The Coming Storm

Gabriel Gatehouse and producer Lucy Proctor were on stage at the Hay Festival in May 2025. They discuss the second Trump administration, making the second series and how the storm seems to be progressing in 2025. Chaired by Horatio Clare. Editor: Richard Vadon Mix: Neil Churchill

Over two series this podcast has followed a cast of characters who propelled Trump into the White House – twice. Many of them are now likely to take power and inject their reality-bending world views into America’s health, security and intelligence infrastructure. Who are they and what do they believe?There's Kash Patel, Trump's pick for FBI director. He was deeply embedded in the Russiagate saga. Several bit-part players in our episodes who've now been promised influence. Elon Musk of course.And then there's Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Son of a murdered Senator, nephew of a murdered president, he believes many of America's three-letter agencies represent a threat to national health and security. Presenter: Gabriel Gatehouse Producer: Lucy Proctor

In the 1990s a group of futurist thinkers meet on one of the world’s first email lists. The Extropians imagine a world of augmented human bodies, nanotechnology, cryptocurrencies and artificial intelligence. Now, some of the thinkers on that email list are turning that AI future into a reality. But others are now worried - what if the AI ends up in charge of us all?As we head into an epochal shift for humanity, questions about democracy and tyranny run through the debates about how fast or slow to move forward. Because we don’t want to end up living in the Matrix…Producer: Lucy Proctor Sound design and mix: James Beard Editor: Richard Vadon Script consultants: Richard Fenton-Smith and Afsaneh Gray Commissioning editor: Dan Clarke Original music: Pete CunninghamCREDITS: Timothy Leary 1992 half-hour appearance with cable TV host Skip E Lowe, copyright unknown, Alan Eichler, YouTubeAfter all, the body is an extension of fashion, Natasha Vita More, YouTube

Gabriel Gatehouse is on holiday with his family when he gets an invitation to an exclusive party in New York City from a group called Praxis. The tech start-up plans to create a new sovereign state somewhere on the Mediterranean coast, part of a new tech movement called ‘the network state’. The idea is that these statelets, governed not by a giant state bureaucracy but on the blockchain, will eventually replace the nation state. Gabriel meets crypto cowboys cheering on the end of democracy and tech bros hoping to replace the dollar with meme coins. It looks like kids playing around, larping as revolutionaries. But kids playing around with memes gave rise to Pizzagate, Qanon and Jan 6…Producer: Lucy Proctor Sound design and mix: James Beard Editor: Richard Vadon Script consultants: Richard Fenton-Smith and Afsaneh Gray Commissioning editor: Dan Clarke Original music: Pete CunninghamCREDITS: The Network State Conference 2023 - Livestream, The Network State Podcast, Youtube JD Vance: The US is being run by 'childless cat ladies', Fox News EVERY ANGEL IS TERRIFYING, Praxis_tv, Youtube

A prank about pizza is the moment members of the Republican Party in Idaho realise the conspiratorial John Birch Society has burrowed into mainstream politics. These people are dredging up ideas from the past, about communist plots and hidden hands, and repurposing them for the 21st Century. An alliance is forming in the Pacific Northwest state between the John Birchers and another group of people who never trusted the federal government of America. Gabriel Gatehouse meets the leader of The Real 3%’ers of Idaho, anti-government activists who are part of the militia movement. He hears how a stand-off in the desert a decade ago between government bureaucrats and cowboys became a defining moment, for those who don’t trust the institutions of the state, and also for the FBI, as everyone looks at the January 6 Capitol riot as evidence of the enemy within.Producer: Lucy Proctor Sound design and mix: James Beard Editor: Richard Vadon Script consultants: Richard Fenton-Smith and Afsaneh Gray Commissioning editor: Dan Clarke Original music: Pete CunninghamCredits:Dorothy Moon speaking at the Kootenai County Republican Women Federated’s fundraiserIdaho Freedom Foundation Investigation by KTVBDorothy Moon introducing Eric Parker of Hailey during the Idaho House session on Jan. 16, 2018.Leaked bodycam footage of the Bundy Ranch stand-off fromThe Pete Santilli Show, Rumble - original owner unknown

America through the looking glass - enter a world where nothing is as it seems. As America heads into a presidential election, Gabriel Gatehouse dives back into the labyrinthine rabbit warren of American conspiracy culture.Whilst liberals across the world worry about a possible return of Donald Trump, millions of Americans are convinced that their democracy has already been highjacked - by a sinister Deep State cabal. How did this happen? And who is behind it?Gabriel meets a January 6 rioter running for office who sees his detention as political imprisonment and goes on the trail of a Californian yogi who stormed the Capitol and then fell even deeper down the rabbit hole.New episodes available on Wednesdays. Listen first on BBC Sounds.Producer: Lucy Proctor Sound design and mix: James Beard Editor: Richard Vadon Script consultants: Richard Fenton-Smith and Afsaneh Gray Commissioning editor: Dan Clarke Original music: Pete CunninghamCREDITS: Audio from January 6 from A Reporter’s Video from Inside the Capitol Siege, Luke Mogelson, The New YorkerAudio of Ivan Raiklin from @MattStruck on X News report of Alan Hostetter’s first protest from Former La Habra police chief sentenced for role in Jan. 6 attack on US Capitol, KCAL News News report of Alan Hostetter’s first protest from PROTEST - Coronavirus Quarantine/Lockdown Protests - The Next Thing? (San Clemente, CA), Local Story TV Audio of ‘fencegate’ from OC HawkAudio of protests outside Katrina Foley’s home from @inminivanhell, X Alan Hostetter outside the Supreme Court from Virginia Women for Trump rally at Supreme Court, NTD / Patria De Marti Alan Hostetter’s video on ‘fencegate’ from Bitchute

Louis Theroux interviews Gabriel Gatehouse about the aftermath of the 2021 Capitol riots, QAnon, and the latest twists in the plot to break reality. Producer: Lucy Proctor

As America goes out to vote for the first time since the tumultuous aftermath of the 2020 election, Gabriel Gatehouse is back in the deep undergrowth of the US political scene, in a bid to understand where the dark energy underpinning the January 6 assault on the Capitol is going now.Some of the energy from the QAnon conspiracy theory about a satanic cabal of paedophiles is morphing into a grassroots political movement against ‘groomers’ – the idea that LGBTQI+ sex educators and trans healthcare advocates are indoctrinating young people into a sexualised culture.The battleground is America’s school boards and the prize could be a galvanised Republican base with a new crusade. At a conference in Miami of thinkers shaping the future ideas of the right, Gabriel finds the issue top of the agenda.And across the country, a slate of candidates linked to QAnon is running for office – how will they fare?Producer: Lucy Proctor

QAnon and the plot to break reality...The Q Shaman, the man with the furs and horns who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, is in jail. The movement he came to symbolise appears defeated. But in a small South Carolina seaside town, ‘establishment’ Republicans are fighting a losing battle for the soul of their party, after one of the bloggers who mainstreamed the QAnon conspiracy theory has been elected to a powerful local position. Across America, people who believe Donald Trump’s parallel narrative about a stolen election are trying to take over the levers of democracy. Was this the plan all along? Producer: Lucy Proctor Presenter: Gabriel Gatehouse

QAnon and the plot to break reality...A British spy is hired to dig dirt on Donald Trump’s Russia connections. His sources tell him Trump is a Russian agent, a puppet of the Kremlin. America is gripped by this story. Half are convinced the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians in order to defeat Hillary Clinton. But the other half believes the investigations into Russian collusion are a hoax, a conspiracy by the establishment to unseat a democratically elected president. The QAnon community takes up this second narrative, in which a renegade General becomes a martyr and a figurehead. Producer: Lucy Proctor Presenter: Gabriel Gatehouse

QAnon and the plot to break reality...A severely disabled boy from upstate New York is shocked when his online community of video game fans is flooded with porn. He gets sucked into a toxic world of mostly young men stuck in their parents’ basements, making memes out of snippets of popular culture and Nazi symbols. He becomes a major figure in a dark new counterculture germinating on a niche website called 4chan. As the 2016 Presidential election approaches, a story grows on 4chan about Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, paedophilia, and references to pizza. The story bursts out into the real world when a man walks into a pizza restaurant with a gun. Producer: Lucy Proctor Presenter: Gabriel Gatehouse

QAnon and the plot to break reality...When a mob storms the Capitol in Washington DC, reporter and presenter Gabriel Gatehouse sees someone he recognises: a man draped in furs with horns on his head. He is known as the Q Shaman. Gabriel had met him at a Trump rally in Arizona, ranting about a conspiracy theory involving Hillary Clinton and a cabal of satanic paedophiles plotting to steal the 2020 presidential election. The search for the origins of this strange and twisted tale begins in 1993, when the suicide of a White House aide during Bill Clinton’s presidency reveals the first signs of a new information ecosystem that is starting to spill over into the mainstream. Myths about his murder proliferate on the early internet. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. In Arkansas a parallel reality is forming, in which the Clintons are a corrupt and murderous couple who will stop at nothing in their quest for power. Producer: Lucy Proctor