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Barack Obama condemned it. Black American activists championed it. Meghan Markle brought it to the Royal Family. 鈥淲okeness鈥� has become a shorthand for one side of the culture wars, popularising concepts like 鈥渨hite privilege鈥� and 鈥渢rigger warnings鈥� - and the idea that 鈥渓anguage is violence鈥�.

Journalist Helen Lewis is on a mission to uncover the roots of this social phenomenon. On her way she meets three authors who in 2017 hoaxed a series of academic journals with fake papers on dog rape, fat bodybuilding and feminist astrology. They claimed to have exposed the jargon-loving, post-modern absurdity of politically correct university departments - whose theories drive 鈥渨oke鈥� online political movements.

But is there really a link between the contemporary language of social justice warriors and the continental philosophy of the 1960s and 70s? And are critics of wokeness just reactionaries, left uneasy by a changing world?

Producer Craig Templeton Smith
Editor Jasper Corbett