Recommended listening from Top Comment, the BBC podcast that investigates what's blowing up online.

In this clip from the latest episode Marianna Spring and Matt Shea look at the highly convincing fake BBC news articles that are being promoted on Truth social and other major sites. One example, which describes a fictional altercation on Question Time between Nigel Farage and the governor of the Bank of England, appears to be an elaborate attempt to promote a murky crypto operation.

To listen to the rest of the episode and to hear more stories about what's blowing up online, search "Top Comment" on BBC Sounds.

Top Comment is hosted by Marianna Spring and Matt Shea. The series producer is Laurie Kalus. The social producer is Sophie Millward. The technical producer was Philip Bull. The editor is Justine Lang. The senior news editor is Sam Bonham.

Jamie and his AI companion Jimmy Botlett become increasingly difficult to tell apart as they bring you the final chapter of this story - featuring Geoffrey Hinton, the godfather of AI, who now wishes he'd thought harder about the consequences. Plus we hear claims that an engineer is building something rather frightening at one of the big AI companies. But what's true, what's fake, and what does any of it say about what's happening to all of us, right now?

Presenter: Jamie Bartlett

A Tempo+Talker production for BBC Radio 4

Jamie sits down with Dr Aseem Malhotra, the cardiologist who reaches millions through alternative media with his claims about Covid vaccines - and who is, he says, nervous about talking to the BBC. Jamie goes through his arguments carefully, with an open mind. But the harder question isn't whether Malhotra is right or wrong. It's what it means that so many people trust him more than they trust the institutions that are supposed to tell us the truth.

Presenter: Jamie Bartlett

A Tempo+Talker production for BBC Radio 4.

In the early 2000s, a young man in New Jersey was writing thousands of fake university essays for paying students. Around the same time, financial analysts in New York were rating toxic debt as safe. And in Silicon Valley, a new business philosophy was taking hold: fake it till you make it.

Jamie Bartlett asks how so many people, in so many different worlds, arrived at the same conclusion at the same time. The answer, he thinks, has a name - The Lance Armstrong Defence. A quiet, creeping logic that says everyone else is doing it so why can't I?

Presenter: Jamie Bartlett

A Tempo+Talker production for BBC Radio 4.

In 1987, the same year Hulk Hogan body-slammed Andre the Giant, something else happened that would change America's relationship with the truth forever - a Washington regulator abolished the law that required broadcasters to present both sides of an argument.

What followed was Morton Downey Jr, a furious chain-smoking provocateur who discovered that outrage was more compelling than accuracy. And Oprah Winfrey, who found that sincerity and emotional honesty could be just as powerful. Together, they popularised an idea that has quietly shaped the world we live in - that your truth is just as valid as the truth.

Presenter: Jamie Bartlett

A Tempo+Talker production for BBC Radio 4.

In episode two, Jamie ventures into the strange world of 1980s WWF wrestling - where performers and fans share an unspoken agreement to treat the whole spectacle as real. A shared illusion where everyone knows it's fake, but plays along because it feels true. It sounds like harmless fun. And for a while, it was. But Jamie soon wonders: what happens when an idea like that escapes the ring and changes the world?

Credits:

A Tempo+Talker production for BBC Radio 4.

Jamie Bartlett is not Steven Bartlett. People mix them up more than you might think - but there is an important difference: Steven Bartlett is one of the most successful podcasters on the planet, and Jamie is not.

So what does Steven have that Jamie doesn't? And what does the answer tell us about the world we now live in?

In this first episode, Jamie digs into the origin stories of the UK's podcast kings - and discovers that in 2025, working out what's true, what's embellished, and what's just a really good story is harder than it sounds.

He also builds himself an AI companion, Jimmy Botlett, because if he's going to get to the bottom of how fakery took over the world, he's going to need all the help he can get.

Credits:

A Tempo+Talker production for BBC Radio 4.

Have you noticed that more and more of the world feels, well, fake?

Online there's a daily avalanche of dubious advice and information - about health, money, success, happiness - much of it delivered with total confidence and little regard for evidence.

There's the fabricated reviews, inflated metrics and synthetic content.

Influencers present themselves as authorities. The 'fake it till you make it' mantra has hardened into the business model.

Meanwhile, institutions once trusted to tell us what is true now compete for attention like everyone else - just as new technologies emerge that can generate convincing false information at scale.

How did we get here? What can we do about it? And, well, do we really care?

In this six-part series Jamie Bartlett sets out to understand how fakery stopped being a flaw and became the operating system of modern life.

This isn't a series about individual liars or shysters. It's about the cultural conditions that made modern fakery not just possible, but incentivised, rewarded, and often indistinguishable from success.

From the scripted spectacle of 1980s professional wrestling to the collapse of the global financial system, Jamie traces the incentives that normalised our fake world. Along the way, he's joined by his AI companion, Jimmy Botlett.

The series builds towards one urgent question: in a future shaped by generative AI and synthetic media, how will we tell fact from fakery - and will we even care enough to try?

Credits:

A Tempo+Talker production for BBC Radio 4.

On 30th September 2022 a coroner in London finds that Molly Russell "...died from an act of self-harm while suffering from depression and the negative effects of online content."

The finding is a global first. Social media is ruled to have contributed to the death of a child.

In San Francisco, around the same time, a strange story is unfolding inside Twitter HQ.

Ever since Donald Trump's account was suspended on twitter, tensions have been building around what is and isn't allowed on platforms.

Elon Musk shares internal staff documents with a hand-picked group of journalists. One of those journalists suspects these documents show collusion between tech platforms and the US government.

Politicians and civil groups on both the left and right from across the world, want the power and influence of these companies to be reigned in.

There's even talk of repealing section 230 - the law that created modern social media.

In this final episode, Jamie Bartlett asks if Silicon Valley's radical experiment is about to implode? And if the online world is chaotic now, what will advances in artificial intelligence mean for us all?

Presenter: Jamie Bartlett

Reading by John Lightbody

Archive credits: BBC News, September 2022; CNN, 2022; C-Span, Jan 2024; BBC Archive, 1967

New episodes released on Mondays. If you’re in the UK, listen to the latest episodes of The Gatekeepers, first on BBC Sounds: bbc.in/3Ui661u

If you are suffering distress or despair and need support, a list of organisations that can help is available at bbc.co.uk/actionline

Jamie Bartlett travels to Minnesota to meet Abrham Meareg Amare.

The young academic is seeking asylum in the States following the murder of his father in Ethiopia in 2021.

In December 2022, Abrham became the lead complainant in a $2 billion lawsuit against Meta. Abrham believes that company is partly responsible for the death of his dad - a renowned chemistry professor - who was slandered and doxxed on Facebook, before being shot outside his home.

Abrham says he reported the posts multiple times but they were not taken down, until eight days after the killing.

Jamie meets the Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, who tells him that her decision to leak Meta's internal documents was driven by grave concerns about the way Meta operates in the Global South.

Producer: Caitlin Smith

Archive: C:Span, October 2021

New episodes released on Mondays. If you’re in the UK, listen to the latest episodes of The Gatekeepers, first on BBC Sounds: bbc.in/3Ui661u