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Pushkin Industries


The Last Archive​ is a show about the history of truth, and the historical context for our current fake news, post-truth moment. It’s a show about how we know what we know, and why it seems, these days, as if we don’t know anything at all anymore. The show is written & hosted by Ben Naddaff-Hafrey, and was created by the historian Jill Lepore. iHeartMedia is the exclusive podcast partner of Pushkin Industries.


The Last Archive

Elon Musk has claimed that AI is humanity’s “biggest existential threat.” Paradoxically, Musk is also working to create artificial intelligence. Why? Jill Lepore tours through a century of imagined robot rebellions, and argues that these stories are never only about robots. So what’s Elon Musk really afraid of when he wrings his hands over AI? In this final episode, Lepore argues that while Musk may be a visionary, “every piece of Muskism has origins in a future foretold in science fiction, long, long ago, as a cautionary tale.”

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The Terminator from X Man: The Elon Musk Origin Story

In 2022, Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion, and renamed it X. When asked why he wanted to own the social media network, Musk talked a lot about something he called the “woke mind virus.” Where does the idea of a mind virus come from? Jill Lepore looks to Cold War science fiction and the recently uncovered writings of Elon Musk’s grandfather in South Africa.

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Body Snatchers from X Man: The Elon Musk Origin Story

The science fiction that Silicon Valley techno-billionaires like Elon Musk adore concerns gleaming futures in which fantastically powerful, immensely rich men colonize other planets. In this episode, Jill Lepore looks at some of the science fiction that’s usually left out of this vision — science fiction by and about women.

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Baby X from X Man: The Elon Musk Origin Story

In 2021, Elon Musk started calling himself The Dogefather to signal his support for Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency based on a joke meme about a dog. That dog is now wagging the tail of the world’s economy. In this episode, Jill Lepore looks at Silicon Valley's cryptocurrency craze through the lens of some very old science fiction. Like everything else about Muskism that purports to be futuristic, this idea is a relic, whose history serves as a warning.

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The Dogefather from X Man: The Elon Musk Origin Story

In 2008 Tesla Motors launched its first car, the completely electric Roadster. Tesla was a great story — something genuinely new, an engineering marvel. Musk became a media darling, on the cover of countless magazines under headlines like ‘Elon Musk, AKA Tony Stark, Wants to Save the World’. Within the logic of Muskism, talking about saving the world was a business strategy, a way to sell cars without ads. Why did so many people buy what Musk was selling?

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Iron Man from X Man: The Elon Musk Origin Story

Elon Musk is a rocket man. He wants humans to become ‘a multi-planetary species’ and talks about establishing human settlements on Mars. As President Trump talks up the Mars program while dismantling aid initiatives around the globe, Jill Lepore traces how Silicon Valley's existential catastrophism led to Musk’s extraterrestrial vision of capitalism.

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Planet B from X Man: The Elon Musk Origin Story

Elon Musk is reinventing himself as a kingmaker for the United States and the world. He wants to shape the future. But in this episode, Jill Lepore goes back to his past — to his childhood, his strange family history, and his fascination with Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

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Dimension X from X Man: The Elon Musk Origin Story

Elon Musk’s origin story keeps changing. First, he was Tony Stark, or Iron Man. Not too long ago, he compared himself to Batman. Arguments started online over whether or not Musk is a real-life Bruce Wayne. In this episode, Jill Lepore looks at the original ‘Caped Crusader’, created back in 1939. Batman’s origin story is bound up with fascism. And every time Musk is compared to Batman it raises a very old question about the Dark Knight: is Batman fighting fascism, or is Batman — a brooding, fabulously wealthy vigilante — somehow, himself a fascist?

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The Dark Knight from X Man: The Elon Musk Origin Story

In the 1960s, a right-wing organization led by a former candy tycoon rose to fame in America for their anti-communist campaigns. They called themselves the John Birch Society. Then, they tried to take over the Parent-Teacher Association. This week, what the battle between the two organizations tells us about the fate of American politics, and the history of your Halloween candy.

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John Birch vs. the PTA

Jesse Owens spent the rest of his life retelling the story of the 1936 games and his encounter with Luz Long. We trace the evolution of a tall tale, discovering the hidden life of one of America’s iconic sports heroes.
 
This is part two of a two-part crossover from Revisionist History’s ‘Hitler’s Olympics’ series. To listen to the whole series, head over to the Revisionist History show page.

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Part 2: Long Jump, Tall Tale

Each week on ‘The Returns,’ we pull a different episode from our archive to help put our present politics into historical context. 
 
In the 1980s, Rush Limbaugh transformed talk radio. In the process, he radicalized his listeners and the conservative movement. Limbaugh’s talk radio style became a staple of the modern right. Then, the left joined the fray. This week: partisan loudmouth versus partisan loudmouth, and the shifting media landscape that helped create modern political warfare.
 
This episode first ran in June, 2021.

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The Returns: Hush Rush

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