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S2: 8. The Last Election…?
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
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S2: 7. Wonderland
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
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S2: 6. Kompromat
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 CunninghamCREDITS: Stephen Hawking clip from goal.cast, TikTokJeffrey Epstein reporting in Florida, 2008-2011 from WPBF, Palm Beach Post, WBTV, Miami HeraldG Edward Griffin clip from The Subversion Factor, Knowledge 2020 Media, 1983Gamestop archive from CNBCIan Carrol's videos: Cancelthisclothingco on TikTokPeter Thiel on The Joe Rogan Experience
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S2: 5. The Photocopier
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
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S2: 4. The Jump
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 CunninghamCredits: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 todayO.U.R documentary audio from The Abolitionists, FletChet Entertainment
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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?

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