The Coming Storm

By BBC Radio 4Government

The Coming Storm episodes

July 02, 2025 Live at Hay Festival
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
1 hr 3 min
January 20, 2025 Inauguration: Live Q&A
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 is joined by US-based BBC journalist Mike Wendling to answer listener questions about Donald Trump's picks for influential positions and about how to report on conspiracy culture. This live recording happened on the Live News stream on BBC Sounds the day before President Trump was inaugurated.
Producers: Lucy Proctor and Charlotte McDonald
40 min
January 19, 2025 Inauguration Bonus
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
41 min
October 30, 2024 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
55 min
October 23, 2024 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 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
40 min
October 16, 2024 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 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
34 min
October 09, 2024 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 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
37 min
October 02, 2024 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 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
36 min
September 25, 2024 3. The Enemy Within
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
39 min
September 18, 2024 2. Flight 007
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
37 min