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Origin Story

Origin Story

Written by: Podmasters
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What are the real stories behind the most misunderstood and abused ideas in politics? From Conspiracy Theory to Woke to Centrism and beyond, Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey dig into the astonishing secret histories of concepts you thought you knew. Want to support us in making future seasons? There are now two ways you can help out: • Patreon – Get early episodes, live Zooms, merchandise and more from just £5 per month. • Apple Podcasts – Want everything in one place with one easy payment? Subscribe to our premium feed on Apple Podcasts for ad-free shows early and bonus editions too. From Podmasters, the makers of Oh God, What Now?, American Friction and The Bunker.Podmasters / Ian Dunt & Dorian Lynskey 2022 Politics & Government Social Sciences World
Episodes
  • Paranormal Investigations – Is There Anybody Out There?

    Paranormal Investigations – Is There Anybody Out There?
    Jul 1 2026
    Welcome to Origin Story. This week we’re doing something different: the history of paranormal investigations and what it says about the relationship between evidence and belief. In 1848, two sisters in Hydesville, New York claimed to be contacting the spirit world. Within a couple of years spiritualism was a popular craze on both sides of the Atlantic, with seances attracting luminaries from Queen Victoria to Charles Darwin. But could it be proven beyond doubt? In 1883, a group of scientists and intellectuals launched the Society for Psychical Research to find out, but from its inception there was tension between the genuine sceptics and the instinctive believers. However many hoaxers they debunked, even the sceptics encountered things they could not rationally explain. The mass grief of the First World War created a new appetite for spiritualism, spearheaded by the world-famous author Arthur Conan Doyle. Meanwhile in North Carolina, J.B. and Louisa Rhine proposed that these uncanny goings on were not evidence of ghosts but of untapped powers in the human brain: Extra-Sensory Perception. Concepts like telepathy and telekinesis swept through popular culture while scientists explored their potential as weapons in the Cold War. In the 1970s, Connecticut couple Ed and Lorraine Warren became the world’s star investigators. In the era of Carrie, The Exorcist and spoon-bending celebrity Uri Geller, there was a huge audience for this kind of thing, bringing money and fame to the most prominent spook-hunters. Events such as the Amityville Horror and the Enfield Poltergeist still inspire fascination today, despite the investigators’ extremely dubious methods. Was the truth-seeking mission of the Society for Psychical Research destined to end up as a license for grifters? How did spiritualism bewitch the Victorian era, including some of its most eminent scientists? Are psychic powers any more credible than ghosts? Why was the creator of the ultra-rational Sherlock Holmes so boundlessly credulous about the spirit world? What can the field of the unexplained teach us about cognitive biases and conspiracy theories? Is it really possible to apply scientific rigour to paranormal phenomena? And why, when almost 150 years of investigations have produced no solid evidence or theoretical basis for them, do so many people still want to believe? This is a thrilling story of faith, doubt and fraud, featuring Harry Houdini, George Eliot, Marie Curie, Carl Jung, Helena Blavatsky, W.B. Yeats, Winston Churchill and (possibly) the Devil himself. Don’t have nightmares. • Special offer! Get 20% off any vehicle history check at carVertical.com/OriginStory • See Origin Story live at the Union Chapel, London on September the 1st. • Support Origin Story on Patreon Reading list Books • Edward T. Bennett — The Society for Psychical Research: Its Rise and Progress and a Sketch of Its Work (1903) • Ruth Brandon – The Spiritualists: The Passion for the Occult in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (1983) • Edmund Gurney, Frederic W.H. Myers and Frank Podmore – Phantasms of the Living (1886) • Renée Haynes – The Society for Psychical Research 1882-1982: A History (1982) • Oliver Lodge – Raymond; or, Life and Death (1916) • Roger Luckhurst – The Invention of Telepathy 1870-1901 (2002) • Ben Machell – Chasing the Dark: Encounters with the Supernatural (2025) • Janet Oppenheim – The Other World: Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England, 1850-1914 (1985) • Guy Lyon Playfair – This House Is Haunted: The Amazing Inside Story of the Enfield Poltergeist (1980) • Harry Price – The Most Haunted House in England: Ten Years’ Investigation of Borley Rectory (1940) • J.B. Rhine – Extra-Sensory Perception (1934) • Michael Shermer – The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies: How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths (2011) • Upton Sinclair – Mental Radio (1930) Articles • A.P. – ‘“Amityville Horror” amplified over bottles of wine, — lawyer’, Lakeland Ledger (27 July 1979) • Angie Barry – ‘The Warren Case Files: Fact or Fiction?’, Criminal Element (31 October 2017) • Stefan Beck – ‘A Night with The Conjuring’s Ed & Lorraine Warren’, Daily Beast (18 August 2013) • Paul Byrnes – ‘The Devil Among Us’, Sydney Morning Herald (12 July 2013) • Casey Cep – ‘Why Did So Many Victorians Try to Speak with the Dead?’, New Yorker (24 May 2021) • Kevin Dolak – ‘The Slippery Truth About “The Conjuring: Last Rites” and Ed and Lorraine Warren’, Hollywood Reporter (10 September 2025) • Neil Genzlinger – ‘Lorraine Warren, Paranormal Investigator Portrayed in ‘The Conjuring’, Dies at 92, New York Times (19 April 2019) • Kim Masters and Ashley Cullins – ‘War Over ‘The Conjuring’: The Disturbing Claims Behind a Billion-Dollar Franchise’, Hollywood Reporter (13 December 2017) • Sean...
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    1 hr and 43 mins
  • Think Tanks – Part Two – The Room Where It Happens

    Think Tanks – Part Two – The Room Where It Happens
    Jun 24 2026
    Welcome to Origin Story and part two of the story of think tanks. Last time we traced the history of two very different varieties: the non-partisan centre for research and policy development and the handsomely-funded vehicle for a political ideology. Now we explain how they shape politics today. In the first half of the show we follow the partisan think tanks into the 21st century with the Koch network’s war on Obama, the Heritage Foundation’s MAGA makeover, the IEA’s role in the Liz Truss catastrophe and the depressing devolution of centre-right think tanks. At the centre of the British story is 55 Tufton Street, the notorious building where climate change deniers cross paths with Eurosceptics and the distinction between think tanks and lobby groups all but collapses. Nice work if you can get it. Then we explain how the more independent-minded think tanks make an essential contribution to developing and analysing policies, keeping alive the original ideal of politically neutral expertise. So what do we talk about when we talk about think tanks? What’s the deal with Tufton Street and why are its denizens always on TV? Where is the money coming from? How has Trump transformed the balance of power among US think tanks? What role have these groups played in the radicalisation of conservatism over the past decade? How do the independent think tanks — more important but far less discussed — try to make politicians better informed and more effective? Ultimately, how influential are think tanks really? • Special offer! Get 20% off any vehicle history check at carVertical.com/OriginStory • See Origin Story live at the Union Chapel, London on September the 1st • Support Origin Story on Patreon Reading list Books • Richard Cockett – Thinking the Unthinkable: Think-Tanks and the Economic Counter- Revolution 1931-1983 (1994) • Paul Dickson – Think Tanks (1972) • Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi – The Worlds of Herman Kahn: The Intuitive Science of Thermonuclear War (2005) • F.A. Hayek – The Road to Serfdom (Reader’s Digest abridged version) (1945) • Jane Mayer – Dark Money: How a Secretive Group of Billionaires Is Trying to Buy Political Control in the US (2016) • Thomas Medvetz – Think Tanks in America (2014) • Madsen Pirie – Think Tank: The Story of the Adam Smith Institute (2012) • James A. Smith – The Idea Brokers: Think Tanks and the Rise of the New Policy Elite (1991) Articles • Dr James Barham – ‘Top Influential Think Tanks Ranked for 2024’, Academic Influence (16 October 2023) • Tom Bawden – ‘The address where Eurosceptics and climate change sceptics rub shoulders’, Independent (10 February 2016) • Chloe Farand – ‘Mapped: Whistleblower Accuses Nine Organisations of Colluding Over Hard Brexit’, DeSmog (23 July 2018) • Richard Fink – ‘Structure of Social Change’, Philanthropy Magazine (Winter 1996) • F. A. Hayek – ‘The Intellectuals and Socialism’, University of Chicago Law Review (Spring 1949) • Richard Kostelanetz – ‘One-Man Think Tank’, New York Times (1 December 1968) • Jane Mayer – ‘Covert Operations’, New Yorker (23 August 2010) • Jane Mayer – ‘Is IKEA the New Model for the Conservative Movement?’, New Yorker (15 November 2013) • James G. McGann, ‘2020 Global Go To Think Tank Index Report’, University of Pennsylvania, Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program (28 January 2021) • Louis Menand – ‘Fat Man’, New Yorker (20 June 2005) • George Monbiot – ‘Number 10 and the secretly funded lobby groups intent on undermining democracy’, Guardian (1 September 2020) • New York Times staff – ‘49 Scholars Hold Man Up to Mirror’, New York Times (21 September 1958) • David Perlman – ‘Man’s Actions Challenge a Braintrust’, San Francisco Chronicle (23 March 1958) 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
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    1 hr and 22 mins
  • Think Tanks – Part One – What’s the Big Idea?

    Think Tanks – Part One – What’s the Big Idea?
    Jun 17 2026
    Welcome to Origin Story. This week we explore the world of think tanks, a term that has developed two very different meanings. To many people, it suggests deceptively named and opaquely funded vehicles for the political agendas of right-wing billionaires — think Tufton Street. Yet most of the world’s leading think tanks still cleave to the original intention of producing conscientious research and bold new ideas, independent of political parties. How and when did these paths diverge? The first think tank, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, was born in 1910 during a period when governments were increasingly interested in using data and expertise to generate more rational policy-making. Accelerated by the calamitous irrationality of the First World War, this mission produced such influential bodies as Chatham House and the Brookings Institution. The so-called eggheads proved their worth in a crisis, from the New Deal to the Second World War. As the Cold War began, the quintessential think tank (a term coined in 1958) was the RAND Corporation and the industry’s first celebrity was nuclear strategist Herman Kahn, a charismatic provocateur who boasted about “thinking about the unthinkable”. In the UK, however, a new kind of think tank was being born. In 1955, chicken farmer Antony Fisher founded the Institute of Economic Affairs as a power base from which the pioneers of neoliberalism could wage their long war against the Keynesian consensus, following Friedrich Hayek’s theory of political change. Their patience paid off. Along with the Centre for Policy Studies and the Adam Smith Institute, the IEA built the framework for Thatcherism in the 1970s. Likewise in the US, the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute furnished Ronald Reagan with an armada of policies and advisers. The neoliberal revolution was incubated in these new-model think tanks. The centre-left was losing this war of ideas. By the 1980s, then, think tanks had acquired a more controversial reputation, using their charitable tax status to funnel money from billionaires like Richard Mellon Scaife and the Koch brothers into a vast network of organisations, books, journals, university programs and media operators, serving not just their ideological agendas but their financial interests. It was very far from the original notion of think tanks as a non-partisan “bridge between knowledge and power”. What do the first think tanks tell us about the dream of government based on facts and expertise? Who were the tycoons and intellectuals who joined forces to launch a new wave of think tanks? How did Hayek’s followers build from scratch an infrastructure that made Thatcherism and Reaganism possible? How is that nakedly ideological projects can present themselves as philanthropy and anonymous, tax-free donations can shape our politics so profoundly? And why are the names of think tanks so interchangeably boring? • ⁠⁠See Origin Story live⁠⁠ at the Union Chapel, London on 1st Sept 2026. Tickets selling fast! • Support Origin Story on Patreon • Buy the Origin Stories books on Centrism, Fascism and Conspiracy Theory • Subscribe to Origin Story on YouTube Reading list Books • Richard Cockett – Thinking the Unthinkable: Think-Tanks and the Economic Counter- Revolution 1931-1983 (1994) • Paul Dickson – Think Tanks (1972) • Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi – The Worlds of Herman Kahn: The Intuitive Science of Thermonuclear War (2005) • F.A. Hayek – The Road to Serfdom (Reader’s Digest abridged version) (1945) • Jane Mayer – Dark Money: How a Secretive Group of Billionaires Is Trying to Buy Political Control in the US (2016) • Thomas Medvetz – Think Tanks in America (2014) • Madsen Pirie – Think Tank: The Story of the Adam Smith Institute (2012) • James A. Smith – The Idea Brokers: Think Tanks and the Rise of the New Policy Elite (1991) Articles • Dr James Barham – ‘Top Influential Think Tanks Ranked for 2024’, Academic Influence (16 October 2023) • Tom Bawden – ‘The address where Eurosceptics and climate change sceptics rub shoulders’, Independent (10 February 2016) • Chloe Farand – ‘Mapped: Whistleblower Accuses Nine Organisations of Colluding Over Hard Brexit’, DeSmog (23 July 2018) • Richard Fink – ‘Structure of Social Change’, Philanthropy Magazine (Winter 1996) • F. A. Hayek – ‘The Intellectuals and Socialism’, University of Chicago Law Review (Spring 1949) • Richard Kostelanetz – ‘One-Man Think Tank’, New York Times (1 December 1968) • Jane Mayer – ‘Covert Operations’, New Yorker (23 August 2010) • Jane Mayer – ‘Is IKEA the New Model for the Conservative Movement?’, New Yorker (15 November 2013) • James G. McGann, ‘2020 Global Go To Think Tank Index Report’, University of Pennsylvania, Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program (28 January 2021) • Louis Menand – ‘Fat Man’, New Yorker (20 June ...
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    1 hr and 20 mins
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