Hello, I'm Dorian Linsky. And I'm Ian Dunnell. We're here to tell you about a brand new

podcast that we're making with the producers of Ogod What Now and the Bunker.

It's called Origin Story and it's out every Monday. Each week we're going to be exploring

the hidden roots of some of the most used, abused and misunderstood ideas in politics.

Some conspiracy theory to woke to centrism. We're going to look into the secret history

of these concepts and explain why it matters where people get them wrong.

The first edition is about McCarthyism and it's out right now. You can find it in your

favourite podcast app, just search Origin Story. To wet your appetite, here's a

taster of episode one, McCarthyism. Ian, why have we decided to not just talk about McCarthyism,

but to start with McCarthyism. What is it about the way that word is being used?

I see it misused on right and left in roughly equal capacity. On pretty much a weekly basis,

we're going to pick some words for this series that it's a daily hourly basis. It's not

quite that bad, but McCarthyism I'd say is misused on a weekly basis. The most obvious examples

right now, Alex Jones, that lunatic conspiracy theory in the US. His response to being called in

front of the January 6th committee was instantly to go there. He said it's a witch hunt,

which has lied about myself. It's a criminal subpoena. This is something that Joseph McCarthy

did to a lot of people in America, although he added the essential ending to that. It turned out

some of the people he was targeting are actually guilty. You even got that one wrong, Alex.

Congratulations. I see it in members of the Lane Party who have been accused of anti-Semitism,

they complain about McCarthyism. People being called up to January 6th committee,

any conservatives and further to the right than that, who get any pushback at all,

any is going to consequences, Twitter suspension or something. The word just seems to mean

...