Gabriel Gatehouse, producer Lucy Proctor and Ben Ansell, Professor of Comparative Democratic Institutions at Oxford University, in front of a live audience at the BBC’s Radio Theatre.

As the team emerges from series 2, what have we learned about the future of democracy in an age of technological change and split realities?

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 Cunningham

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 Cunningham

CREDITS: Timothy Leary 1992 half-hour appearance with cable TV host Skip E Lowe, copyright unknown, Alan Eichler, YouTube

After all, the body is an extension of fashion, Natasha Vita More, YouTube

In series one of this podcast we spent months investigating QAnon, a crazy conspiracy theory involving an elite cabal of paedophiles and child sex traffickers. And we never really grappled with… this actual convicted paedophile and sex trafficker, who was at the centre of a network of global financial cultural and political elites.

But the story of Jeffrey Epstein is more than a kernel of truth at the heart of Qanon. It connects the idea of a cabal of elite paedophiles to the wider conspiracy theory we’re looking into for series two, one that millions of Americans believe: that democracy is a facade, and that the institutions of America, from politics to finance, from Hollywood to the secret intelligence agencies, are controlled by hidden hands.

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 Cunningham

CREDITS: Stephen Hawking clip from goal.cast, TikTok

Jeffrey Epstein reporting in Florida, 2008-2011 from WPBF, Palm Beach Post, WBTV, Miami Herald

G Edward Griffin clip from The Subversion Factor, Knowledge 2020 Media, 1983

Gamestop archive from CNBC

Ian Carrol's videos: Cancelthisclothingco on TikTok

Peter Thiel on The Joe Rogan Experience

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 Cunningham

CREDITS: 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

In the summer of 2023 a small budget thriller becomes a smash hit. Sound of Freedom is based on the true story of Tim Ballard, a former officer at the Department for Homeland Security, who spent years undercover busting child sex trafficking rings before he quit and set up his own organisation.

The film was linked to QAnon, the conspiracy theory about a satanic cabal of paedophiles secretly running America. Q, the anonymous figure who posted cryptic messages in online forums, isn’t mentioned in the film. He’s stopped posting and the movement has withered. But Q’s ideas have seeped into the mainstream. Now they’ve merged with a bigger story about dark forces that have captured the institutions of America - the Federal Reserve, the FBI, and…. Hollywood.

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 Cunningham

Credits:

Opening sequence includes sound from from:

Sound of Freedom, Official Trailer, Angel Studios Jim Caviezel on Bannon’s War Room, Rumble Woke Hollywood FURIOUS Over Sound Of Freedom HUGE Box Office Success! | They CAN'T STOP This Movie! Ryan Kinel, Youtube Controversial movie becomes a surprise summer hit, CNN How 'Sound of Freedom,' controversial child sex trafficking film, became a hit in theaters, USA today

O.U.R documentary audio from The Abolitionists, FletChet Entertainment

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 Cunningham

Credits:

Dorothy Moon speaking at the Kootenai County Republican Women Federated’s fundraiser

Idaho Freedom Foundation Investigation by KTVB

Dorothy 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 Gabriel Gatehouse travels around America in the run-up to the 2024 Presidential election, he keeps hearing about the Federal Reserve. Many people think the Fed is a central cog in a grand conspiracy to impose a sinister ‘New World Order’ and control the supply of money. These dark fears about the Federal Reserve are bound up with the fear of communism. And they go back to the Cold War… to a fringe group called The John Birch Society, and one of its leaders, Congressman Larry McDonald, who lived his life as if in the crosshairs of a terrifying communist conspiracy.

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 Cunningham

CREDITS:

U.S. Stock Market Crash - 1929 | Today in History | 29 Oct 16, AP Archive

Clips of Larry McDonald and Robert Welch from Education Is the Key (by Larry McDonald) 1980, John Birch Society and 1958 Robert Welch Speech - Insiders Plan To Take Over America (copyright unknown)

Audio of G Edward Griffin presentation from The Creature From Jekyll Island (by G. Edward Griffin), recorded 1994

Western Goals film, The Subversion Factor, Knowledge 2020 Media, 1983

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 Cunningham

CREDITS: Audio from January 6 from A Reporter’s Video from Inside the Capitol Siege, Luke Mogelson, The New Yorker

Audio 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 Hawk

Audio 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

A vast new conspiracy movement has gripped America. That weird story we were looking into last time - about Hillary Clinton and a cabal of satanic paedophiles – that’s morphed into something bigger and perhaps more consequential. Join us as we go through the looking glass, into a world where nothing is as it seems, where the storming of the Capitol on January 6 2021 was a piece of theatre, the institutions of the state are a façade and behind the scenes, hidden hands are believed to be pulling the strings.

Listen to new episodes first on BBC Sounds from Tuesday 10 September 2024.

Producer: Lucy Proctor

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

When Gabriel Gatehouse is reporting on the aftermath of the presidential election in 2020, and trying to understand the motivations behind QAnon, he comes across people who believe another conspiracy theory.

It’s about a laptop which Hunter Biden, the son of the Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, had supposedly left in a computer repair shop in Delaware. The laptop allegedly contains damning information about the Biden family. Gabriel thinks it’s fake news and ignores it at the time. But that is a mistake.

The laptop turns out to be real, even if some of the claims about its contents are not. Silicon Valley and perhaps even the FBI seem to have tried to suppress the story, while the mainstream media refused to run it. For some, it is now powerful evidence that the Biden administration, and the entire establishment, is a regime that must be toppled.

Producer: Lucy Proctor