Short History of British Journalism (2004) • Andrew Neil – Full Disclosure (1996) • John Preston – Fall: The Mystery of Robert Maxwell (2021) • William Shawcross – Murdoch (1993) • Gabriel Sherman – Bonfire of the Murdochs: How the Epic Fight to Control the Last Great Media Dynasty Broke a Family — and the World (2026) • Michael Wolff – The Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch (2010) Articles and podcasts • Anonymous, ‘The Battle for New York’, Time (17 January 1977) • Ken Auletta – ‘The Pirate’, New Yorker (6 November 1995) • Julian Barnes – ‘Union Blues’, New Yorker (14 April 2003) • McKay Coppins – ‘Growing Up Murdoch’, Atlantic (14 February 2025) • Clyde Haberman — ‘Roger Ailes, Who Built Fox News Into an Empire, Dies at 77’, New York Times (18 May 2017) • Hendrik Hertzberg – ‘Topless Tabloids of Gotham’, New Yorker (15 February 1999) • Joseph Lelyveld – ‘Murdoch Savors His British Coup’, New York Times (2 March 1986) • Jonathan Mahler and Jim Rutenberg – ‘How Rupert Murdoch’s Empire of Influence Remade the World’, New York Times (3 April 2019) • Jane Martinson – ‘“We’re clearly heading towards collapse”: why the Murdoch empire is about to go bang’, Observer (22 February 2025) • Andrew O’Hagan – ‘How the Murdoch Family Built an Empire — and Remade the News’, New Yorker (2 February 2026) • David Shaw – ‘Making of a Megamogul’, New York Times (26 May 1985) • Gail Sheehy – ‘A Fistful of Dollars’, Rolling Stone (14 July 1977) • Slow Burn: The Rise of Fox News, written and presented by Josh Levin, Slate (2024) Written and presented by Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey. Producer: Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production www.podmasters.co.uk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to season 10 of Origin Story. Thanks for listening and supporting our work. We kick off with the world-shaking, century-spanning story of Rupert Murdoch. No single person has ever dominated, and changed, the media landscape like Murdoch. Starting out with an inheritance of a single newspaper in Australia, within three decades he had built a global media empire through his relentless desire to win and had become the most envied, feared and hated man in the business. In part one we cover the period from 1931 to 1989. Despite being the Oxford-educated scion of Australia’s most famous journalist, Murdoch always felt like an outsider, at war with a faceless enemy called “the establishment”. As a young man, he became a major force in Australian newspapers through a combination of brute force, cunning and seemingly impossible deals. In 1968, he came to Britain to snap up the News of the World and the Sun and revolutionised tabloid newspapers with his killer instinct for what readers really wanted, however ugly. Moving to America, he applied the same populist impulse to the New York Post and inspired outrage: one critic called the paper a “force for evil”. Murdoch had a tabloid soul but craved broadsheet prestige. His purchase of the Times and Sunday Times in 1981 set off a series of dramas: the firing of beloved editor Harold Evans, the Hitler Diaries hoax and war with the print unions at Wapping. Ruthlessly unsentimental, he took the gambles and fought the battles that nobody else had the stomach for. It was in the decade of Reagan and Thatcher, both of whom he loudly supported, that Murdoch expanded his empire in all directions: a movie studio, a publishing house, satellite television stations and more. Rivals like Ted Turner and Robert Maxwell loathed him but emulated him. Even when one of his deals failed, it changed the game. He built the world’s first cross-media, intercontinental dominion. But as the 1990s dawned, this precariously funded spending spree brought Murdoch to the edge of bankruptcy. How did Rupert Murdoch’s Australian origins inform his worldview? What enabled him to consistently outwit his rivals and foes? How did he first change both the tone and the business of newspapers and then globalise the media industry? What led the New York Times to call him “the most vilified press mogul in the world today”? Why did his immense power never mute his underdog resentment? Why was it never enough? • Support Origin Story on Patreon to help the podcast AND get merch and extra material too.  Reading list • Neil Chenoweth – Rupert Murdoch: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Media Wizard (2001) • Peter Chippindale and Chris Horrie – Stick It Up Your Punter! The Uncut Story of the Sun Newspaper (2013) • Harold Evans – Good Times, Bad Times (1983) • Robert Harris – Selling Hitler (1986) • Simon Jenkins – The Market for Glory: Fleet Street Ownership in the Twentieth Century (1986) • Andrew Marr – My Trade: A Short History of British Journalism (2004) • Andrew Neil – Full Disclosure (1996) • John Preston – Fall: The Mystery of Robert Maxwell (2021) • William Shawcross – Murdoch (1993) • Gabriel Sherman – Bonfire of the Murdochs: How the Epic Fight to Control the Last Great Media Dynasty Broke a Family — and the World (2026) • Michael Wolff – The Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch (2010) Articles and podcasts • Anonymous, ‘The Battle for New York’, Time (17 January 1977) • Ken Auletta – ‘The Pirate’, New Yorker (6 November 1995) • Julian Barnes – ‘Union Blues’, New Yorker (14 April 2003) • McKay Coppins – ‘Growing Up Murdoch’, Atlantic (14 February 2025) • Clyde Haberman — ‘Roger Ailes, Who Built Fox News Into an Empire, Dies at 77’, New York Times (18 May 2017) • Hendrik Hertzberg – ‘Topless Tabloids of Gotham’, New Yorker (15 February 1999) • Joseph Lelyveld – ‘Murdoch Savors His British Coup’, New York Times (2 March 1986) • Jonathan Mahler and Jim Rutenberg – ‘How Rupert Murdoch’s Empire of Influence Remade the World’, New York Times (3 April 2019) • Jane Martinson – ‘“We’re clearly heading towards collapse”: why the Murdoch empire is about to go bang’, Observer (22 February 2025) • Andrew O’Hagan – ‘How the Murdoch Family Built an Empire — and Remade the News’, New Yorker (2 February 2026) • David Shaw – ‘Making of a Megamogul’, New York Times (26 May 1985) • Gail Sheehy – ‘A Fistful of Dollars’, Rolling Stone (14 July 1977) • Slow Burn: The Rise of Fox News, written and presented by Josh Levin, Slate (2024) Written and presented by Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey. Producer: Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production www.podmasters.co.uk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello Origin Story listeners. We’re launching season 10 in the second half of October and to mark that milestone we thought it would be fun to revisit some of our old episodes under the name Origin Story Revisted. Somehow we’ve recorded over 150 episodes so we’ve chosen four of our favourites to reissue with new introductions where we discuss making them and reflect on how subsequent events have changed how we think about these stories. For our final Revisited before Season 10 begins, we look again at anti-vaxxers. Vaccine resistance is as old as vaccines themselves but not until the 2000s did a toxic compound of junk science and media credulity give rise to a serious anti-vax movement. Since we made this episode in June 2024, that movement has gained power in the US with an anti-vaxxer President (Trump) and Health Secretary (Robert F Kennedy Jr). The dreadful result is not just an immediate spike in measles cases but the stifling of preparations for the next pandemic. Here’s the story of how crank paranoia and industrialised ignorance came to jeopardise one of the greatest achievements in the history of public health. • Support Origin Story on Patreon Written and presented by Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey. Producer: Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production www.podmasters.co.uk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello Origin Story listeners. We’re launching season 10 in the second half of October and to mark that milestone we thought it would be fun to revisit some of our old episodes under the name Origin Story Revisted. Somehow we’ve recorded over 150 episodes so we’ve chosen four of our favourites to reissue with new introductions where we discuss making them and reflect on how subsequent events have changed how we think about these stories. This week we’re returning to our October 2024 episode about Russell Brand, who is back in the news this week because jury selection has begun in his trial on multiple sexual-offence charges. Obviously we can’t discuss legal proceedings but we can talk about how his rise and fall represents a very modern narrative of radicalisation and/or opportunism. From ubiquitous celebrity to left-wing hero to right-wing conspiracy theorist, Brand is a creature of 21st century media and a warning to the gullible. • Support Origin Story on Patreon Written and presented by Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey. Producer: Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production www.podmasters.co.uk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week, while we research a two-parter on the history of libertarianism, we're revisiting the story of the political novelist Ayn Rand. In this episode from 2022 — the first time we chose to focus on an individual rather than an abstract idea — we explore how Rand's extreme views on the self versus the society inspired a whole school of thought but somewhat ruined her life. And we read some very long novels. Enjoy • Support Origin Story on Patreon Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production and music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production www.podmasters.co.uk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello Origin Story listeners. We’re launching season 10 in the second half of October and to mark that milestone we thought it would be fun to revisit some of our old episodes under the name Origin Story Revisited. Somehow we’ve recorded over 150 episodes so we’ve chosen four of our favourites to reissue with new introductions where we discuss making them and reflect on how subsequent events have changed how we think about these stories. Our first Revisited episode is The Battle of Cable Street from August 2024. It’s not just because the 80th anniversary of that event falls on 4 October. In light of the emergence of Patriot Platform and other forms of far-right intimidation, it’s a good time to look again at the day a vast anti-fascist alliance stood up to Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists in the East End, and at how popular resistance can spur state action. Hope you enjoy it. • Support Origin Story on Patreon Written and presented by Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey. Producer: Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production www.podmasters.co.uk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week we dive into the life and ideas of John Rawls, the most celebrated liberal philosopher of the post-war period. Even in his own lifetime he was compared to Plato and Hobbes, becoming the only figure of our era to enter the canon of Western thought alongside the greatest figures in the philosophical tradition.  Rawls' work was a deadly surgical attack on neoliberalism and a rigorous defence of a more progressive form of liberalism, grounded in equality, rights and social justice. His notion of the veil of ignorance is perhaps the single most influential philosophical idea of the 20th Century and one of the most beautiful concepts in political theory. He provided a systematic justification for a centre-left worldview and policy programme, with a firm moral grounding and extremely radical repercussions. We trace his life story, from early childhood tragedy, through the battlefields of the Second World War, to a long and distinguished career in Harvard. We find a quiet, shy, unassuming man, uncomfortable in large groups and immune to self-importance, who nevertheless shook the philosophical world to its foundation. As his libertarian opponent Robert Nozick admitted: "Political philosophers must either work within Rawls' theory or explain why not."  We then delve into Rawls' political philosophy, providing a concise explanation of a foundational idea in the history of progressive thought. If you've ever wondered what the limit of the market should be, or how much inequality we should allow, or why people should be entitled to rights, Rawls will provide the explanation. Join us for an inspiring story of a world-changing idea. • Support Origin Story on Patreon Reading list • Daniel Chandler - Free and Equal: What Would a Fair Society Look Like? (Penguin, 2024) • Thomas Pogge - John Rawls: His Life and Theory of Justice (Oxford University Press, 2007) • John Rawls - Political Liberalism (Columbia University Press, 2005) • John Rawls - Theory of Justice (Harvard University Press, 1999) Written and presented by Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey. Producer: Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production www.podmasters.co.uk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello listeners. This week’s episode is an audio recording of our live show at the Union Chapel in London on 1 September 2026. This time we did something different and made a live show out of a classic Origin Story narrative. It’s the story of how the Daily Telegraph’s deterioration from grey citadel of High Toryism to feral troll farm mirrors the cognitive decline of conservatism in Britain. In part one we tell the story of the Telegraph. Founded in 1855 by a crank army colonel to pursue an obscure vendetta, it was soon bought by the Levy-Lawson family, who turned into Britain’s liveliest newspaper and the world’s largest. During the 20th century, it became the heart of British conservatism: solidly — sometimes alarmingly — right-wing yet respectable and conscientious. It was proud to be boring: a safe harbour in a changing world. “Was, is, and will be,” its masthead boasted. The Telegraph took a strange turn after 2004, with its acquisition by the Barclay brothers and the rise of online journalism. Drawing more of its editors and energy from the Daily Mail, it began platforming more extreme voices in the hunt for clicks. By the time of Brexit in 2016, the viciousness and paranoia that characterised its online output had colonised the newspaper itself. Could its recent purchase by Germany’s Axel Springer trigger a return to normality? In part two we play headline tennis with some of the Telegraph’s barmiest articles, dig into the feverish, apocalyptic world view of columnist-editor Allister Heath, and explore what the paper’s decline says about the crumbling of the Tory mind. Then we take questions from the audience. Hope you enjoy listening to it as much as we enjoyed doing the show.  Reading list Books Lord Burnham – Peterborough Court: The Story of The Daily Telegraph (1955) Colin Coote – Editorial: The Memoirs of Colin R. Coote (1965) W. F. Deedes – Dear Bill: A Memoir (2005) Duff Hart-Davis – The House The Berrys Built: Inside The Telegraph (1990) Max Hastings – Editor: A Memoir (2002) Jane Martinson – You May Never See Us Again: The Barclay Dynasty: A Story of Survival, Secrecy and Succession (2023) Peregrine Worsthorne – Tricks of Memory: An Autobiography (1993) Articles Stephen Bates – ‘Sir Peregrine Worsthorne obituary’, Guardian (5 October 2020) Jason Cowley – ‘The lost magic of England’, New Statesman (11 February 2016) Bryan Curtis – ‘Paper Tiger’, Slate (25 October 2006) Allister Heath – ‘Vast forces are mobilising to stop Britain’s only real chance of survival’, Telegraph (18 February 2026) Allister Heath – ‘The Fall of Britain: A tragedy in three horrifying acts’, Telegraph (19 April 2026) Liz Truss – ‘Trump has been proven right about pretty much everything’, Telegraph (14 April 2025) Jim Waterson – ‘“Toxic” Telegraph made me feel nauseous, says Graham Norton’, Guardian (7 October 2019) Peregrine Worsthorne – ‘The “Daily Telegraph”: No other British institution has been so badly degraded’, Independent (21 November 2005) Written and presented by Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey. Producer: Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production www.podmasters.co.uk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to a bonus episode of Origin Story. This time we tell the story of Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988, the legislation that prohibited local councils from funding the “promotion” of homosexuality and cast a chilling shadow over the lives of gay men and lesbians in the UK for the next 15 years. How did it come about, what were the consequences, and is something similar happening to trans people today? The 1980s were a decade of rampant homophobia, fed by conservative anxieties about progressive education, “loony left” councils and the emergence of HIV/AIDS. One book (Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin) and one London council (Haringey) became the focus of a moral panic that spread like wildfire through the right-wing press and Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government, with all the hysteria, bigotry and misinformation you would expect. Opposition to children learning about homosexuality in any way featured in the 1987 election campaign and led to the amendment that became Section 28: local authorities were forbidden to “intentionally promote homosexuality,” whatever that meant. While nobody was ever prosecuted under Section 28, these few vague and provocative lines created a climate of fear and self-censorship, from schools to broadcasters, and effectively legitimised homophobia. But the campaign against it mobilised gay men and lesbians like never before. Figures such as Ian McKellen, Michael Cashman and Peter Tatchell initiated a new era of activism, including the foundation of Stonewall, to ensure that something like this never happened again. Tony Blair’s Labour government finally repealed Section 28 in 2003, amid a slew of progressive reforms, and multiple Tory leaders apologised for ever supporting it. Now, though, government guidelines on the teaching of gender identity are echoing the intolerant logic of Section 28 and the media’s moral panic around trans people feels grimly familiar. How did a single copy of a Danish picture book lead to the most homophobic legislation in a century? Was the newspapers’ vicious campaign against the “loony left” Britain’s first experience of an “anti-woke” culture war? Who were the politicians, many of them still around today, who supported and opposed Section 28? How did the battle over it give birth to modern LGBTQ activism? How did Section 28 damage ordinary lives and why did it take so long to repeal? And why are some of the people who fought so hard against Section 28 now supporting its transphobic equivalent? • Find out if you’re owed on car finance at⁠ refundclub.co.uk/originstory⁠  • Refund Club is a trading style of Sandsford Law Limited, authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA no. 8008114). Checking is free. A fee is payable only if your claim is successful. Eligibility: car finance taken out in the UK between 2007 and 2021. The average claim is around £829 per agreement; this is an average and not a guarantee of the amount you will receive. You can also claim yourself for free by contacting your lender or the Financial Ombudsman Service. ⁠refundclub.co.uk/originstory⁠ •⁠ ⁠⁠⁠See Origin Story live at the Union Chapel⁠⁠, London on September the 1st  • Support Origin Story on⁠ ⁠Patreon⁠⁠  Written and presented by Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey. Producer: Chris Jones. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production  ⁠⁠www.podmasters.co.uk⁠⁠  Books and articles Paul Baker – Outrageous! The Story of Section 28 and Britain’s Battle for LGBT Education (2022) Susanne Bosche – ‘Jenny, Eric, Martin… and Me’, Guardian (31 January 2000) Faye Brown – ‘Claims of oral sex and choking lessons prompt government review into sex education critic says is “politically motivated”’, Sky News (8 March 2023) Michael Cashman – One of Them: From Albert Square to Parliament Square (2020) Colin Clews – Gay in the 80s: From Fighting for Our Rights to Fighting for Our Lives (2017) James Curran, Ivor Gaber and Julian Petley – Culture Wars: The Media & the British Left (2005) Ryan Gilbey – It Used to Be Witches: Under the Spell of Queer Cinema (Faber, 2025) Audrey Gillan – ‘Section 28 gone… but not forgotten’, Guardian (17 November 2003) Chris Godfrey – Section 28 protesters 30 years on: ‘We were arrested and put in a cell up by Big Ben’, Guardian (27 May 2018) Ian Lucas – OutRage! An Oral History (1998) Kelly Ann Cecilia McGhee – ‘The Destruction Caused by Clause 28’, Glasgow Women’s Library Adam Mars-Jones – ‘The book that launched Clause 28’, Index on Censorship, Vol. 17, Issue 8 (September 1988) Michelle O’Toole – ‘I’m a trans woman who grew up under section 28 — I worry it could make a comeback’, the i Paper (11 May 2020) Ruth Pearce – ‘Labour’s Section 28 is here — act now’, ruthpearce.net (14 February 2026) ‘Relationships Education, Relationships and Sex education (RSE)’ Peter Tatchell – The Battle for Bermondsey (1983) Jamie Wareham – ‘“Section 28 2.0”: New “transphobic” curriculum restricts teachers from teaching Trans+ pupils to understand their identity’, QueerAF (19 July 2025) Nicholas Watt – ‘David Cameron apologises to gay people for section 28’, Guardian (2 July 2009) Ian Youngs – ‘Blue Jean: the lesbian teachers who inspired film about Section 28’, BBC (10 February 2023) Radio and film Archive on 4: Section 28: Right to Be Gay, Radio 4 (22 March 2025) Blue Jean, written and directed by Georgia Oakley (2022) The Reunion: Stonewall, Radio 4 (20 September 2009) Parliamentary debates Schools: Investment in Education and Science, Hansard (7 May 1986) Education Bill HL, Hansard (20 May 1986) Local Government Act 1986 (Amendment) Bill HL, Hansard (18 December 1986) Amendment of Local Government Act 1986, Hansard (8 May 1987) Prohibition on Promoting Homosexuality by Teaching or by Publishing Material, Hansard (15 December 1987) Local Government Bill, Hansard (1 February 1988) Local Government Bill, Hansard (16 February 1988) Clause 28, Hansard (9 March 1988) Repeal of Section 2A of Local Government Act 1986 (10 March 2003) Engagements, Hansard (18 March 2023) Learn more about your ad choices. 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Welcome to another bonus episode of Origin Story, where we look at the short and extraordinary life of the Duke of Buckingham (1592–1628). It's a bizarre, tragic tale which weaves together queer history, courtly romance, unending war and the early resistance of parliament against royal power.   More than anything, it is the story of the Favourite, that strange underdiscussed role of the leader's key ally. In our modern era, we've seen figures like Dominic Cummings and Morgan McSweeney take this position – operating as the prime minister's chief loyalist and then being used as a sacrificial pawn to placate their critics. We see a very similar arrangement in the 17th Century, albeit in a significantly more sexy way.   As Sir Francis Bacon said: The favourite is a "shadow" who can be "offered as a sacrifice to appease the multitude". Come with us back to an era where the modern world is slowly being formed, and see how exuberant, unpredictable, emotional and dramatic the early days of the English parliament truly were.   Books   Lucy Hughes-Hallett – The Scapegoat: The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham (4th Estate, 2024)   Roger Lockyer - Buckingham: The Life and Political Career of George Villiers, First Duke of Buckingham 1592-1628 (Routledge, 1981)    • Find out if you’re owed on car finance at refundclub.co.uk/originstory  • Refund Club is a trading style of Sandsford Law Limited, authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA no. 8008114). Checking is free. A fee is payable only if your claim is successful. Eligibility: car finance taken out in the UK between 2007 and 2021. The average claim is around £829 per agreement; this is an average and not a guarantee of the amount you will receive. You can also claim yourself for free by contacting your lender or the Financial Ombudsman Service. refundclub.co.uk/originstory • ⁠See Origin Story live at the Union Chapel⁠, London on September the 1st  • Support Origin Story on ⁠Patreon⁠  Written and presented by Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey. Producer: Chris Jones. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production  ⁠www.podmasters.co.uk⁠  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello Subscribers. Thanks for looking after us through this long, weird summer. We have another exclusive Q&A episode for you. In this episode: What’s the relationship between individual and collective action when understanding the course of history? Is anything inevitable? Why does the UK keep getting new prime ministers? Why do Britons struggle to identify as European? How do we do all the reading for the show and what tips do we have for reading more? Why don’t we invite expert guests? And why do we love horror movies? See you soon for another bonus episode. • See Origin Story live at the Union Chapel, London on September the 1st. Patreon people can buy as many tickets as you like for just £30 each including all fees. They will be £35 each to the general public. Written and presented by Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey. Audio producer: Chris Jones. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production www.podmasters.co.uk

Tickets are flying out of the door for Ian and Dorian’s biggest live show yet at the stunning Union Chapel in London’s sophisticated Islington on Tue 1 Sept. A spectacular Gothic Revival church on Upper Street, the Union Chapel is a breathtaking venue just a few moments’ stroll from Highbury & Islington Tube – and therefore close to Euston and King’s Cross for the Not-London crowd. As well as the Victoria Line, it’s on the Mildmay Overground so whether you’re in leafy West London or sourdough-and-cold-drip-coffee East London you can be there and home with ease.You can buy tickets here, or Patreon supporters get exclusive discount, so now is as good a time as any to sign up: https://www.patreon.com/c/originstorypod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to a bonus episode of Origin Story. For the first time, we’re revisiting an earlier episode to ask what we got right and what we got wrong about the subject. Just before the July 2024 election we profiled Labour’s PM-in-waiting Keir Starmer and made some cautiously optimistic guesses as to what his government might look like — the promise and the pitfalls. Well, it turned out to be mostly pitfalls. As Starmer steps down and Andy Burnham steps up, we perform the autopsy. Did Starmer have fundamental personal weaknesses that doomed him to failure? What happened to the moral principles and managerial competence that defined his career before he became Labour leader? What mistakes did he make and what opportunities did he miss? Has Starmer killed the theory that a boring technocrat is the antidote to right-wing populism? How did he become so hated? What legacy has he bequeathed to Burnham (it wasn’t all bad news)? How much of this can we blame on Morgan McSweeney? And is it fair to call Keir Starmer the worst Labour prime minister ever? The ghost of Ramsay MacDonald certainly hopes so. Join us for an in-depth reflection on what went wrong for Starmer and the lessons we can learn about what it takes to be a successful prime minister in the 2020s. • See Origin Story live at the Union Chapel, London on September the 1st • Support Origin Story on Patreon Written and presented by Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey. Producer: Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production www.podmasters.co.uk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices