The Coming Storm

Investigation into American conspiracy theories and their influence AI summary

BBC Radio 4 Visit website › Government · EN · 24 episodes · latest 2025-07-02

Rank 3098

0 upvotes, 0 downvotes

Embed a widget with this podcast’s standing on your website

What it is about

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? That's the story that Gabriel Gatehouse is investigating in this series of The Coming Storm.The search for the origins of this story takes Gabriel inside a paranoid political group that tried to build its own Deep State during the Cold War, now back in fashion in the conservative backwaters of western mountain states. Gabriel meets the January 6 rioters running for office who see their detention as political imprisonment in gulags, and the militia men convinced the CIA and FBI are working against the American people. In the background lurk the tech utopian ideologues, using their vast wealth and power to fund conspiracy flavoured content as they work to create sovereign states free of all government control. And online, amateur finance bros foment distrust of government, central banks and giant financial institutions to millions of followers.What were once fringe ideas have burst into the mainstream. Conspiracy theories have become central planks of Trump's Republican Party, while Democrats run on dark warnings about the end of democracy. With both sides convinced the other is an existential threat, what are the prospects for the survival of the American political system?

Publisher’s own description, taken unchanged from the podcast feed.
(C) BBC 2025

Listen

Available at these services — the RSS feed works in any podcast app.

Apple Podcasts Deezer Spotify

Latest episodes

Live at Hay Festival

2025-07-02 · 1 hr 3 min · Season 2, episode 11

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.…
Inauguration: Live Q&A

2025-01-20 · 39 min · Season 2, episode 10

Gabriel Gatehouse is joined by the BBC’s US Digital reporter Mike Wendling to answer listener questions.Has the storm finally come?What do listeners want to know about the incoming Trump administration?Gabriel Gatehouse…
Inauguration Bonus

2025-01-19 · 40 min · Season 2, episode 9

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…
8. The Last Election…?

2024-10-30 · 54 min · Season 2, episode 8

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,…
7. Wonderland

2024-10-23 · 40 min · Season 2, episode 7

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…
6. Kompromat E

2024-10-16 · 34 min · Season 2, episode 6

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…
5. The Photocopier E

2024-10-09 · 37 min · Season 2, episode 5

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…
4. The Jump E

2024-10-02 · 35 min · Season 2, episode 4

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…
3. The Enemy Within

2024-09-25 · 38 min · Season 2, episode 3

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…
2. Flight 007

2024-09-18 · 37 min · Season 2, episode 2

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.…

Episode details from the publisher’s feed. Playback happens at the publisher.

Publisher details

Owner: BBC
Oldest episode in feed: 12/2021 · over 4 years
Typical length: 38 min
Format: Serial Meant to be heard in order

The Coming Storm in the rankings

The best Government podcasts The best English-language podcasts All rankings ›

For podcasters

Is this podcast yours? Verify it — afterwards you can correct details, get the widget for your website, and we let you know when your podcast is nominated or wins.

Without an account you can use an email address on your show’s own domain — we create the account along the way. The other methods need a login.